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Great New Report on WA State Preschool Program
The Learning Policy Institute, run by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, released a report yesterday that talks a lot about the quality of Washington’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP), our state’s preschool program. The short summary: The program is great. It doesn’t serve enough kids, because being great is really, really expensive. You never agree…
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How to talk to your kids about the Orlando shooting
Time Magazine had a nice article today about how you might talk to your kids about the Orlando shooting. They suggest different messages for different age kids. The preschool one is pretty simple: For pre-school kids: This is the only age which experts recommend trying to avoid the subject a little. Children younger than five…
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Home Visiting
The New York Times has a great article in the Magazine today by Paul Tough, the author of “Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why.” In it he talks about “Home Visiting,” one of the key strategies my agency and many others (including the United Way of King County) are employing to help get kids who…
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At DEL we’re all about those results boss
We (the Department of Early Learning) published an outcomes report on the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (or ECEAP) last week. ECEAP is, despite its horribleness as an acronym, Washington’s pretty well-regarded preschool program. The Seattle Times analysis in the Education Lab part of the paper was pretty good. My favorite quote: “The percentage of children ready for kindergarten after attending…
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Ross lobbying for budget
I worked hard to lobby Sen. Joe Fain for the Department of Early learning’s budget last week at a reception honoring the ten years since the creation of both the Department and Thrive Washington, our non-profit partner. Someone took a video which Sen. Fain was kind enough to share on YouTube. He may have a…
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A Different Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
This is a super-interesting story from The Atlantic Monthly (driven by anecdotes) that raises a lot of interesting questions about how states administer federal childcare money, including how we set up the eligibility requirements in a world of scarce financial resources. (This is the world I live in.) If you think about what we do…
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Early learning director, former Eastside lawmaker Hunter confirmed by Senate
It’s always nice to hear positive comments about your work from the people on the other side of the bargaining table. Senators Hill and Litzow are quoted in this story about my confirmation in the Redmond Reporter. Normally a Senate confirmation isn’t all that big a deal, but many of you may be aware there…
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Does Preschool “Crush” Children?
Erika Christakis’ article in this month’s Atlantic Monthly “The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids” has generated a lot of attention in the blogosphere. Slate’s Laura Moser asks “what’s the alternative” in her response in Slate this week. Both articles are well worth reading. Christakis’ argument, that pre-school that is too focused on curriculum and “table tasks”…
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Only 56% of low-income kids get enough well-child visits
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington almost all (95%) of children have medical insurance. ALL low-income (below 300% of the federal poverty level) children have access as part of Apple Health for Kids. This chart shows the performance of all the Apple Health plans at actually getting low-income kids to visit the doctor…
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DEL is Hiring!
The Department of Early Learning is hiring to build an internal research and analysis team. We are spending way too much on consultants to do statistical analysis and research on proposals that we should be able to do in-house. DEL is building a small team of analysts to help us focus our work on the data about…