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When Public School Starts at Age 3
New York Times ^ | July 9, 2019 | Conor P. Williams

Posted on 07/09/2019 5:01:30 PM PDT by reaganaut1

Free public school starting at age four, or even three, is growing in many American cities. It’s gaining traction as a way to help young children learn the reading, counting and social skills that prepare them for kindergarten. It also promises to help close academic gaps between rich and poor children. Above all, it may have lasting benefits for attendees, including success in school and better lives as adults.

But promises are not guarantees, and universal pre-K works better in some places than in others. Washington, D.C., runs one of the country’s oldest, best-funded, most comprehensive pre-K systems. So what can other cities learn from Washington’s success?

Here’s how pre-K looks in one Washington classroom:

Amina, who is 4 years old and introduces herself as a writer, looks up from chopping plastic carrots. She and two of her classmates are pretending to cook a family meal together. Her “sister” Lesley, who said she is a librarian-professor, is prepping tomatoes. Their third “sister,” Madison — “I don’t work. I just sit on my computer all day,” she said — is making caramel for the salad. That doesn’t seem right, I say.

Amina shrugs. It’s an odd salad, but not out of bounds for the dramatic play center at the Parklands campus of AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School. It’s in the Shipley Terrace neighborhood of Washington, a largely low-income, African-American part of the city.

Amina gathers all the ingredients and passes me the bowl. “Here! Try some!”

Amina, Lesley and Madison are three of the more than 13,000 children enrolled in Washington’s universal public pre-K program.

The city introduced universal pre-K in 2008. Over the next decade, glittering rhetoric about pre-K’s benefits helped sell the public — and policymakers across the country — on the idea.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS:
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To: reaganaut1

Washington DC has one of the best funded programs, but the kids still end up stupid.


21 posted on 07/09/2019 6:40:14 PM PDT by King Moonracer (Tag, you're it.)
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To: lastchance
You can even buy a gown with a PHD hood for your child who is to be graduated from K.

Wow. PHD hood, huh? They're little kids!

Last month our granddaughter graduated from pre-school, and wore a gown and cap. Ridiculous. She'll go through that again next year after kindergarten. Now if they learned chemistry, engineering and latin I could understand the PHD hood.

22 posted on 07/09/2019 6:54:22 PM PDT by roadcat
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To: reaganaut1

Pre-K is a substitute for parenting, no more - no less.


23 posted on 07/09/2019 7:00:55 PM PDT by jimfree (My19 y/o granddaughter continues to have more quality exec experience than an 8 year Obama.)
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To: reaganaut1

Great. More indoctrination and brain washing starting at their most vulnerable age. What could possibly go wrong?

/s


24 posted on 07/09/2019 7:24:31 PM PDT by Boomer
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To: reaganaut1
It's rightly called "the Sovietization of American childhood."

Don't put your kids in a Day Orphanage. Don't.

It makes my heart hurt.

25 posted on 07/09/2019 7:26:15 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." - Romans 12:9)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

It’s rightly called “the Sovietization of American childhood.”

Don’t put your kids in a Day Orphanage. Don’t.

It makes my heart hurt.


Ditto....

:...(


26 posted on 07/09/2019 7:28:22 PM PDT by Jane Long (Praise God, from whom ALL blessings flow.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
It's rightly called "the Sovietization of American childhood."

Marx didn't like the idea that the job of educating children is that of the parents:

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

That gives us this from the Manifesto:

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

I read this, and think reforming public education is like trying to make warm ice.

27 posted on 07/09/2019 7:38:57 PM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s^2)
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To: reaganaut1

Parenting doesn’t pay Union dues....


28 posted on 07/09/2019 7:54:52 PM PDT by 4Liberty ("The Democrats are the Party of Crime." - Donald J. Trump)
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To: BenLurkin

Hitlery Rotten Criminal.....Thank God that worthless sack of crap lost the election, despite her best efforts to steal it.


29 posted on 07/09/2019 8:23:14 PM PDT by july4thfreedomfoundation (President Trump IS The Resistance!)
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To: reaganaut1
It’s gaining traction as a way to help young children learn the reading, counting and social skills that prepare them for kindergarten.

I’m so old-fashioned I thought teaching my children to do these things was my responsibility as a parent.

30 posted on 07/09/2019 8:29:56 PM PDT by untenured
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To: reaganaut1

The leftists want to be able to indoctrinate children at increasingly younger ages.


31 posted on 07/09/2019 8:55:38 PM PDT by FenwickBabbitt
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To: SkyDancer

The church-run “Mother’s Morning Out” program that some of my children attended had a “graduation,” too. Parents like the opportunity to take cute pictures.


32 posted on 07/10/2019 3:00:50 AM PDT by Tax-chick (It's the guitar solo! Everybody polka!!!)
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To: ml/nj

It is just daycare/warehousing, nothing more. Education isn’t even a goal anymore; gubmint jobs are.


33 posted on 07/10/2019 3:33:42 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: kearnyirish2
Education isn’t even a goal anymore; gubmint jobs are.

Yes.

34 posted on 07/10/2019 3:58:46 AM PDT by Tax-chick (It's the guitar solo! Everybody polka!!!)
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To: reaganaut1

“Free public school starting at age four, or even three, is growing in many American cities.”

Big mistake.


35 posted on 07/10/2019 5:40:06 AM PDT by simpson96
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To: reaganaut1

More time to indoctrinate the little ones and create good little communists.


36 posted on 07/10/2019 7:04:10 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: roadcat

Does pig Latin count? Our Kindergarten was half day and somehow or other it did not impede our future academic ability.


37 posted on 07/10/2019 7:28:52 AM PDT by lastchance (Credo.)
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To: untenured

Silly you. What is also forgotten by those pushing for earlier and earlier schooling is what Kindergarten was developed for. The translation should have given them a hint. It was not for sitting at desks and parroting answers.


38 posted on 07/10/2019 7:31:37 AM PDT by lastchance (Credo.)
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