What Alabama Voters Say
A coalition dedicated to expanding quality pre-kindergarten education for 4-year-olds in Alabama has found voters support spending more money on the effort -- regardless of party affiliation. View our findings here.
Source: Pre-K Now and Alabama Office of School Readiness
Early Literacy Research Noted in Trainings and Workshops
Every Child Ready to Read at your library®
Important research regarding how quality pre-k programs increase development in reading.
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RESEARCH
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SOURCE
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Roughly 35% of children in the United States enter school without the skills necessary for learning to read.
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Carnegie Foundation of New York. Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children. Waldorf, MD: Carnegie Corp of NY, 1994.
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One out of five school children is reading-impaired by the time he reaches 4th grade. 38% of our nation’s fourth-grade children are reading below a basic level of proficiency.
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U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Nation’s Report Card: Reading Highlights 2003
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This has long term effects: The U.S Office of Technology has estimated that 25% of the adult workforce does not read well enough to meet routine requirements of today’s workplace
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Moats, Louisa Cook. Speech to Print: Language
Essentials for Teachers. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes, 2000
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Knowledge of alphabet letters at entry into kindergarten is a strong predictor of reading ability in 10th grade.
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Ehri, L., & McCormick, S. Phases of word learning:
Implications for instruction with delayed and disabled
readers. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 14, 135-163 (1998).
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Children who are exposed to books early in life have better language skills than those who wait until later.
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Adam Payne, Grover Whitehurst, and Andrea Angell. The Role of Home Literacy Environment in the Development of Language Ability in Preschool Children for Low-Income Families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly v. 9 issues 3-4 (1994) p.422-440.
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Research shows the development of early literacy skills through early experiences with books and stories is critically linked to a child’s success in learning to read. Children who are read to from an early age have a larger vocabulary and better language skills when they start school.
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Contacts of Literacy: What Children Learn from Learning to Read Books in W. H. Teale Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986.
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“Promoting literacy does not mean creating a school-like setting in your home, but taking advantage of all the opportunities that are present in everyday life.”
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Hall, Susan and Louisa Moats, eds. Straight Talk About Reading: How Parents Can Make a Difference During the Early Years Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1999.
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Update Pre-Kindergarten in the South: Preserving the Region's Comparative Advantage in Education
The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) released a report on March 2 warning Southern states against endangering critical, hard-earned gains in early childhood education – In conjunction with the report’s release, SEF is making available some “web extras” that provide additional details to the SEF study. See them all here.
Kindergarten Teacher Survey
Alabama’s public kindergarten teachers have a front-row seat when it comes to seeing the difference that pre-K education makes in their students. That they overwhelmingly agree that pre-K is extremely important is significant. More than 2,300 of the state’s 3,200 public kindergarten teachers responded to a survey conducted by VOICES for Alabama’s Children and the Alabama State Department of Education. Click here to find out what they said.
Duncan: Early Ed Can Get Schools Out of 'The Catch-Up Business'
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan presented the fullest picture yet of his vision for a birth-to-8 education system in a speech that emphasized the importance of "raising the bar" on the quality of early learning environments.
Read the full story here.
Preventing Crime with Pre-kindergarten: A Critical Investment in Wisconsin’s Safety
FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS, an anti-crime organization, investigates how quality pre-k can reduce crime in their lives.
Pre-K data released
By TIFFINY WOO
Published: November 6, 2009
Pre-K works.
That’s what Deltonya Warren reported to the Eufaula City School Board of Education last week.
Warren, the director of instruction for the school system, has been instrumental in the development of Eufaula’s Pre-K program. She presented a slideshow for the school board last week showing test results for students who have been through the program.
The presentation included scores from the Alabama Reading and Math Test (ARMT). It compared ARMT scores between students in each grade who participated in Pre-K versus students who had not. The results showed a noticeable improvement in the success rate for students who attended Pre-K.
“We’ve been saying it for a long time, that Pre-K works,” said Warren. “In our hearts, Pre-K always seemed right, and now the data shows that it is right.”
Read more on this story in the weekend Tribune avaliable Friday (Nov. 6).
