Front & Center

By Mike Rose

The stakes couldn't be much higher in Margaret Ivy's kindergarten class. Getting kids ready to read is the top priority for this AFT teacher, whose work in the classroom is supported by a federal Reading First grant. But time is at a premium when you're one teacher dealing with a class of 26 students and your school serves a low-income neighborhood in Oklahoma City, a community where many students speak English as a second language.

To get it all done, Ivy needs help. She needs students who come through her doors familiar with school rules and routine, comfortable working and sharing with other youngsters in a classroom environment, familiar with letters and their sounds, shapes, basic vocabulary and the other building blocks of instruction. These skills are no longer optional—not in Ivy's classroom, not in kindergarten rooms around the country given the increasing demands of public education today.

Ivy not only relies on the type of preparation that only a strong early childhood education program can offer, she also has provided it. That's because many of the kindergartners Ivy teaches this year are the same students she taught last year, when she was a preschool teacher at Eugene Field.

"It's hard to undo lost opportunities," the AFT member says. "If your plan is to start tutoring and mentoring in third grade, then some [of these students] will never catch up. But here, there are bilingual students who are doing fantastic [work] because they have that huge background in prekindergarten. I'm thinking of one student whose mother has no English—but she went to an exceptional Head Start doing the same things I was doing" in the preschool program.

Words to action

The type of boost that Ivy describes isn't a secret. Studies stretching back almost a half century have documented how investments in strong preschool programs, staffed by well-qualified and well-supported professionals, pay handsome dividends later in a child's education and well into adulthood (see "Benefits that stick," page 12). But knowledge does not always translate into support—a point that was forcefully driven home to Missoula, Mont., Head Start teacher Karen Giuliani not long ago.

Habitat for Humanity, the acclaimed program that builds no-cost housing for America's most needy citizens, undertook a project in Missoula last year: Four of Giuliani's co-workers qualified for free homes. "We are low income. Some who work here qualify" for Habitat houses.

After years in which funding has failed to keep up with demand for Head Start, compensation continues to scrape bottom, and centers continue to make tragic choices. Last year, insurance premiums for workers at Giuliani's Head Start center rose to $60,000. The only way the center could cope was to raise deductibles, cut four teaching positions and eliminate two classes.

"This program cannot survive another increase in health insurance," says Giuliani, who is also president of the Head Start Day Care Employees, the AFT local at the center. "We're in the trenches and see how important the work we do is. I have a B.A. in elementary education, and I'm working for a third of what I'd make" in a traditional classroom setting, she notes. "In general, in our country, early childhood education hasn't been of much importance. We have to connect the dots."

A voice to be heard

Mike Sheehan has been an early childhood educator for 29 years, and he remembers well a conversation he had with his father when he announced his career choice. The older man, a teacher and principal, immediately appreciated how much of a contribution his son would be making—but he also knew that living can be hard for an educator of very young children.
After almost three decades, "it's still a struggle," says Sheehan, who works at a private child care facility located on the campus of the Hutchinson Cancer Center outside Seattle. These days, however, the AFT member is less interested in describing the particulars of one family's finances than in the work under way through his and other unions to win public support for early childhood education.

"We know that a quality child care [and] early learning system is founded on the ability to hire and retain well-educated, highly trained staff," Sheehan explains. Yet, "our public policies seem to almost ignore this."

The point is beginning to get through, however, in several areas.

• Washington state, with strong backing from AFT Washington, has adopted a career-and-wage ladder for child care centers that Sheehan reports has had some success in reducing staff turnover. Home-based providers in Washington recently organized and now have a contract with the state, allowing them to collectively bargain health benefits, and training incentives, along with increases in subsidy rates. That also has helped center-based programs. Employers like Paula Gamez, owner-director of Sunnyside Early Learning Center in eastern Washington, who believes union involvement in the sector could promote stable staffing and secure access to training "to help increase the knowledge base" of early childhood educators.
• In Montana, bargaining has helped Head Start professionals deal with budget shocks in the workplace, and unions have been pivotal in helping the frontline have a persuasive voice thousands of miles away, successfully encouraging Congress to pass a landmark Head Start reauthorization bill. The union also has worked for professional growth among Head Start educators; last year, the AFT's state affiliate brought together Head Start members for a first-ever meeting that allowed them to share ideas.
• In New York City, 28,000 home-based child care providers recently voted to become part of the AFT-affiliated United Federation of Teachers. The landmark vote "brings us one step closer to professional status and gives us a strong voice to help people understand the many talents, roles and responsibilities we take up in this profession," says AFT member and child care provider Tammie Miller, who was active in the organizing drive.
• Oklahoma offers universal prekindergarten to any 4-year-olds whose parents want them to be enrolled, and nearly 90 percent of children take advantage of the opportunity either through district programs or through Head Start. Pre-K teachers hold a B.A. degree with certification in early childhood education and are paid on the same salary scale as their K-12 counterparts.

"There are a lot of really, really good early childhood educators," Ivy says. "Children should all share in that."
________
Mike Rose is a senior editor of American Teacher.