A recent Ontario study of some 700 children attending the new Full-Day, Two-Year Kindergarten program claimed that the first cohort was better prepared to enter Grade 1, showing strong language development, improved communications skills, and better social skills. That report was welcome news for an Ontario Liberal Government, now headed by Kathleen Wynne, that has staked its reputation on a $1.5 billion program that critics characterize as an expensive form of government controlled day care. If the gains are real, then the key questions become – do the gains justify the enormous costs and will the head start last?
British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec also offer all-day Kindergarten, but Alberta has delayed its planned implementation because of financial pressures. In Nova Scotia, the Darrell Dexter NDP Government has followed a curious, meandering course. On August 22, 2013, on the eve of a provincial election, Minister of Education Ramona Jennex announced the plan to open four little bundles of joy – in the form of spanking new Early Years Centres for young children in elementary schools scattered across the province. Initial indications are that universal early learning in Nova Scotia, if it materializes, will most likely be implemented piecemeal, in stages.
Early learning advocates, inspired by the late Dr. Fraser Mustard and his Council on Early Child Development, have long identified Nova Scotia as a laggard among the Canadian provinces. In November 2011, Dexter and his cabinet were stung by the CECD’s Early Years Study 3 ranking Quebec and P.E.I. as tops and giving Nova Scotia low marks (five out of 15 points) for its current patchwork of programs. Since then pressure has mounted on the NDP government to embrace universal, publicly-funded ECD starting at age two in Nova Scotia.
Universal, publicly funded programs like that in Quebec, where parents pay $7.00 per day per child, have proven to be enormously expensive. Former Liberal cabinet minister Ken Dryden made an initial effort, but it stalled in 2006 at the federal level and the campaign was, until 2010, sputtering in both Ontario and Nova Scotia.
With the passing of its legendary champion Dr. Mustard, philanthropist Margaret Norrie McCain started carrying the torch for universal, state-funded early learning programs, utilizing the considerable influence of the Margaret and Wallace Family Foundation.
Eighteen months ago, with Ontario’s Liberal government threatening to scale back on its $1.5 billion full day junior and senior kindergarten (FDK) spending, McCain and the universalists began focusing on Nova Scotia. On February 9, 2012, she secured a private audience with Dexter. That’s what finally swayed the cautious-by-nature Premier.
One Thursday in late May 2012, Dexter visited a Halifax family resource centre and—without any warning—announced that Nova Scotia was embarking on Early Years programs in a big way. He unveiled a discussion paper, Giving Children the Best Start, and local media scrambled to report that a previously unannounced advisory committee would be producing a go ahead plan within a month’s time.
The policy paper recycled CECD research and claimed that one out of every four Canadian children “arriving at school with vulnerabilities” was “more likely to fail” out of school with limited life outcomes. Not surprisingly, it strongly endorsed a universal, school-based, state-funded early childhood education program for children as young as two years.
When Dexter and Jennex welcomed the report, it looked like the NDP government was preparing to buck the national trend to austerity by embarking on a costly public spending program. In July of 2013, the McCain Foundation greased the wheels by investing $500,000, at $100,000 a year, to kick-start the program and fund Early Years Centres.
The McCain campaign for universal pre-school education is not about winning widespread support from daycare operators, parents or families. In early February 2012, Kerry McCuaig, a Toronto-based CECD research fellow, let the cat out of the bag. “It’s political leadership that matters,” she told a Halifax Public Forum, and the Ontario FDK initiative showed that there is “no real need to seek a public consensus.” What about the existing private and non-profit day cares spread across the province? “There’s a dog’s breakfast of programs out there, “ McCuaig stated. “ Let’s reorganize it. It costs us nothing to do so.”
Nova Scotia’s bold plan for universal Early Childhood Development will, it is now clear, be entering the province through the back door. That way the government can side-step and delay the whole thorny issue of accommodating the 220 existing private day cares and 160 non-profit day cares currently operating here in the province.
