Second in a series The temperature
was pushing 90. The air-conditioning was out. But that didn't faze the
4-year-olds in the Woodson South Child Parent Center on the South Side. They
were on.
At the math table, five were engaged
in a serious game of war. That's the card game where everyone draws a card and
the player with the highest number gets to scoop up all the other cards. At
Woodson, the game is called "more," after the concept being
"taught."
At the neighboring
"writing" table, a boy and a girl were drawing pictures and
embellishing them with scribbles. The boy then "read" his story to a
teacher aide, who printed it for him.
In the corner playhouse, three boys
were taking plastic vegetables, fruits and meats out of cupboards. Each piece
had its place, marked with a picture and the name of the food. That way, when
it came time to put the food away, the boys were drawn into the mental
activities of matching and making a connection between the food and its name as
it appears in print.
Elsewhere, youngsters were painting
at easels, pasting collages, paging through books and making trains and bridges
out of blocks and construction toys.
Surveying this noisy, multi-ring
circus, Jacquelynne Gilmore, principal of the child parent center and its home
school, Woodson South, smiled and said: "They're learning. They're
learning through play."
Woodson is situated in one of the
poorest communities in Chicago. For want of money, time or know-how, parents
there don't provide the environment for learning that typifies middle-class
homes.
The Board of Education's child
parent centers; the new state-funded preschool
program; Head Start, and a variety of community preschool programs are helping fill in the gap for about 40
percent of such families, a Chicago Sun-Times study shows.
According to a random sample of
Chicago public school kindergarten teachers, 69 percent of low-income children
with preschool were prepared for
kindergarten, while only 46 percent of low-income children without preschool were prepared.
The same picture emerged when
teachers were asked to report how many of their pupils could do specific
things. For example: More than 5 out of 10 children with preschool could tell their teachers
both their first and last names and could speak in complete, simple sentences.
For children without preschool,
the ratio was less than 4 in 10. 6 out of 10 children with preschool could identify the colors
red, blue and yellow. For children without preschool, the ratio was 4 in 10. More than 5 out of 10 children
with preschool could draw a
recognizable complete human figure, such as a stick figure. For children
without preschool, the ratio was
slightly more than 3 in 10.
These and other tasks on the
Sun-Times questionnaire were suggested by early childhood specialists and
classroom teachers as indicators whether children had received the kind of
verbal and mental stimulation that prepares them for school.
While preschool helped, it did not bring low-income children up to the
level of middle-income children. On only one item did poor children with preschool come out as well as
middle-income children - 26 percent could print their first and last names,
compared to 17 percent of the more affluent children.
The value of preschool for children from low-income homes was underscored again
when teachers were asked if kindergartners with preschool stayed ahead of their non-preschool classmates throughout the school year.
In cognitive, or thinking,
activities, 39 percent of the teachers said children with preschool were ahead a lot and another
33 percent said they were ahead a little. Twenty percent said there was no
difference between the two groups, and 8 percent said children with Lexington MA Preschool were behind.
Child parent centers in particular
received a vote of confidence. Fifty-seven percent of teachers whose classes
had a majority of such youngsters said pupils with preschool were a lot ahead of their non-preschool classmates in cognitive activities. Another 19 percent
said they were ahead a little.
A similar - but weaker - pattern
emerged when teachers rated the social behavior of children who attended preschool: Youngsters with preschool tended to do better - but
not as much better as they did in cognitive activities - and children who had
attended child parent center preschools did best of all.
Child parent centers are the
Cadillac of Chicago school programs. Created 21 years ago with the first gush
of federal War on Poverty funds, they consist of four to 11 classes of 3-, 4-
and 5-year-olds served by a head teacher, a clerk, a parent resource teacher, a
school-community liasion, classroom teachers and several classroom aides
(though not one for every classroom). Class size is limited to 20, and
classrooms are amply equipped.
