Thursday's Child

From Education Week

Comment: We put our right hand in; we put our right hand out; we put our right hand in and we shake it all about. We do the hoki poki and we turn ourselves around, and that's what it's all about!

Published Online: July 2, 2009

NRC Urges Greater Focus on Preschool Math

By Sean Cavanagh

“It’s fair to say the attention is almost entirely on reading and literacy, without recognizing the importance of math,” said Christopher T. Cross, who co-edited the report and chaired the committee that produced it.

That lack of attention comes despite research that shows many young students arriving in preschool with an ability, and a willingness, to tackle math lessons, added Mr. Cross, the chairman of Cross & Joftus, an education policy consulting company based in Washington and California.

“There’s a natural curiosity about mathematical things,” he added, “even if they don’t call it math.”

Patchwork System

The National Research Council, headquartered in Washington, is one of several nonprofit institutions charged with providing advice to Congress, as part of the National Academies. The early-childhood study received funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Head Start; the agency’s Office of Planning Research and Evaluation; and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which has provided funding for coverage of math and science issues at Education Week.

Ms. Satkowski said she believed the report could broaden understanding of how many different routes into math are available to teachers and parents.

“[E]arly math instruction doesn’t have to be flashcards and worksheets,” Ms. Satkowski explained. “A good pre-K or kindergarten teacher knows how to effectively integrate math into child-initiated play activities with questions about the number of rocks in their pail, the relative size of the two spiders they drew,” and other means.

The consequences of not providing an early math foundation to disadvantaged students, given their more limited opportunities to learn the subject away from school, can be especially great, the authors found. At the same time, high-quality math instruction can help overcome “systematic inequities in educational outcomes and later career opportunities,” they say.

The report focuses primarily on children between the ages of 2 and 6, according to the NRC.

The system of early-childhood education in the United States is a “loosely sewn-together patchwork” of programs and services, as the report describes it. About 60 percent of preschool-age children are in “center-based” care, including services run through the federal Head Start program; roughly 21 percent receive some sort of home-based care; and about 20 percent have no formal child-care arrangements, according to the NRC report.

In addition to the Head Start program, which serves an estimated 908,000 students, many children in center-based care are enrolled in state-funded preschool, as the report points out. A number of states have moved to fund preschool programs for low-income families in recent years.

It follows that bringing about the changes in preschool teachers’ training and professional development, Mr. Cross said, would likely require action from several players, including federal officials who administer Head Start, professional associations, and state licensing programs.

“It’s a complex set of actors who would have to implement this,” Mr. Cross said.

For more of the story go HERE.