Going to the top is the preferred mode of operations for those promoting single platform publicly-funded programs for every child. The lighthouse universal ECD program, after all, was initiated by the late Dr. Mustard and fully implemented in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Top down leadership worked in Quebec, Ontario and P.E.I. Here in Nova Scotia it has – so far– produced a typical ad hoc, staged implementation policy response.
How beneficial is universal, government-run Early Learning? Should such universal programs begin as early as age 2? Are such universal programs affordable for governments facing long-term financial challenges? What’s the impact of introducing such programs on families, as well as private and coop (not-for-profit day) cares? What is gained – and lost- in implementing a single platform system?
When I was in Bermuda our school (Somersfield Academy) started at 3 years old. The government schools (and the other independents) started half-time at 4, full days at 5. We saw a definite impact on the early acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills and the head start allowed our teachers to enrich the learning experience for our students at a much younger age.
Having said that, the greatest impact was that it allowed both spouses to work full time and made our school and its unique programmes available to a far broader demographic of families. I introduced full days for 3 year olds in 2008, by 2012 we had grown our preprimary programme from 80 students to 125 and the school by almost 150 students. In a time when every other Bermudian school was shrinking by 15 – 25%, the provision of an early learning option for our families allowed us to buck the trend.
There may be a correlation between unemployment rates and the lack of availability of a free schooling option for working parents. Five years out of the workforce staying home with a child is a much higher hurdle for re-entry than two or three.
Your account, especially its conclusion, sounds like a reasonable approach to helping working class families give their kids some of the opportunities rich kids have at home.
One stay-at-home parent is nice if you can have it, but the world has changed such that some (like my parents) each had to hold down two jobs to make enough to feed, clothed, and house their families. This reality is all too prevalent today.
I don’t agree with full day kindergarten for children but then I’m a stay at home mummy and my childhood was relaxed. I had a mum at home and had none of the playgroups, preschool, kindergarten experiences my sons had. My sons had half day kindergarten and were both happy to get home after that time at school.
I think the push for full day kindergarten allows parents to have kids in school rather than in a day care program. So basically the kindergarten is for the benefit of adults not kids.
I think it is far more important for young kids to have free time.
I think kids –if asked–would opt for the loose structure of half a day out of school and half a day in kindergarten. Perhaps they would rather just stay at home. I never asked the boys. I just put them into the half day programs because I wanted them to be comfortable yapping in groups or individually.
I don’t think full day kindergarten is necessary for young kids unless of course they come from economically challenging situations where there just isn’t enough print around and enough knowledge to jump start their brains. Even in this situation–I think they can catch up but the full day kindergarten may be beneficial in providing positive learning models for them. Even wealthy families have problems enriching their kids with print and good study habits what with the endless competition for their attention from electronic gadgets.
I don’t think governments at this time can afford such full day programs unless of course Alberta starts to ask a fair rate of return for its bitumen (i.e. it increases the bitumen royalty rate). As it is unlikely that either the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta or the Wildrosies under Harper and crew at the federal level will have the balls to do this –well –there’s no money to pay for baby and toddler care in the form of full day kindergarten programs or nursery school programs for pre-kindergarten kids. And if Alberta–can’t do this-how the heck are other provinces paying for this sort of state subsidized day care via the public education route? I suppose they must have a sales tax or something.
It would be far more useful if the government supported community programs that allowed families to enrich their children in individualized ways. In Riverbend we had a playgroup that parents ran called Peanut Butter and Jam Playgroup and parents got to run programs, did the teaching and yes, organized fun field trips. It was a lot of work but we got our children the types of learning experiences that were not rote memorization, cutting out and pasting of decals, and yes asked for more effort on the parts of parents. But of course, we were mostly stay at home mummies. It is hard for families who are double income families from either choice or necessity to do this sort of program. But certainly other groups could provide such neat and creative versions of early childhood education that doesn’t come with a single curriculum pattern set in brick by provincial governments. There is a lot of talent out there and it isn’t for the most part in the public school system unfortunately because –heck—the public school system and the private school system has been systematically weakened by the conversion of education into a business. We are now –in Alberta –at the tail end of the conversion of education and health into Republican Tea party entities. We will lose faculties that aren’t serving business interests (especially big oil) and we will have programs that ultimately provide worker drones to the industries that modulate educational facilities.
