Dosage Matters for Washington’s Preschool Kids!

Our goal as an agency is to get 90% of Washington’s children to be “ready for kindergarten,”  and to have race and family income not be predictors of readiness.

About 20% of Washington’s children are in families at or below 110% of the federal poverty level (FPL,) or about $24,000 for a family of four.  These young people face many challenges in life and are a key part of any rational economic strategy for the state, as well as being part of the paramount duty enshrined in Washington’s constitution. The large gap seen in our kindergarten entry assessment between kids below 110% and their more advantaged peers persists through their entire experience in the K12 system, and the rest of their lives.

We’re looking at a number of ways to help these kids get ready for kindergarten. The most effective in national data and in Washington is high-quality preschool. Without that investment, we estimate that about 28% of this group will arrive in kindergarten meeting our benchmark for kindergarten readiness. 28% isn’t 90%.

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Say – ice cream. When it comes to high-quality preschool experiences – not so much. Dosage matters. There are three major components of “dosage,” the amount of preschool a kid gets.  Length of day, number of years, and length of year.

ECEAP today is mostly a half-day program – about 2 ½ to 3 hours. Most national research suggests that a full-day program is much more successful in getting kids ready for kindergarten.[1] There are other reasons full-day makes a lot of sense, which I’ll cover later.

We also have strong data supporting high quality preschool for both three and four year olds.

  • After one year of ECEAP, about 55% are ready when we measure in June. When we measure in the fall the number falls to about 35%. We attribute this falloff to both to summer learning loss, a problem well explored in the literature[2]and some testing differences between ECEAP and
  • A small fraction of kids start when they are three, getting two years of ECEAP. 69% of those kids are ready for kindergarten. 69% is a lot closer to 90% than 55% is.

Only a very small fraction of kids in ECEAP have summer programming, and it’s too new for us to have enough data to evaluate the effect. We’re super-interested in figuring out how to prevent the large drop of scores over the summer, and this year’s budget includes funds for a reasonable experiment to measure the effect of providing the service all summer. This would inform future investment decisions.

One of my particular concerns about ECEAP is that we’re not getting to the kids at the highest risk. Over 60% of the families below 110% of the federal poverty level (FPL) are headed by single parents, but only 42% of ECEAP families are. There are lots of potential reasons for this, but the most likely is that a half-day program is crazymaking for single parents. What are you going to do in the middle of the day – tell your boss you need time off to switch your kid from one place to the other?

We don’t have another intervention that works this well for getting kids ready for kindergarten, and if we’re serious about ensuring that kids from low income families have the same chance to succeed in school as their friends that are born closer to opportunity then we have to design the preschool experience so that it actually works for Washington families. Governor Inslee’s ECEAP budget proposal in front of the Legislature right now:

  • Continues to expand ECEAP, but with almost all full and extended-day slots. Washington law says that all kids below 110% FPL will be entitled to a slot in the fall of 2020, and Governor Inslee’s budget calls for a significant expansion in the next two years so that we’re not scrambling to try to do it all at once in the next budget cycle.
  • Funds a substantive experiment in summer programming so we can determine which particular model works best to reach our kindergarten readiness goals.
  • Continues eligibility for both three and four year old children, because without this we are unlikely to make our 90% goal and will be living with an opportunity gap for the next generation of kids, something we think is morally repugnant.

In one of my favorite turns of phrase this year, it’s pretty clear from national data that kids really need to spend more time each day in the somatosensory bath[3] of the high-quality preschool and intervention services that ECEAP provides. Research is emerging that indicates more time in high quality preschool each day equals better results for the kids who need it most.[4]

So in short, dosage matters and more is better for ECEAP. Some questions we’re still exploring in order to best steward the public funds in our trust while getting the best outcomes for kids:

  • What is the best combination of length of day, number of years, and type of summer programming to get the most children ready for kindergarten?
  • Which children benefit the most from the three elements above?
  • ECEAP is more than just classroom time. The variety of family supports and health coordination the program provides are a critical part of its success. Not all families need every type of support available. What types and levels of services each family needs, and how to determine that efficiently, is a question we took up in our Family Support Pilot and will continue to examine.
  • What other factors are affecting kindergarten readiness: availability of dual-language instruction, family involvement in various parts of the child welfare system, seamless transitions from effective early intervention programs like Early Head Start, ESIT, and home visiting to high quality preschool programs like ECEAP?

We don’t have a perfect formula for dosage yet, but we have the tools to devise a good one. Most importantly, we need to support and expand ECEAP in a thoughtful and effective manner. I’ll be writing more about how DEL plans to implement ECEAP expansion in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that post.

