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Reading is incremental
‘1,000 Books Project’ promotes literacy for preschoolers
Research shows that reading to preschoolers helps prepare them for greater success in school. This is the basis for the 1,000 Books Project, a program that promotes literacy and school readiness by setting a goal for parents to read 1,000 books to their children by age 6.
“I’m not sure if 1,000 is the magic number, but the more books read to children, the better,” says Carol Axner, director of the Ossining (N.Y.) Staff Development Center, which started its 1,000 Books Project last May.
Axner first heard about the project from the Marlboro (N.Y.) Faculty Association, which has been running its project successfully for several years. She felt the project would be a good way both to help children have a head start when they enter school and to improve the literacy skills of at-risk students. “Many of the older students who are at risk read to their younger siblings,” says Axner, a member of the Ossining Teachers Association.
Both the Marlboro and Ossining locals are affiliates of the New York State United Teachers.
It took nearly $7,000 to get the Ossining project going, most of which went toward buying books and the canvas bags to put them in. The program is supported by donations from the community and grants.
There are 112 families signed up for the program. Parents can go to the public library and sign out a bag of 10 books for two weeks and then return it for another bag.
Axner recently extended the project to offer dual-language and multicultural books in an effort to encourage Ossining’s Latino community to sign up. The books allow the Spanish-speaking parents to see the English words along with the Spanish words; and English-speaking parents can expose their children to another language, says Axner.
More than 6,000 books have been read to children since the program’s inception.
Feds sandbag strong Head Start data, group charges
Head Start advocates are crying foul at what they call the Bush administration’s decision to bury politically “inconvenient” evidence showing that the program works and works well.
At a February news conference, the National Head Start Association released test scores showing that the at-risk children served by Head Start are performing better than expected. The Head Start Association charges that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has only held behind-the-scenes briefings on the test results—what NHSA calls a deliberate effort to keep good Head Start findings under wraps.
NHSA pointed out that administration officials also have declined to circulate to the general public the “Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey,” a separate report that looked at 2,500 Head Start children. NHSA says the data show that children with severe socioeconomic handicaps were, by the spring of their kindergarten year, essentially at national norms in early reading and early writing, and close to catching up to the national norms in early math and vocabulary knowledge.
“The fact that there are two new studies showing that Head Start delivers the goods for America’s poorest children and their families is news we are going to shout from the rooftops, even if the Bush administration finds these facts inconvenient,” said NHSA president and CEO Sarah Greene.
“Given the increased focus on accountability by this administration for even our youngest children and their teachers, it is surprising that these data have not been more widely publicized,” says Marci Young, deputy director of the Center for the Child Care Workforce, a project of the AFT Educational Foundation. “As the only federally funded early childhood program, Head Start’s legacy in supporting children’s early learning is unparalleled. We must continue to push for full funding for Head Start as well as increased resources to support high quality in all early childhood programs.”
D.C. vouchers: What's 'opportunity' got to do
with it?
A new report charges that fewer than 75 of the more than 1,300 students who were awarded school vouchers in the District of Columbia actually were low-income students attending schools labeled most in need of improvement.
In fact, more than 200 students who received vouchers were already enrolled in private schools, observes “Flaws & Failings: A Preliminary Look at the Problems Already Encountered in the Implementation of D.C.’s New Federally Mandated School Voucher Program.” The report was released in February by the nonprofit People For the American Way Foundation, and was drawn from documents obtained from the U.S. Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request and other public information. It reveals a program that falls dismally short of its stated goal of providing educational opportunity to the most vulnerable student populations.
The report calls into question who is actually doing the choosing under the D.C. voucher program. The federal voucher initiative allows private schools to administer their normal admissions tests—effectively allowing them to pick and choose among students. And private schools participating in the program that charge tuition higher than the $7,500 voucher amount are free to maintain those costs.
“It’s clear that in its first year the D.C. voucher program is not meeting the priorities claimed by its proponents and set out in legislation,” says Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation.
The full report is available online at www.pfaw.org.
