Early childhood professionals have long been a beleaguered species. For starters, they’ve had to battle the perception that they’re “just babysitting,” providing “day care.” Never mind the field’s heroic history, chronicled in Exchange magazine a few years ago by Roger Neugebauer and Debra Hartzell. Heading the list was the Sheltering …
There’s nothing like a megadose of civic action to boost my serotonin—especially in these dark times. Several days ago, Parent Voices NY posted to their website an eloquent, diplomatic request
September 9th marks the first birthday of Bill de Blasio’s universal preschool initiative, a cornerstone of his agenda to combat inequality. On this day the largest and most segregated school district in the nation will greet its children. Segregation is hardly a new phenomenon in New York City. It’s been …
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! may have preceded the publication of Betty Hart’s and Todd Risley’s landmark study by five years. But oh, how deliciously apt. The researchers’ discovery of language disparities among children across the socioeconomic spectrum has taken off. Reducing the gap of 30 million words between low- and …
“Just in case you hadn’t seen this,” a friend wrote, passing along the latest piece by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post. “The next big liberal cause,” he called universal child care. “Does it really have a chance?” my friend asked. The multi-billion-dollar question. Sargent’s “next big liberal cause” was …
June 17th was the darkest of nights. A white man slaughtered nine black people during worship. Our nation’s soul is sick, threatened by an ancient malignancy. We continue to search for the words to make sense of it all. Young black men are taking to their posts with anguish and …
Americans love data. We cannot get enough of it. Collectors on speed, we measure every indicator in sight. Children are the youngest, most fragile casualties of our obsessive compulsive disorder. How many words do they have in their emergent lexicons? Do they know their letters? Can they count up to …
Earlier this year, Robert Pondiscio, a policy pundit at the Fordham Institute, took to his “Common Core” blog and blasted Reading in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose, a report written by three early childhood educators. Why shouldn’t kids be reading in kindergarten, the man wanted to know. …
Ruby Takanishi, who presided over the Foundation for Child Development for many years, sends me small gifts. In a recent email with the subject line “Favorites,” I clicked on the link to a TED talk by Takaharu Tezuka about a kindergarten that he and his wife and partner, Yui, renovated …
Not too long ago, I read a piece at the Huffington Post with this title: “Cost of Military Jet Could House Every Homeless Person in U.S. with $600,000 Home.” Author Robbie Couch was reporting on a project, seven years behind schedule due to chronic incompetence, to create a fleet of …