Compare that to the description of a
kindergarten that one teacher scrawled across the Sun-Times questionnaire:
"There are over 30 children
with one teacher and an aide, assigned for 45 minutes daily. My budget totals
$40 for next year. If I want materials I have to rely on proceeds from donut
sales or my own funds."
The Head Start and state-funded preschool programs have staffing
similar to that in child parent centers. But because classes are dispersed -
with no more than two to a school - they don't have the benefit of full-time,
on-site supervision and support, except for the principal.
Child parent centers stand out not
only for their resources but also for the steps they take to bolster parents,
help them help their children and, in the process, establish a good
relationship between home and school.
Parent rooms are the site of lessons
in crafts, child development, everyday economics, high school subjects and
English. Children aren't accepted for the program unless parents promise to
participate and serve as volunteer helpers in their children's classrooms.
Marilyn Flores goes daily to the
parent room at the Von Humboldt Child Parent Center, 1345 N. Rockwell, where
two of her children are enrolled. There she has learned how to sew, make
artificial flowers and create activity books for her children.
She has learned important lessons
from her children's teachers, too, like: Hitting children does not help them
learn.
"I used to hit my child,"
said Flores. "My son's teacher taught me (not to). . . . She was so patient.
I wanted to be patient, too."
Marina Montijo, who has three
children at the Von Humboldt center, said she's learned how to play with her
children in a way that helps them learn.
"You have to be like a
child," she said. "You can't just sit there. You have to work with
them, go on the floor with them, be a child just like them. They enjoy
that."
In turn, Montijo is teach ing her
husband what she has learned about interacting with children.
"I tell him to ask the kids
questions, and he does," she said. "He asks the kids questions and
they get involved."
The enthusiasm of Flores and Montijo
illustrate a theory early childhood experts have about the preschool advantage: Parents who
enroll their children probably are more supportive to begin with, as suggested
by the fact that they enrolled their children.
Like many other school programs,
child parent centers have suffered from budget cuts. At one time they were
served by their own teams of social workers, speech therapists and nurses.
At one time they also extended
through third grade instead of just kindergarten. Older children who had
enrolled as 3-year-olds scored at the national average on reading tests, board
officials say.
But that success became the
program's undoing in the early primary grades. In 1974, the year the program
won official recognition as a national model, the federal government cut off
funding for grades one, two and three. The children in these grades were no
longer educationally disadvantaged, the feds argued, and therefore were not entitled
to money earmarked for the disadvantaged.
While the Sun-Times study makes a
case for child parent centers and other early intervention programs,
controversy has dogged most research on the effectiveness of preschool - and especially so the many
years of study on the federal government's Head Start program.
Project Head Start was launched in
1965, as part of the War on Poverty, to provide preschool experience for low-income children.
In 1969, a major study by the
Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Ohio State University concluded that the
program produced no lasting benefits and was not worth the cost.
More recently, Head Start
commissioned a massive survey that examined every study ever done of the
program, published and unpublished. The result was the Synthesis Project, which
concluded in 1985 that: Head Start pupils enjoy significant immediate gains in
intellectual ability as measured by IQ and achievement test scores. Two years
afer Head Start, low-income children who did not take part in Head Start catch
up with the Head Start children. The Head Start children do not regress. But
they do not maintain their advantage in IQ and test scores.
The Synthesis survey reported that a
few studies do find evidence of some long-term effects: that Head Start alums
down the line are less likely to be retained in grade and less likely to be
placed in special education classes.
Such long-term benefits also were
found by the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies at Cornell University (1983),
which analyzed the impact of 11 experimental early-intervention programs.
But only two of those programs were
Head Start programs. The others were privately sponsored initiatives that were
well-funded and professionally staffed. And one of those was the widely
publicized Perry Preschool
Project conducted by David Weikart in Ypsilanti, Mich.
The Perry project produced
"real life" gains that have lasted more than two decades - including
a reduced delinquency and arrest rate, a reduced teenage pregnancy rate, an
increased employment rate at age 19 and a decreased rate of welfare dependency
at age 19. And its sponsors estimate that every dollar spent on the
experimental project saved up to $6 in social costs.
