Headline, February19, 2014

''' O" LITTLE ANGELS : JUST !WOW! 

OVER FOR HUE AND CUE "'

Just bear with me, as I quote this one brilliant excerpt from a book:

Mrs Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper.

'It's called a  blueprint,  mother. You've got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together'.

'Is this part of the  pro-to-type?'

The boy looked at the doting mother's face and realised that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said:

''Mother, I know they're all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all:
you know this is a picture of an engine.'

Mrs Simnel gripped his hand and said, 'What do you think you are going to do with it?'

And young Simnel grinned and said happily, 'Change things as needs changing, Mother.'''

So, back to > ''' Raising Steam ''' on the continuing Post.
One report found that   disadvantaged children   who had attended pre-school had better literacy, language, maths and science skills.

And two years of pre-kindergarten were better than one.

Some studies also track the effects of early learning over lifetimes, such as its effect on crime rates and other factors that may eventually burden society

But the quality of  Head Start's school provisions is highly variable, a factor that is rarely taken into account.

The sniping focuses on a study that found the educational gains from Head Start had petered out by third grade. Opponents say this proves that pre-school is a failure.

In fact, it demonstrates what everyone has known for a long time: that Head Start is failing to deliver the level of cognitive improvement that children in better pre-schools achieve.

The problems stem from its absence of oversight. Some providers have had decades of funding, though they have had to produce any evidence that they were teaching well.

This is changing. President Obama's administration has so far required 254 of 1,600 grant recipients to reapply for their money.

Unfortunately, the entire pre-kindergarten industry id fragmented, with few standards and little oversight.

Many of its teachers are unaccredited. According to President Obama, less than 30% of four-year-olds are in good programmes.

Nevertheless, some states and school districts need no convincing of its benefits, and pre-schooling has grown in the past decade.

More than  28% of four-year-olds,  about  1.1m  children are in state-funded public pre-kindergarten. Adding in other programmes, including Head Start, brings public enrolment to  42%.

The President has been short on specifics. He has not explained how his plan will be financed. Last year, some began to speculate that funds will be taken from Head Start.

Sceptics then contended that new money will be needed and this difficult to get past  tight-fisted  Republicans.

This is why many in Washington and in education thought that the idea will not get far.

While some argue over finances, and others over efficacy, the real issue is whether the country can realistically roll out,  on a large scale,  the kind  of excellent learning that would    feed minds   and help the economy grow.

On America's route  to become the  wealthiest nation on Earth,  it has matched up any number of impressive achievements:

Landing on the Moon is easy?!

Teaching millions of  four-years-old,   and doing it well,  is much, much harder.

With respectful and loving dedication to all the four-year-olds in the world. See ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:


'''Your New Reference"'

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless