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March 1, 2009 NEW YORK TIMES 2 articles on preschools in NJ "Aid Critical to Public Preschool Plan".........."Public Preschool Program in Englewood Uses Italian Approach"
March 1, 2009 NEW YORK TIMES
Aid Critical to Public Preschool Plan
By JOHN MOONEY
Rockaway Borough…TRAFFIC was heavy in the playhouse of the preschool class at Lincoln Elementary School here, as 5-year-old Cassi Auten served up plastic carrot soup.
Nearby, two girls matched animals in a wood-block zoo, and another group measured out sand at a play table. A few students had donned capes, part of a superhero theme they came up with.
“It is amazing how much learning is happening through their play,” said the school’s principal, Phyllis Alpaugh.
This Morris County community of 6,000 residents and two schools has been among a growing number of suburban districts in New Jersey expanding into public preschool, seeing the benefits of starting early to teach children learning and social skills.
Now, more programs may be on the horizon, under an ambitious — some say overly ambitious — plan approved by Gov. Jon S. Corzine and the State Legislature in last year’s new school funding formula.
Modeled after court-required preschools in the state’s urban districts, the far-reaching law calls on virtually every district to start providing all-day programs for their low-income 3- and 4-year-olds by the fall.
For 86 middle- and working-class districts — from Hackensack to Carteret to Cape May City — that will mean universal programs available for all their children. Four hundred other districts will have to provide at least some preschool, and will decide whether to extend beyond their low-income students.
The state would ultimately pay an estimated $350 million to cover the costs for the neediest kids, or up to $12,000 per child.
That would raise the total number of needy children served to close to 70,000 by 2014, up from the current 46,700, officials said.
“This is really our passion,” Mr. Corzine said recently of the expansion. “We want to make sure we have quality programs for all of our kids.”
But with the current economic downturn, it is up in the air whether the plan can start by the fall deadline. A decision largely hinges on whether the latest federal stimulus package might include money for preschool education.
Mr. Corzine estimated next year’s cost at $50 million to $60 million for the first set of children, something he acknowledged that the state might not be able to afford on its own in the current economic climate.
“There is no way we are dropping away from our long-term commitment,” Mr. Corzine said. “But we do need to look at the financial reality of making that happen.”
Planning to meet that fall deadline is nevertheless under way, and each district has its particular needs and challenges: from wealthy ones with a handful of eligible children to those that may need to serve hundreds more.
Some have existing programs eager for the help; others cannot even offer full-day kindergarten now because of space or budget limitations. Without an infusion of more aid, many officials are left wondering if this is the best time to start the program, even with the stimulus help.
“It’s a nice idea, yes,” said Richard J. Codey, the State Senate president and a Democrat of Essex County. “But can we afford it right now? I don’t know.”
Under the plan, the program standards would be as high as any in the nation.
Districts would be required either in their own schools or in partnership with private preschools to match the programs mandated in the state’s 31 poorest cities under the 1998 Abbott v. Burke rulings.
That means free full-day programs for eligible 3- and 4-year-olds, specified curriculums, certified teachers and classes no bigger than 15.
“Abbott has shown us the benefit,” said Lucille E. Davy, the state education commissioner, citing test score increases in Abbott elementary schools.
“We have seen the gains in many of the Abbotts, and clearly preschool is part of it,” she said.
Few argue with that or the growing national consensus around preschool, especially for disadvantaged children.
The challenges have come in the details, as the state currently reviews district plans and the deadline looms to at least start enrolling children by the fall.
“It is an enormous undertaking: expanding the academic preschool requirement from 31 districts to more than 500 within a two-year time frame,” said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.
In Morris County, the School District of the Chathams has asked to delay putting the plan into effect for another year. It has only half-day kindergarten now and no space for any preschool, let alone full-day programs, said the schools superintendent, James F. O’Neill.
With an estimated six children who may qualify, Mr. O’Neill said he had reached out to a few private centers in town, and one might have room but would also have an annual tuition of $16,000. And under the rules, he said, the center would have to change its curriculum, meet new staff and space requirements, and even raise teacher pay to levels comparable to the local public schools.
“They have no incentive to change,” said Mr. O’Neill, who is now looking to a center in nearby Madison.
“It’s unfortunate to have these concerns,” he said. “Everyone agrees preschool is a good thing, and no doubt better prepares kids for school. But there are logistical things to consider.”
Still, there are other districts, like Piscataway and Montclair, that are ready, with programs that have been in place for years and that are able to absorb new students.
But under their own budget constraints, the local officials said new students would be added only if the state comes through.
“It would be a shame to put it off,” said Eve Robinson, executive director of the community preschool in Montclair, which now has 225 students and could take another 25.
“Since we started, the trend has really changed around preschool,” she said. “There is much greater acceptance. I’d hate to see us go backward.”
DEEP into the economic downturn, the timing may already be decided.
Mr. Corzine is not giving up on pushing the plan through by the fall. He said a last resort occupies the White House. President Obama has called preschool a central piece of his domestic agenda and a down payment on his pledge could come in the $787 billion stimulus act. It’s just a matter of how much, and state officials and education advocates are now scouring the law to see where money could be applied.
Ms. Davy, the education commissioner, told school districts in a January memo that the state’s mandate would probably move forward this year only if federal help was forthcoming.
A decision is now expected by mid-March, when Mr. Corzine’s next budget is to be presented.