So really–do we need to start pruning the dendrite trees at age 2?
Nope.
I’d have liked my sons to have had the childhood I had until I was thrown into the jail of school–on the beach –running wild with a gang of neighborhood kids—home only when it was dark, always on the bike, travelling free, reading free, and my own independent spirit.
I gave my sons –mostly that sort of a childhood.
I don’t regret the 2 hours of playgroup, the 2-3 hours of nursery school, the half days of kindergarten, art classes, sports, swim classes–but if I could do it over again–I’d give them a later start date to kindergarten and more free unhurried time.
Public polling is overwhelmingly in support of this direction, the cost $1.5B in Ontario, if previous studies hold true to form will be more than cost-recovered as productivity increases, wealthy holding and income increases and therefore government revenue swells without raising taxes. On the other side of the ledger, the costs of cops, courts, prisons, welfare, EI, and so on plundge as more citizens take care of themselves and their families so if the cost is $1.5B I expect the savings to government alone to be $2-3B+. At that point it is much cheaper to institute the programs than to not do it.
To have a high quality program however I would have all employees either ECE trained or teacher trained roughly 50/50. I would have the school boards as the only employer and eventually the cost absorbed 100% by the state, first in poor areas and later in all areas.
I see this development as the downward extension of the school system. Reformers always want more hours, shorter summers, fewer PD days, longer school years but when someone says lets extend school by 2-3 years some begin to balk. Interesting.
Maria Montessori said kids should be in school full time as soon as they are toilet trained (avg 2 years old). I agree 100%
Although folks want to have this direction for their children, what do children have to say about the matter?
When we have the situation of children being hurried through their childhoods to a premature adulthood with early development seen as a panacea for the failure of our society to concentrate on the fact that most kids want to have someone at home to be there for them full time–when we have the situation of children being portrayed as infant adults in media, product advertisements and education itself—I don’t think we really consider the biological and psychological readiness of children for full out stimulation as has been the policy —official and non-official of the education establishment and the bloom before you doom their brains league.
I think kids are too stimulated and this may contribute to the explosion of ADHD diagnosis in both children and adults.
While I think some enrichment is fine I doubt very much that full time school is necessary or even productive for children as soon as they are out of diapers. More than anything I believe our children need time with their parents with one parent at home full time to give them the attention and time –quantity time not just the much vaulted quality time that the experts yap about.
We’re not aiming to make supersonic jets here.
We’re not trying to create perfect adults.
We want children who know how to loaf around, bike around their neighborhoods, do science in their backyards, play with the gang and do art within their own needs and wants.
The ramped up school demand of our society is solely designed to get both adults working and support the demands of our society for workers with little respect for the children in our society who are often without adult guidance of the family sort and are given adult models of the outside the family sort.
I am a well educated person and although I believe education is significant and necessary I also believe that children need the quantity time with their own parents, grandparents, and community members that full time immersion into a day care at the public school level (for let us be frank–this is what it is basically–day care with art projects and literacy training).
The work loads of parents these days is immense. Couple this with the demands placed on them by aging parents and other sick family members and you have very little time for children. Something has to give. And it is time with the kids-that this sort of public policy will address. But is this sort of public policy –that aids parents and allows them to work full time —really the way we want to go in terms of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens?
Why not ask your children what they would prefer?
Would they like mummy or daddy at home or would they prefer to have all the societal requirements more?
I’m betting the children want to stay home and have a parent at home.
I see no need for children to be stuck in school from 2 years on. I see no reason for full time kindergarten. I see no reason for schooling that is already too long. I think there is a limit to the capacity of our children to accept all these stresses–of too few hours with parents—too much time on buses to school and back–too much time sitting in classrooms–and too little physical activity in the school itself.
We’re creating children.
Not drones.
Make education for age 2-6 totally voluntary, I’m happy. You will only have about 98% sign up instead of 100%. People don’t want their kids to miss out or fall behind. The ones who keep their kids out don’t get any rebate naturally because it is all “school”.
Kindergarten is voluntary in Ontario. Attendance is only compulsory at age 6. What percentage are kept out of kindergarten? Not many.
Full-day Kindergarten has been put on hold in Saskatchewan where the Brad Wall Government is attempting to respond to overcrowding in urban schools and to introduce provincial testing. On Saturday Saptember 7, The Star-Phoenix weighed-in with an editorial calling into question the priorities being set by Education Minister Russ Marchuk. Full-day kindergarten figures prominently in the debate over education priorities:
Editorial: “Gov’t failing standard tests” (September 7, 2013)
“While the minister’s attention is focused on testing, many teachers and parents across Saskatchewan are reporting that the school year has begun with three dozen or more students being crammed into a single class. If measurement can bring improvement, as Mr. Marchuk suggests, the number of kids in a classroom alone would say a lot about what’s needed without the cost and time involving a standardized test.
And consider a Globe and Mail story this week from Ontario, based on a study of nearly 700 children, that reports children in full-day kindergarten are better prepared for school and show stronger language development and communication and social skills than others. Meanwhile, cash-strapped Saskatoon schools had to drop full-day kindergarten classes as they try to cope with an influx of students and deliver such things as English as an Additional Language classes, while the government sees more rigorous testing of students as its priority.”
Read on here: http://www.thestarphoenix.com/opinion/failing+standard+tests/8882530/story.html
Comment:
Funding Full-Day Kindergarten is a big ticket item for governments. Without a firm commitment, it gets delayed or put-off indefinitely. Keep your eye on Saskatchewan.
Sask. govt is wrong on testing as a means of improvement. Research evidence worldwide strongly states otherwise (from Robert Linn in the US to John Hattie in Australia).
All the testing done in the US with no bang for the testing buck.
Rather it is feedback that promotes improvement- in sports, in drama, in musics, in academics.
John is right about testing. If it worked USA #1 Finland #17 interesting it is the reverse.
Popular premier conservative (Sask Party) Brad Wall, riding a resource boom, has a tough choice to make.
Please conservative ideologues and test (cheap but ineffective) or do what progressives who don’t vote for him want (FDK, child care) – expensive but effective, grows the state, the opposite of conservative ideology.
The demands for FDK, child care will not go away if he chooses testing. If NDP promises FDK/child care he makes his gov’t vulnerable.
Brad Wall has run a competent government, but the testing things is indeed a mistake.
I find the voluntary part of ECE is the key because those few like Julie that want their kids at home can have their way but not stand in the path of the vast majority of those who want full public school education all day beginning at age 2.
You want to home school beyond age 6 be my guest, just don’t ask for a rebate.
sounds good to me, Doug
“How beneficial is universal, government-run Early Learning?” It depends on the approaches. However with government, their tendency to used one-sized-fits-all approaches and funding resources at the cheapest possible costs by centralizing operations – very expensive, and more so if it is within a school. Finland does a much better job, by having front-store operations in the neighbourhoods. Each one is different, and offers different things to meet the needs of the parents and children of the neighbourhood.
“Should such universal programs begin as early as age 2? ” Again, universal for who? Full time workers? Part-time workers? The stay-at-home Mom who wants a couple days in the week? The Ontario set-up, may have really been designed for the professional parents, who worked the standard 9 to 5 job and was looking for a reduction in child care fees, without reducing the quality of child care their children have been receiving.
“What’s the impact of introducing such programs on families, as well as private and coop (not-for-profit day) cares?” The impact – higher fees for the private and not-for-profit day cares and nursery schools. At the other end, crowded conditions in the school day care, because the schools cannot afford to build the facilities, to make room for the daycare facilities. At the moment, the school boards are having a hard time to expand for full time kindergarten, resulting in reports of having 30 K students or more in the classroom. There is no savings for parents regarding before and after school care costs, because the fees went up accordingly. Seamless??? Far from it, but when it comes to government, there is nothing universal about the programs in Canada.
That said, a 2010 study – DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES
Forschungsinstitut
zur Zukunft der Arbeit
Institute for the Study of Labor
Is Universal Child Care Leveling the Playing Field?
Evidence from Non-Linear Difference-in-Difference
Its the first study of its kind – The study concludes – “In sum, our study shows that non-linear DD methods can play a useful role in assessing policy changes, when only non-experimental data is available and theory predicts
heterogenous treatment effects. The results from our study are also of interest from a policy perspective: Although the child care reform failed to improve, on average, children’s earnings prospects, it did succeed in leveling the playing field. This illustrates how the conclusions drawn from policy evaluations of universal child care policies might depend crucially on the trade-off between the mean and (in)equality in the distribution of children’s outcomes.” http://ftp.iza.org/dp4978.pdf
Another surprising conclusion is found in the report that has direct implications for the single-platform system. A single-platform system may not be the best way to go for early childhood education and daycare in Canada and its provinces. Besides being very expensive, the single-platform system does not provide a wealth of options for parents, that enables them to select the best options for their children and lifestyles. I would hate to be living nearby the largest kindergarten school, and it was my only choice. “Almost 700 children will line up outside the Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy for their first day of classes on Tuesday at one of Canada’s largest all-kindergarten schools.”
http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2013/08/29/thorncliffes_allday_kindergarten_school_offers_bright_purposebuilt_space_for_700.html
“
You can nit pick all you want Nancy, universal ECE FDK/chilcare is what people want so overwhelmingly that conservative politicians (the one who agree with you) are deathly afraid to speak out against it lest they put their own seats at stake.
You have not really read the study have your Doug? After all its all about Norway. I am sure the Europeans – especially the Norse Nations have a few lessons on financing daycare and all day Kindergarten without stripping the taxpayers’ cupboard dry.
The set-up and the design of it – one flaw – it will cost progressively more in the smaller communities across Ontario, then the ones in the urban centres. The smaller school boards don’t have the resources, resulting in all day kindergarten and daycare being the bare bones, and no doubt parents and the communities fundraising for the extras such as food. There is one such operation in Toronto, where the Toronto School Board is too cheap – the school is looking to raise $150,000 for food for their low-income kids. I guess the TDSB is too busy looking for innovative ways of bilking schools for $164 installed pencil sharpeners, instead of putting on their thinking caps, searching for ways to solve the finances of Daycare, all day kindergarten and working co-opertatively with the city of Toronto. Ford could used a little bit help, where schools are turning down his gift of football gear.
There is more studies on the European pages – lots to learn – Even England has a pretty good set-up. I really don’t think too much of the design of the Ontario one – for one reason only – it won’t work in the smaller communities and will end up costing more to operate them. Just remember, the smaller communities whether in Ontario or another province are suffering the cutbacks in silence. Lots of government services are disappearing – such as story hour at the library – oops – the library was shuttered just last year. As for schools – the doors are locked as the last bus disappears. Few extracurricular activities or even sports or an arts program on the go. Then there is the schools, where schools are face with building new wings or making room by kicking a couple of grades into portable classrooms. All day Kindergarten – perhaps but daycare – out of the question. No more room at the schools, due to all the closures that have taken place and a funding formula of unintended consequences. Go onto the P4E web site and read about on the 2013 report. They have lots to say about Early Childhood Education, fundraising, SE and other inequalities that are impacting student achievement.
