In Alabama, a Model for Obama’s Push to Expand Preschool
Meggan Haller for The New York Times
Damien Fowler, 4, playing a memory game with his teacher at the Nina Nicks Joseph Child Development Center in Mobile, Ala.
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: February 14, 2013 389 Comments
President Obama’s call in his State of the Union address
to “make high-quality preschool available to every single child in
America” rallied advocates across the country who have long argued that
inequity in education begins at a very young age.
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In details that emerged early Thursday, the administration proposed that
the federal government work with states to provide preschool for every
4-year-old from low- and moderate-income families. The president’s plan
also calls for expanding Early Head Start, the federal program designed
to prepare children from low-income families for school, to broaden
quality childcare for infants and toddlers.
While supporters herald the plans as a way to help level the playing
field for children who do not have the advantages of daily bedtime
stories, music lessons and counting games at home, critics argue that
federal money could be squandered on ineffective programs.
In the 2010-11 school year, the latest year for which data is available,
28 percent of all four-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in
state-financed preschool programs, according to the National Institute
for Early Education Research.
According to W. Steven Barnett, director of the institute, which is
based at Rutgers University, only five states, including Oklahoma and
Georgia, have a stated objective of offering preschool slots to all
4-year-olds. While about 1.1 million students across the country are
enrolled in federally financed Head Start programs and others attend
private preschools, that still leaves millions of children on the
sidelines.
The president’s plan would provide federal matching dollars to states to
provide public preschool slots for four-years olds whose families earn
up to 200 percent of the poverty level. President Obama would also
allocate extra funds for states to expand public pre-kindergarten slots
for middle-class families, who could pay on a sliding scale of tuition.
President Obama’s early education proposals come as a handful of states
have been more aggressively pushing taxpayer-financed preschool.
In Alabama, for example, Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, has called
for a $12.5 million increase — or more than 60 percent — in the state’s
preschool budget, with the eventual goal of increasing financing over 10
years to the point where every 4-year-old in the state could have a
preschool slot.
The governor’s proposal is supported by a coalition of early-education
advocates and business leaders, who see preschool as an important
component of future job readiness.
“We’re trying to invest in a work force that can compete in 20 years
with other states and other nations,” said Allison de la Torre,
executive director of the coalition, the Alabama School Readiness
Alliance.
Alabama is one of only five states whose preschool program received top
marks based on an assessment of its quality standards by the National
Institute for Early Education Research, but only 6 percent of
4-year-olds there are enrolled in a state-financed preschool.
To receive state money in Alabama, a preschool must employ teachers with
bachelor’s degrees in early childhood education or child development,
keep class sizes under 20 children, and follow a state-approved
curriculum. The Obama administration is proposing similar standards for
its federal matching program.
At one of the state-financed sites on Wednesday, the Nina Nicks Joseph
Child Development Center in Mobile, Tina Adair, the lead teacher in a
class of 18 students, most of whom come from low-income families, helped
Amiyah Wilson, 5, copy the words “Happy Valentine’s Day” onto a card
for her mother. Elsewhere in the classroom, Donovan Smith, 5, and Henry
Hinojosa, 5, used a scale to compare the weights of two loads of blocks.
Ms. Adair said that the children had plenty of time to paint, sing or
play with dress-up clothes and toy trucks. But she said they were also
preparing for kindergarten and beyond through letter and number games,
science experiments and writing.
As a former middle-school teacher, Ms. Adair said she could tell when
students have had academic preparation from an early age.
“As fast-paced as our public school system is right now,” she said, “any little advantage that they can get is a bonus.”