“Under any circumstances, however, we will not ask local taxpayers to fund these programs,” Ms. Davy wrote.
So far, public preschool education around the country has mostly survived the tough economy, experts say, but it’s hard to say for how long.
“It’s a patchwork,” said Ellen Frede, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research and an architect of the Abbott programs. “There’s a definite increase in some and decreases in others. And a whole bunch just holding their breath to see what will happen.”
New Jersey is among 38 states with at least some state-funded preschool programs and has one of the most extensive in serving more than a quarter of all eligible students. The most expansive program is Oklahoma’s universal preschool, where more than two-thirds were enrolled in 2007. New Jersey also invests the most money per pupil, at nearly $11,000.
In Rockaway Borough, officials said Lincoln Elementary would wait things out as it continues its half-day program, started two years ago.
“We started with two sections and have three now — and a waiting list,” said Mrs. Alpaugh, the principal.
As she picked up her daughter Cassi from the preschool program recently, Ateena Auten said she did not doubt its benefits.
“Cassi’s reading, she’s doing math,” she said. “She tells me something new every day. I definitely believe it will be so much better for her in kindergarten and first grade. I just wish I could have put her in last year, too.”
March 1, 2009 NEW YORK TIMES
Public Preschool Program in Englewood Uses Italian Approach
By SUSAN M. SIPPRELLE
ENGLEWOOD…IN a small classroom here, sunlight streams through bottles filled with orange, red, blue and green water arrayed along a window ledge. Woven baskets and glass jars holding birds’ nests, wire, feathers, pine cones, pipe cleaners, beads, tissue paper and paints sit within a child’s easy reach on open shelves. Children’s artwork hangs from the walls.
Children in Englewood’s Reggio Emilia-based prekindergarten use this art studio as a laboratory to investigate ideas together with their teachers. Recently, a teacher asked several of the school’s 4- and 5-year-olds to help solve a problem: How would visitors to the school find its new indoor garden?
The children chatted among themselves and came up with a sign — a big green circle like a green traffic light — that would show visitors the way to go.
“How do we know that green means go?” a teacher, Breigh Miller, asked.
Anisa Sharisf, 5, said: “Because green is light and bright. With the sunshine in back of it, it goes.”
In Manhattan, affluent parents scramble to get their toddlers into the handful of private and expensive preschools based on the Reggio Emilia philosophy developed in Italy after World War II. The approach, combining child-initiated learning with teacher-directed activities — usually involving art — became popular in the early 1990s after Newsweek magazine described the Reggio Emilia approach to preschool education as the best in the world.
There are now about 1,200 North American Reggio Emilia Alliance programs across the country, most of them private. The Englewood school district program, which the state says is New Jersey’s only public Reggio preschool, serves 125 children who share five classrooms and an art studio in a drab brick building with the Bergen Family Center, a social services agency.
“I wanted to offer a public prekindergarten program that was the equivalent or better than the expensive private schools nearby,” said Barbara Berger, the director of the program, who helped bring Reggio Emilia to Englewood about seven years ago.
Parents of children enrolled in the program appreciate the respect its teachers give children, its dual-language (Spanish-English) classrooms and the heavy emphasis it places on art.
“I like its ethnic diversity,” said Darius A. Hicks, 31, a minister. He and his wife withdrew their son Darius, now 4, from a private preschool after they attended an open house and talked with Ms. Berger about the program.
“It’s a blessing to have it as a public program,” said Reginald Jenkins Jr., 42, a lawyer whose daughter, Ellary, 5, attended the preschool. He said that the prekindergarten is fulfilling its mission — teaching kids how to think.
This month, the Englewood school district and the Bergen Family Center will host their second Reggio Emilia conference, featuring two of the approach’s leading experts: Amelia Gambetti, Reggio international coordinator from Italy; and Lella Gandini, the program’s United States Reggio liaison. Over 300 educators from 100 schools across the country are expected to attend the conference, tour the prekindergarten classrooms and learn more about the approach.
There are critics who challenge the ability of Reggio Emilia’s seemingly spontaneous and relatively unstructured classrooms to help young children learn basics like letter and number recognition and simple math concepts.
The approach’s passionate advocates resent such objections.
“Reggio Emilia requires a more rigorous and challenging curriculum than any other method,” said Sonya Shoptaugh, a Reggio consultant who has worked with the Englewood prekindergarten teachers.
The approach encourages children to explore and test new ideas that are expressed through different vocabularies, including language (both oral and written), clay, paint, dance, wood and music. Reggio Emilia teachers use observation and conversation with children to develop and deepen curriculum.
“It’s a rich, collaborative way of learning, where the child is seen as part of the social network,” said Roseanne Regan Hansel, a program development specialist with the New Jersey Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Education.
Half of Englewood’s 200 public school kindergarteners are graduates of its Reggio Emilia program.
“The program helps kids learn essential vocabulary for early reading and school learning,” said Richard Segall, Englewood’s superintendent of schools. “The Reggio Emilia kids are just so far ahead in how they approach the world.”
In 2010, the Reggio Emilia preschool is scheduled to move into Englewood’s Donald A. Quarles School, which will evolve into an early childhood learning center. In its new home, the prekindergarten will be able to accommodate more children. The school’s kindergarten will begin to incorporate Reggio Emilia-inspired practices.
“As a result of their increased exposure to Reggio Emilia, our teachers are changing their attitude about what kids can accomplish,” Dr. Segall said.