I want a one-size-fits-all system 6am TO 6pm. age 2-5. I want education for 2-5 to be treated like education 5-18. It should include 5.5-6 hours of totally free education from age 2 for all students if their family chooses it. (95% will choose to opt in). I also think the wrap around childcare should be free for poor people, $5 for working class people per day, $10 a day for middle class people and $50 a day for rich people (few will choose it).
I don’t believe in “Let 100 flowers bloom” I think it is indulgent, too precious anarchist and undermines equality. Your children are not so unique and precious that they get ‘designer’ programs. Some parents need to be told “get over yourself” Your child is not the second coming of Christ. We are talking about something free from the state. You don’t get ‘upgrades’ as if you are buying your house or car.
I am totally convinced that this is what a majority wants. Is it expensive? I could care less. it is far less expensive than not doing it. It is one of the last big reforms that will rocket our achievement forward alongside very small classes and very high quality PD.
If I go to one more PD session where half the audience knows more about education that the presenter I will scream.
Interesting that reformers always advocate for longer day, longer year, etc but when someone says “lets add 3 years to the school system before age 5” they balk at the idea. Did you think you were going to get those longer days/years free? Think again.
Doug talks about you don’t get upgrades when it comes from the state. In the City of Toronto – it has already began – ““This just highlights some of the implementation issues,” with full-day kindergarten, said parent Mike Baril, who sits on the daycare’s board of directors. “It seems like ideology is being pushed, versus dealing with real world, real parent accommodation issues.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/10/full-day-kindergarten-creates-headaches-for-riverdale-daycare-as-city-tells-it-to-cut-care-if-it-wants-grant/
At the end of the article another parent – “Children’s Circle is just one of many daycares under pressure to make big changes due to full-day kindergarten that often ignore what parents want, said Ms. Calver. Although the city wants to promote in-school daycare for kindergarteners, the truth is that most school-based daycares in Riverdale are full, Ms. Calver said.
Parent Shawna Curtis, the mother of a four-year-old daughter who will start in Jackman’s full-day kindergarten next year, said she “started to have panic attacks,” when she heard there was a possibility that Children’s Circle might have to drop its service for children like her daughter.
“It’s not broken, so please don’t try to fix it for me,” she said.”
Meanwhile, the public education establishment is gleefully cheering on the slow destruction of the daycares sprinkled throughout Toronto. Inching closer to the bare-boned models. Replicates of the old Soviet Union model of 14 hours state day care and some were 24 hours. In a paper, “The need to work obliged many parents to use the services of kindergartens. Although the
pre-school stage was not obligatory, pre-school education embraced large numbers of children – over 70% of children attended kindergarten. The wo
rk regime of kindergartens was for a full-day stay (14 hours) and there were also 24-hour groups. The State actually usurped the function of education and upbringing, displacing the family. Parents were considered helpers of the educators rather than equal partners in children’s education and upbringing.
The overcrowding of groups (as a consequence of the shortage of places in kindergartens) complicated the individualization of education influences and formalized the work of the educator and in kindergartens mostly frontal forms of organization of children’s life were employed.”
The old Soviet Union educationalists would agree with Doug – “I don’t believe in “Let 100 flowers bloom” I think it is indulgent, too precious anarchist and undermines equality. In the Russian system, it was all about the equality, except the best daycare facilities and kindergartens were reserved for the Russian elite and Communist political elite. The rest languished in the bare-bones facilities, because its all about watering down the education services just so everyone will be equal. I can’t wait for the first reports when children are being evicted for not following the rules of sharing the tricycles or refusing to share their paint brushes. That is if painting will be allowed in the all-day Kindergartens which falls underneath scarce resources.