Head Start advocates argue that a preschool program can not provide a
one-shot inoculation that will carry children successfully through all their
years of schooling.
"I think the data tell us that
Head Start does a very effective job of preparing children for public
school," said Allen N. Smith, a research psychologist who served as government
project officer for the Synthesis survey. "I think the public school does
not do an equally good job of dealing with those children." Smith added:
"What is needed really is more
emphasis on public school activities that would allow for the same level of
growth that children attained when they were in Head Start. And we have been
working with public school systems in the last year or two to develop
transition-oriented programs that would in fact enhance that kind of continuity
in academic stimulation."
But the federal government actually
started trying that back in 1967, when it introduced a national program called
Project Follow Through to build on the gains children had made in Head Start.
The project was supposed to be a
major service program, as extensive as Head Start, that would extend
educational intervention through third grade.
Follow Through still has its ardent
champions, who say it has produced some excellent individual programs. But the
over-all operation didn't live up to expectations. And it survives today only
at a much-reduced level of funding.
What's the bottom line here?
Some advocates of early intervention
suggest that programs including Head Start don't start soon enough.
That case is argued by Burton L.
White, director of the Center for Parent Education in Newton, Mass., and author
of The First Three Years of Life.
By age 3, said White, most children
headed for scholastic difficulty are already significantly behind their peers
in intellectual and linguistic skills.
"Good language acquisition is
the best single indicator of brain power," he said. "And poor
language acquisition is the single most common problem associated with
underachievement in school." White continued:
"There is no language ability
at birth. A child by age 1 may understand five to 10 words and a few
instructions like `wave bye-bye.' By age 3, the average child understands
roughly 70 percent of everything he's going to use in ordinary conversation for
his entire lifetime.
"The child who is delayed at
age 3 when he enters Head Start invariably, with virtually no exceptions, is
behind on language. And if he's nine months or more behind on language, the
chances are very good he'll never be an average student. Ever. The probability
that any Head Start program is going to make him even average is very, very
low."
White said "modest
success" can be achieved under special conditions by a few well-funded and
highly sophisticated programs like Perry Preschool. But such remediation, he said, is very expensive, hard
to do - and, even under the best of circumstances, unlikely to completely
reverse early losses.
Others, including Lisbeth B. Schorr,
view preschool success stories
as far from modest.
Looking at the same data, in her
book Within Our Reach, Schorr writes of "two decades of dazzling successes
in providing care and education for disadvantaged preschool children."
She pronounces Head Start "one
of the most successful legacies of the War on Poverty," and she concludes:
`The basic Head Start model has proved to be sound. . . . The results are
measurable and dramatic."
The middle ground is taken by Perry Preschool's Weikart and his High/Scope
colleague, Lawrence J. Schweinhart, who criticize the Synthesis survey for
lumping together all Head Start projects.
"Despite what Allen Smith
says," said Schweinhart, "I don't think you can draw any conclusions
about a national project with the variety in it of Head Start. You can't say
unequivocably that Head Start works or Head Start doesn't work. You've got good
Head Start programs, and you've got bad ones. You can say that's it's hard to
find long-term effects, that there are very few longitudinal studies, that the
study designs are generally not good enough to find long-term effects. But you
can't go beyond that and make general claims about Head Start." EL3
Weikart and Schweinhart even object to enthusiasts who say that the Perry Preschool track record proves that
Head Start works, or that preschool
works. EL3.1 That record, they say, proves only that a preschool program can work - if it is a quality program with
adequate funding, a skilled staff and a carefully planned curriculum. EL3.1
They add that high-risk children deserve such programs - and White agrees -
because preschool has now become
the norm for children in this country, which is supposed to be a country of
equal educational opportunity. As Weikart and Schweinhart put it:
"The majority of parents who
can afford to enroll their children in preschool
programs do so, and they seem to do so regardless of the weight of evidence on
program effectiveness. . . . Therefore, program effectiveness aside, preschool program participation for
low-income children is an issue of equity."