Scrambling to be ready for the first day of school for thousands of preschoolers. Enrolling kids, hiring teachers, preparing classrooms. Making prekindergarten available to any and all new york fouryearolds was a Campaign Promise of mayor bill de blasio. And this was the first opening day of school of the mayors term. Around the country elected officials have operated on the assumption that starting school earlier is betterperiod. Heading to schools before kindergarten High Pressure system get more kids ready to learn, ready to behave and ready to handle themselves in classrooms, and promises to narrow the gaps between poor kids and other kids who show up in standardized testing from the earliest grades on. On this edition well ask whether new yorks emphasize on universal prek is a worth while priority, and how you measure the pay back. Its back to School Season around the country. This year in new york city that includes all the fouryearolds, too. Mayor bill declassio signature 300 Million Campaign process. Prek education for all is set to launch september 4th. Were going to be doing a lot of good here right now for children, for families. Were also to go to be sending a message all over this state, all over this nation that were serious about education. Were serious about getting it right for every child, including those who are neediest. It begins with fullday, high quality prek for all. With a little less than a week to go pressure is mounting. According to a report from the New York Times some Program Leaders are wrestling with building approvals, teacher recruitment and student enrollment. Each school be given money based on how many children enroll by september 1st. If enrollment quotas are not met some schools could already face getting shut down. The mayor aims to get 53,000 youngsters in classrooms for this inaugural year. So far just over 50,000 have signed up. The eyes of the world are on us. The pressure is on us to perform, to get it right. And if new yorks mayor is worried about that, hes not letting on. What started school earlier might accomplish more school for younger children this time on inside story. Joining us for that conversation in new york Stephen Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education research at rutgers university. Connor williams researcher at the new Americas Foundation education policy program, and also in new york, robert pondiccio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute. Can we operate for the rest of this program on the assumption that starting school earlier is better and leads to better results . We can in so far as were being careful. It does for many kids under many circumstances. We have studies that show programs for prek can have a really dramatic affect for many, many children. Not all kids . I think the research is mixed for some kids. It does, and Stephen Barnett can speak to this in more details, but for middle and upper class families the research is a bit more mixed whether prek is as effective as not going to prek. It doesnt seem to have as much of an effect on them. Here. Should we throw open the doors and welcome all comers as early as we can manage it . Absolutely we should. The vast majority of kids do benefit. Left on their own most middle income and even higherincome families will find their kids in poor quality programs. So its really a matter in the difference of quality that theyll get. It wont help them as much as children from homes where english isnt the language, in homes where their parents dont have a lot of education, and they have other disadvantages from poverty. Those kids will benefit the most. Thats why it will close the achievement gap. Does it have to be preschool . If its playgroup. If its spending time with other kids, developing language, doing blocks, having someone who will help them with their colors. Do we know whether any socialization, any exposure to other kids is better than none, and different in outcome from an Actual School experience . Well, we know that most programs actually dont make much of a difference. Intentional teaching from a real expert who knows what each child needs socially, emotionally, cognitively, and who knows how to translate that into an interaction with the child, thats what has the big impact on kids learning and development. Robert, if you set out to design a program like this, what should you make sure is in it . What is going to do the most good . Thats a good question. Im not sure thats the question being asked enough. My general sense is that were better at creating a political appetite for prek than delivering programs that work for kids. A preschool should help children. I look at language and knowledge, as Stephen Barnett alluded to, kids from lowincome homes have material differences in their up bringing. They dont have the languagerich, the knowledgerich up bringing that more affluent children have. So it probably should be aimed to the degree possible at closing those gaps. They should be languagerich, knowledgerich. The preschool should make up for any wa in any way what affluent kids get in their lives. Read allowes, trips to museums, thats probably the difference. By making it universal that defeats the purpose. We would be better off focusing our efforts and resources at low income kids who need it the most. When i was interviewing in past years one of your Fordham Institute colleagues who pointed out by third grade for many kids there was already a threeyear gap. Sure. That nearly floored me. The idea that you could be three years behind in school when you werent barely three years in school. Sure. What are we doing in a preschool environment . You mentioned closing the gap. How do we do it . I think thats the question that were not asking. There is this certainly sense, and i dont want to be overly critical, but the impulse of early Child Education is the good one, the right one, but we need to be asking questions what are we expecting from these programs, what are we spending our money on. I would like to see a Strong Research component. I can accept failure if preschool does not do what we set out to do. What is harder to accept is not being curious as to why it succeeds or fails. I would like resources to be set aside about what is about to happen in new york. If it fails, lets adjust. If it works, lets find out why its working. Do we have numbers from places like florida, from what has been tried in california to transition to school, what has been attempted in oklahoma . Do we already have