The proponents of all day kindergarten and state day care won’t be happy until the only private and non-profit daycares, nursery schools that are left are in the upscale neighbourhoods. Will Riverdale eventually close? Time will tell, when the daycare is one foot closer to shutdown because they lost their bread and butter due to the shifting regulations, forever changing and targeting the daycare facilities that served the lower income groups. No upgrades for the middle-class and below as Doug would state. In the old Soviet Union, no upgrades except for the political elite and the upscale Russian neignbourhoods, The identical goals, but using different tactics to accomplished the goal of equality. Some children are more equal then others.
I sure wont lose any sleep about private daycare closing. The faster the better.
Toronto newspapers are full of horror stories from private daycare up to children actually dying.
“On a weekday afternoon in July, Jessica Klaitman pulled her 16-month-old daughter Hannah out of a stroller in the lobby of the New York Kids Club, a “child-enrichment center” with four classrooms, a dance studio, and gym space in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y………. According to a 2011 research study by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon,… Underprivileged children now languish at achievement levels that are close to four years behind their wealthy peers.
These days, middle-class children are also falling further behind their affluent peers. The test-score gap between middle-income (the 50th percentile of income) and poor children has remained stagnant.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/when-class-became-more-important-to-a-childs-education-than-race/279064/
I really don’t know how universal early learning being operated by the public education guys are going to deal with the ‘class’ factor’. Considering the two billion that has already been spent in Ontario, and a few more billion dollars are going to be needed just to expand and build the facilities at the public schools – only to find out that early childhood education there is no lasting impact on achievement for the children. At least not in the public schools of cutbacks and locking the access doors to the resources……….more importantly the one-sized-fits-all-approaches besides the education funding formulas of the so-called equity pie of unfairness.
Meet the pre-school drop-outs.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/discovering-that-your-18-month-old-is-using-an-ipad-in-pre-school/279438/
Although, not related to early childhood education, another set of parents will probably be withdrawing their children from all-day kindergarten, to a private one or maybe homeschooled for the kids who are labeled the non-conformist kids. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114527/self-regulation-american-schools-are-failing-nonconformist-kids
I can just imagine how many children in the all day kindergarten are being labeled with mental and emotional health issues. If it is happening in the private schools of high income, its just a matter of time when it will come to the Ontario public schools. Plenty of horror stories on Head Start from parents, and who have withdrawn their children due to the crazy pedagogy and learning methods by the educators.
“Nursery school dropouts’: Poverty as a health crisis for many of America’s kids” http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/06/19489097-nursery-school-dropouts-poverty-as-a-health-crisis-for-many-of-americas-kids
“We were seeing what I would call “nursery school dropouts.” They couldn’t make it in Head Start. The Head Start teachers would call us and say, you need to suspend these kids, they can’t behave, they’re disrupting the class”
The good doctor’s solution – more money – “You give me $8,000 to spend on a child from birth to 5 years, think of what we could do with it! There’s a great economic argument for doing something about childhood poverty.”
But if you give the $8000 to the low-income people – the first thing on the shopping list is health insurance, and then shopping for good quality daycare and nursery schools – private or public. Isn’t it really all about the class factor and what the public education system is willing to provide???? These days, only willing to provide the minimum education services and resources and that is not going to cut it!
Nova Scotia is now in the midst of a provincial election where Early Learning has barely registered on the screen. Today, my commentary in The Chronicle Herald looks at the meandering policy of Premier Darrel Dexter and the NDP and the incrementalist politics so common in Nova Scotia.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1153979-baby-steps-only-on-early-education-front
Where do the politicians stand? You will find it just as confusing as most Nova Scotians.
Dexter will do better than people expect (gaining now) but will not be re-elected because he was too timid. People want bold progressive policies.
Nancy,
All I can say about your backward looking post is that it is a good thing the world is going the other way. Everybody is looking at both the research and the popularity of the downward extension of the school system and everybody is getting on board. Even families with 2 parents with 1 stay at home parent are putting the kids in ECE. They know otherwise they will fall behind and lack the group socialization needed to school.