[1] (Kenneth B. Robin, 2006)

[2] Wikipedia “Summer learning loss” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_learning_loss

[3] Somatosensory “of or relating to sensations that involve parts of the body not associated with the primary sense organs.” James Heckman writes about the importance of the somatosensory bath of early childhood here: http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR37.5/ndf_james_heckman_social_mobility.php

[4] RAND 2016, “Informing Investments in Preschool Quality and Access in Cincinnati”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1461.html

Town Hall Meetings Are Hard – But Politicians Should Do Them

In my 13 years in the Legislature I probably hosted over a hundred town hall meetings all over the 48th district. Sometimes they were cavernously empty. Sometimes they were like what former Rep. Israel describes below – raucous. Sometimes this was organic, like the time my Republican seatmate Rodney Tom and I hosted a joint appearance during the recounts of the hotly contested 2004 gubernatorial election. Sometimes they were more like AstroTurf, with organized groups of constituents (or non-constituents) trying to turn the meeting into a rally for whatever point they were trying to make.

An angry constituent at a town hall meeting held by Steve Israel in 2009. Credit Pablo Corradi/Newsday

New York Times: My Night in Town Hall Hell By STEVE ISRAEL

 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/opinion/my-night-in-town-hall-hell.html

I loved them either way. You got to hear what people cared about, and they got to see if you were listening. They also got to see if you had done any of the actual work of representing the district. Did you understand the issue? Had you thought about it enough to have an opinion about what ought to happen? Could you talk cogently about both sides of an issue and explain how you got to your position?

Town Hall meetings are a staple of American democracy for just that reason. You represent people. They have a right to tell you what they think, even, or perhaps especially if you don’t agree with them. Sometimes they just want to yell at you. I never felt physically threatened.

My favorite was one I didn’t even attend. I watched Congressman Brian Baird (on TVW) stand on a stage in front of hundreds of angry constituents who were upset about his vote on one of our interminable wars in the middle east or Afghanistan. He had a position, and the people in the crowd didn’t like it. He took questions for hours until the crowd ran out of talk. It was hard. I didn’t agree with him either, but I respected the hell out of him for standing up for what he thought was the right decision.

Doing staged events like the telephone town halls isn’t the same. We did those sometime. They reach more people. We would get thousands listening in. After the first one we did I remember thinking how easy the questions had been and saying something to the staff who were handling the calls. The person running it looked at me like I was out of touch and told me she had screened out the “frequent flyers” with crazy questions. It’s easy to do – there are more questions than there is time and nobody can tell you’re doing it. We tried to be more balanced in the questions we took in later ones, but I’d be astounded if politicians do that in general.

Town hall meetings are important. Talking to, and with your representatives at all levels of government about what you want is the only way you’re going to get anything close to it.

Mama Yaya meets Governor Inslee and Results Washington

Amelia Cruz, the owner and operator of Mama Yaya’s Child Care in Lacey was our guest at the Results Washington meeting yesterday. Results Washington is responsible for implementing Governor Inslee’s focus on lean management and continuous improvement. We review progress on key indicators of progress in outcomes. In this specific case we were looking at indicator 1.1b – “1.1.b  Increase number of early learning providers who achieve level 3 or above in Early Achievers (quality rating and improvement system) from December 2013 baseline of 253 programs to 1,471 programs by December 2018.”

This kind of meeting can be like watching paint dry, but it’s way more fun when we have providers like Amelia Cruz. She talked about how Early Achievers has improved her practice with the kids, and how she’s doing so much more than just feeding and making sure they’re safe now.

Mama Yaya Child Care is rated at level 3, which shows that she’s achieved our base level of quality. It’s a great recognition of the work she’s put in to help prepare a generation of kids to succeed in Kindergarten.

The actual indicator we’re measuring is the number of providers who have reached a level 3 or higher by 2018. The (graphically terrible) chart above shows our progress on this front – we are will on our way to meeting the goal. You can see the real version on the Results Washington website.

Tranparency Provides Clarity

Sorry for the worst headline ever. Click here for the video above.

This article in the Huffington Post from Allan Golston, President of US Programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation touches on an important topic – the power of the right information at the right time to help people make life-changing decisions. In this case he’s writing about education, from preschool to college. I’m involved in both ends of this spectrum right now and totally agree.

The program he writes about that we manage is “Early Achievers” the Department of Early Learning’s quality rating and improvement system. “Think of Early Achievers the same way hotels and restaurants are rated. Providers must be licensed and complete training to make it past level 2. Then they can move up to a 3, 4, or 5 rating based on several measures of quality—and they receive extra training and support to improve their rating. The goal is to boost the quality of Washington’s early learning providers, while also giving parents an easy-to-understand rating system to help them make informed choices about what’s best for their children.” Huffington Post 12/19/2016

He also writes about the need for information to help college students, particularly those from the “New majority” of first generation college-goers, students from low-income families, folks who work and go to school at the same time, etc. figure their way thru a complicated system that can sidetrack them and leave them with too much debt. I serve as a trustee for Bellevue College and we’re struggling with the same issue. We have to help provide the right information at the right time so that students can chart a path to a better economic future more easily.

