Pass the Chalk: The TFA Blog

Laura Dallas McSorley is a native of Atlanta and the managing director for Teach For America’s early childhood education initiative.

Last month, my hometown of Atlanta welcomed thousands of pre-K teachers, Head Start leaders, parents, researchers, and program administrators at the largest conference on early childhood education the world over. For four jam-packed days, these practitioners and policymakers came together for the annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children to wrestle with how best to educate our country’s youngest learners. As a former pre-K teacher and fervent believer in the remarkable power of early education, I couldn’t have been prouder of our city.

Georgia’s universal, state-funded Pre-K Program exemplifies Atlanta’s dedication to early learning and its leadership in the field. My personal commitment to early education first developed in my own classroom—a community of 3- and 4-year-olds in the Edgewood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Charged with shaping my students’ first school experience, I came quickly to understand the vital importance of the 10 or so months I would spend with the kids entrusted to me each year.

Research shows that 85% of a child’s brain develops before the age of 5, and that attending a high-quality pre-K program is linked to greater educational attainment, higher earnings, and lower levels of involvement in the criminal justice system throughout a student’s lifetime. It’s one of the highest-return investments our nation can make. Just this week, the New York Times cited lack of early education as a contributing factor in the lingering lag between American students’ math and science achievement and that of their peers worldwide. Without a strong foundation, students tend to fall further and further behind over time.  

Attending a high-quality pre-K program is linked to greater educational attainment and higher earnings throughout a student’s lifetime. (photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Nihal ElRayess is senior managing director of student achievement and program on Teach For America’s Technology Solutions team.

A former educator friend of mine once brought down his school district’s entire network—more than once—during a three-week project when he hooked his 30 students up to a set of MacBooks. You usually hear horror stories like this when a small company hosts an event with far more guests than their network was ever intended to support. While the guests at that company event where the network failed might walk away miffed, our students stand to lose a lot more.

According to EducationSuperHighway (ESH), a nonprofit organization whose cause is to “transform education by closing the digital divide in schools,” 80% of the United States’ 100,000 schools (40 million students) do not have the broadband infrastructure required to take advantage of the promise of education technology.

The ESH School Speed Test, which allows anyone from a school's community to assess whether the school’s network is fast enough for digital learning, takes 1 minute to complete.

Five links that made us think this week.

A new Federal study reveals that students across the nation are struggling to increase their vocabulary skills. The study analyzed responses to a question in the new Common Core Standards test and found that only 51% of fourth graders test-takers were able to define the word “puzzled.”  Research shows that “low-income children tend to have far smaller vocabularies than their middle-class peers, a deficit that dooms many to an inferior education before it even begins.” Reading remains one of the most powerful ways to reverse the trend.

On that note, a New York Times article probes whether the types of books students read also matter. According to research conducted by The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, just over 3 percent of children’s books published in 2011 were written by or about Latinos. This is a troubling disparity when you consider that 1 in 4 public elementary students are Hispanic. According to education experts, “the lack of familiar images could be an obstacle as young readers work to build stamina and deepen their understanding of story elements like character motivation.”

Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eric J. Cutright via WikiCommons

Last week, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford published their latest study finding that, “the typical student in New Jersey charter schools gains more learning in a year than his or her traditional public school counterparts, about two months of additional gains in reading and three months in math.”  

Over the coming weeks, it’s sure to launch another salvo into the education debate as various camps line up their arguments for and against rapidly expanding the number of charter schools across the country.  Strap in—here we go again.

Photo by Rekishi-Japan via Wikimedia Commons