a set of numbers that tell us what to do and what not to do . Well, we have a set of numbers that tell us a lot of what to do. We heard about what a good classroom should look like. Everybody agrees with that. We dont always do that. Right across the river from new york city we have a set of cities in new jersey where the best preschool on the planet begins at age three. For every child in 31 cities. People come from all over the world to look at this, and we look at how those kids are doing in fifth grade, actually. Theyre doing much better because they went to preschool. What is interesting about new york is that theyre setting up to do the same kinds of things. Small classes. Good teachers and a Continuous Improvement process. So this Research Piece while important, its not just about figuring out what works and doesnt work to inform science. Its about having a coach that works with the teacher, Continuous Improvement process so that those classrooms in new york are Getting Better every day year after year, and i believe the city set up a process to make that happen. Connor williams, wont you just get gaps of a different kind if everybody troops into classrooms just starting earlier. That the social capitol, the superior resources that some families bring to bear will just be seen in other ways now even though poor kids are starting school earlier . Maybe. The research is mixed on this. And this is what robert was saying, middle and upper m income families send ther their children, but its poor effects. Having these students with lower income families can help with peertopeer interaction. There is some evidence that that kind of integration of class can have a big advantage to lower income students. When we return on inside story well talk about what it will take for new yorks prek plan to work and the questions, are there enough teachers, enough classrooms, enough dollars to make all this work . Stay with us. Build fault lines labor day marathon the true cost of cheap labor nothing can be worse than this people burnt to ash. Horrendous conditions. Traffic labor on us bases. Management stealing wages. Exploited children put to work. How many of you get up at 4 or 5 oclock in the morning to go out to the fields . Dont miss our Award Winning series fault lines labor day marathon only on Al Jazeera America youre watching inside story on Al Jazeera America. The idea that more school is better school, there is still more to figure out. There is the matter of where youre going to put the neighborhoods fouryearolds. How to staff the classroom, how long to make the instructional day and for many places in the country transportation as we cant expect fouryearolds to wave goodbye at the front door and head out on their way to school. But one concept that has be devil bedeviled governors pop how quality tied does the instructor have to be . Do they have to have the same credentials as a seventh grade teacher or fifth grade teacher, or can you use people with lower qualifications . Thats a really good question. I becomethe longer i spend in this work the more adamant i become about teacher quality. I think we have a bit of a crisis in america in terms of teacher quality at large. And prek is probably particularly acute. Because we tend not to think of preschool as academically rigorous, i dont think im exaggerating in suggesting we have wittingly or unwittingly set a lower bar for preschool educators. Thats a mistake. All roads really do lead to Early Childhood education. Especially for low income kids. The language and knowledge deficits are so profound and critical to success i make a case that we should have prek educators who are overqualified than from other educators. How do you close the gap . How important is it to have highly qualified teachers at that age . It count be more important. This is a transfer of Human Capital from the adult to the child. If the adult really doesnt have more knowledge of the world, vocabulary and understanding of how to help children who are far behind to catch up, then the typical person in that childs neighborhood, youre just throwing your money away, and we have entire states who are doing that. We have the federal Head Start Program that pays teachers wages that keep many of them down around the poverty line. So low that the substantial percentage of these preschool teachers shows signs of clinical depression. Do we get results from head start . Because head start teachers are not as qualified as a Junior High School math teacher teaching in that same district. Do we get results out of head start . Is it a lower cost per head model that allows us to get kids into school sooner without busting the bank . Its a lower cost model, but it doesnt have the kinds of results we would get if we put money into it. So we end up paying on the back end with kids in prison, with kids who cant get good jobs. With kids who fail in school and have to repeat grades. Its not cheaper if you look at the big picture. Connor williams, have different states gone different ways on this . Absolutely. And actually this is one area where i have to differ from Stephen Barnett is that the best preschool in the country is not in the new jersey but in d. C. They pay their teachers identical as the rest of the teachers. Theyre extremely qualified and theyve braided in their head start money into the preschool program. My son started in the thre threeyearold prek here in d. C. On monday. How is it going . Its outstanding. I work in the Early Education initiative at work, so i have to say its really outstanding. You have integrated system in terms of race. You have an integrated system of socioeconomic status, and you have highly trained resource, 15,000 per pupil in the d. C. System. That, by the way, check me on this, but thats 5,000 more per pupil than theyre spending in new york for this big expansion. Its heavily resourced, and as dr. Barnett said there are other states where the cost even with lower cost of running a program like this, in georgia, 4,000 to 5,000 per pupil. The requirements to becoming a teacher is low and then you dont get good results. I asked about how he likes it so far half in jest because as i look at my own children and kids ive known in my years as an adult. Liking school is a big part of this. If the kids wants to go back tomorrow thats half the battle right there in a lot of cases. Its huge. And this is one thing to add, too. Weve been talking about this, and we should voice this, not only what it does for students but parents. What