There is a European study that I posted Doug that tells the underlying reasons how parents make decisions towards childcare and early education. At the moment in Ontario, is where Norway and the other Norse countries were in the 1980s, however its the 21st century – the entire social-economic parameters have shifted to a diversity of options in schooling and learning.
Is the public education model, the best fit to execute ECE and daycare? The Norse countries are beginning to find out the painful lessons of not having diverse options for parents and their children, that enables them to find the best fit for their children and their needs.
I can’t wait until all day kindergarten and ECE is in the upper middle-class neighbourhoods of Ontario. Why? The resources of i-pads, fidget toys, rice pillows, yoga balls, and dance lessons will be on the menu Meanwhile, in the lower income schools – they be banning crayons of many colours and instead handing out 8 crayons, black, brown, blue, yellow, green, red, orange and white based on the equity premises of social justice.
Inequities abound when the public education system and the stakeholders decide that they should be the only ones in charge. The nursery school drop-outs who were forced out of the public education system due to the public education system’s inability to adapt to the 21st century social-economic parameters, is one such outcome when the public education system are running the show in ECE.
By the way Doug, another set of data streams that are not being collected by the public school districts, nor by the provincial counterparts – is tracking all students by public, separate , private or any other alternate education option. The declining student enrollment in the public education system is not just a part of the declining birth rate but also includes the student mobility of moving from one education district to another or moving to an education alternative that is not part of the public education systems and its sub-systems. Even today, the administrator of an elementary school does not have an easy task, of anticipating the number of students entering kindergarten in any given year. All the administrator has at the end of March, the number of students that have registered for kindergarten. What is not tracked by the school board, and should not posed a problem considering the 21st century technology, are the numbers of children at any given day, by age and gender within a school district.
That said, kindergarten has always been popular with parents, no matter the stay-at-home mom or the working parents. All day kindergarten will have the same amount of students enrolling in kindergarten as it was when it was on the half-day schedule. It rather disingenuous of Doug, to use ECE than the phase ‘all day kindergarten’, to make the point that stay-at-home parents are rushing in to register their children in ECE. A great number of parents, working or not working, low-income or high income – would be equally upset with the educators who implied parents are making decisions for their families based on the predetermined assumptions and beliefs of the educators with the education degrees.
Doug states – “They know otherwise they will fall behind and lack the group socialization needed to school.” It certainly was not in my mind when enrolling my children in kindergarten. What was most uppermost in my mind, if my children’s needs were met in the one-sized-fits-all school. I was not at all concern about my children’s needs and ability to socialized in the context of groups with other children their ages.
You can talk until the cows come home Nancy, nobody is listening to that line. The PS system will eventually provide a totally free 2-5 year old education system, more like school than childcare but ‘seamless’ and people can choose to attend the free system say 7AM-6PM or pay themselves. Nobody will be forced to attend until age 6 but 95% will attend.
I doubt it be free – even the Norse countries could not afford that one. Rarely mentioned, in Ontario – the school boards don’t particular like becoming collection agencies chasing down daycare payments, and ensuring that families are not posing as low-income to get the real free deal.
I believe in the state.
I believe in one-size-fits-all
I believe in the majority
I have no time for the precious, the naive, the free riders, the “my kid is special, there were sheppards and wise men and a big star when he was born”
I believe high quality ECE is better than staying at home 2-5 in the very best home environments.
Not a matter of affording it. When will some people learn that there is no cost as the benefits far outweigh the liabilities not only for children but for budgets. The more and faster they invest in ECE the faster their deficits disappear.
The savings on the + side of higher education, higher tax revenue for gov’t, higher productivity plus the savings on the (-) side of fewer SE, ELL, cops, courts jails, welfare, EI, and so on is simply staggering.
The world has many problems but the world has only one solution. – education.