it was meant to do in d. C. Was to provide working families with some more coverage of their child responsibility so that this can work out to Something Like a 20,000 per year coverage for your average working family. They dont have to pay for child care. They can start school a couple of years earlier. In quebec they have heavily subsidized coverage and saw rapidly a 22 increase in maternal employment and 50 decrease in welfare rolls participation for single moms. And increased earnings for single moms. Prek has an effect for families that are nonmeasurable. Do we risk increasing the age of Early Childhood by schoolizing it, institutionalizing it. Earlier than weve been used to in early injury generations in the United States . Well, i think we know how to run high quality programs of what kids need that are not kindergarten or first grade or third grade. Thats one of the reasons we need highly qualified teachers. They know how to run a classroom. Dramatic play is the leading activity. Its not all about the teacher telling you what to do. Its about planning, taking personal responsibility, reviewing what youve done, learning to be an explorer and a scientist, the kinds of things that enrich a childs life not just in the future, but when theyre three and four. Robert, some of the push back when these programs are introduced state by state comes from families themselves that did not contemplate having their own children in school as early as three. Agreed, but i want to push back on something that dr. Barnett just said. I wish i think he put it we know how to run a quality preschool program. Maybe we do, maybe we dont. Im not sure that the Evidence Base is there to support the idea that we know how to do this at scale, as it were. Most of the literature that supports prek and your guest will correct me if im wrong, really lie on two fairly smallscale studies from many years ago. I dont know that weve seen those effect sizes for largescale city or staterun preschool programs. I would like to believe that new york city is about to embark on a transformative experiment, we need more than good intentions. Thus far we have not translated those intentions. As far as new york goes. As far as new york goes. This is one of the great concerns as dr. Barnett has been saying. Quality is important but weve got a thousand new teachers and teacher assistants. Weve given them three days of training. We have Building Code violation in some of the sites. Its hard to know if it will be any quality at all. After this short break well continue our look at Early Childhood education on the roll out of universal prek. It starts september 4th. What do we need to see coming out of new york to know whether what its doing is working or not . Stay with us. Al Jazeera America presents the bulling got two much to take for me thats when when you feel like its gonna be the end. 15 stories, 1 incredible journey edge of eighteen premiers september 7th only on Al Jazeera America welcome back to inside story on Al Jazeera America. Im ray suarez. Were looking at the first year of universal prek in americas largest Public School system this time on the program. What will we need to know before we know whether this big change has worked . Still with us Stephen Barnett, director of the National Institute of Early Education research at rutgers university. Connor williams Senior Researcher at the policy program the new america foundation, and robert pondiccio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute. Stephen barnett, adding 50,000 kids to an already manic system. People dont realize that is larger than many of the Public School systems in much of the country. How long will it take before we know this was worthwhile . Well, first thing i want to see is do they get all the kids there. Do they attend regularly . Coming to school, coming to preschool thats a good indicator. Second, i want to see data on the quality of the classroom. Is that a hard thing to measure . Pardon . Is the quality of the classroom a hard thing to measure comparing this one in ozone park, queens over here, this one over here Staten Island and then cups bay in manhattan over there. There are Good Measures of classroom quality and they have coaches who are trained to use them. They can collect that data and they can see are we good, bad, indifferent, and more importantly Getting Better . Then we want to sea how kids do as they come into kindergarten and how they do moving through school. Youre right, this is a big job. It may be five years before we really see are they accomplishing everything we would like . But in between we want to see theyre meeting their targets and Getting Better year by year. Robert, what will you be looking out for . Much the same. Im willing to give this program its head, as it were, give it time to see how it works. I think its important to let things play out. Im a little less than optimistic because it seems to me that the qualifications to enter in as a provider or teacher were fairly low. There have been some stories that you alluded to with trouble attracting teachers and whatnot. Its a big program. Its a lot of moving parts. Im skeptical because again i think were better at creating the appetite for this, and weve been curious about some of those issues and what exactly the kids are going to do all day, and also the follow up is important. You cant say well, weve done preschool well even if it is done well. What happens with fade out later on. You cant take your eye off the ball for k 5 and on as well. Its a continuum. Connor williams will we be able to see a difference in the kindergarteners, first graders, second graders soon . I doubt we will. We have got three big worries. We havent talked about this much. But because this has been rushed at the pace its been done, there are serious concerns about quality. Were talking about 70 of contracts for prek providers have not been reviewed. In some that have been reviewed there were horrifying oversights. One person over the organization was convicted for child pornography. Im worried about basic human safety. I talked to a trainer in the teaching program, and there is evidence that some of these children came from fourth grade settings. Connor williams, Stephen Barnett, and robert pondiccio, well be watching new york city. Its not on a hill, but it cant be hid. That brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. Thanks for being with us. In washington, im ray suarez. 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