Censorship for Preschoolers?

I got a letter last week from an organization opposed to censorship. They were concerned about some language in one part of our “Early Achievers” rating system for childcare quality that has led some providers to believe that we will deduct points from their score if they have the “wrong” books on their shelves. The standard in question says “books that glorify violence in any way or show frightening images are not considered to be appropriate.” The letter raised concerns that “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak would be one of the “wrong” books.

This standard is part of a national set of standards called the “Environmental Rating Scale” that is one of the two big parts of “Early Achievers,” Washington’s award-winning quality rating and improvement system. I’m not sure what the people at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (the authors of ERS) are thinking that language means, but it most certainly does not mean that any of Maurice Sendak’s books are broadly inappropriate for children. As with all literature, teachers should make sure that kids are ready for what they’re reading, but DEL is not in the business of censorship today, nor will it be in that business tomorrow. We can’t change the text in the ERS, but we are certainly not enforcing anything like this.

“Where the Wild Things Are” was my absolute favorite book as a child. My mother tells me that she thinks it was because I was something of wild thing myself, but that was a long time ago. I’ve included a link to the book at the King County Library so providers can check out a copy and read it to their kids. They have 132 copies, so it seems like it’s somewhat popular. 🙂

There may be confusion in the field about how to interpret the standard and the Department will make significant efforts to ensure that providers and teachers know that having only insipid books is mind-numbing for both children and adults. We’re thinking about a regular newsletter for providers with DEL staff favorite book picks. When I asked the Early Achievers staff about this they listed off their favorites, and there were certainly frightening images in most of them.

Home visiting in Chinese!

And Vietnamese…

Frank Ordway (DEL Assistant Director) and I met with a great group of home visitors last week at the Chinese Information and Service  Center (CISC) in Seattle. We are the tall guys at the back of the group. They run a program jointly funded by DEL and King County United Way called “Parent-Child Home Program” (PCHP.)

PCHP provides twice-weekly home visits for low-income families with kids 16 months to 3-years of age. They focus on early literacy skills, learning through play, and strengthening the parent-child relationship. At each visit they leave a book or a toy for the family to explore. The ladies in the photo are mostly graduates of the program, and all spoke enthusiastically about the impact it had on them – connecting them to other resources and helping them see what their kids needed to thrive.

Every single program you ever visit has enthusiastic workers. PCHP also has a ton of evidence that it works, based on years of randomized control trials with a variety of different populations.

The United Way of King County did the initial implementation of this, funding thousands of slots for families. As is the way of the world with expensive programs, charity can prove that the program works, that it can be implemented here, and that we get the same results as the national model. At some point (and that point is now) the program either has to become taxpayer-supported or it fades away. King County is picking up PCHP as part of the “Best Starts for Kids” levy, or at least I think that’s the plan right now.

PCHP in King County (and everywhere else for that matter) isn’t just visiting Chinese and Vietnamese families – we have programs working in many communities.

These visits are great. I find out all kinds of interesting things. It turns out to be expensive to get kids books in Asian languages. This may be a place DEL can help – buying in quantity should help all the groups doing similar work.

McCleary Resources

The League of Education Voters recently published a page of resources for understanding the McCleary decision and how it impacts school funding. It’s a reasonable collection of items.

http://educationvoters.org/2016/07/22/mccleary-resources/

In addition, I would recommend that you look at some of the posts I’ve done over the past few years on school funding and the Supreme Court. There are a number of candidates this year that are arguing that the court has overstepped its boundaries – getting “too big for it’s britches” might be a way of saying it in the vernacular. I totally disagree, and my argument is here.

Constitutional Crisis? Not so much.

My discussion of how the remaining part of the problem should be solved is on the front page of my website, or you can find it here.

McCleary Phase II

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 with everything in one of these reports, and I have some quibbles about parts of it. They are confused about what kids and parents need and draw a distinction between “childcare” and “preschool.” We offer ECEAP to 3 and 4 year old children. It’s a program that happens during the daytime. Mostly it’s a half-day program, which is very difficult for single parents to manage. (Half-day programs are crazy-making if you are employed or in school.)

Many (perhaps most) working parents need childcare that extends significantly beyond the hours offered by preschool programs. Some parents need care in evenings or on weekends. Almost all will need care in the summer when many preschool programs aren’t running. (More on summer learning loss in another post coming soon.) We spend hundreds of millions a year providing childcare subsidies to parents as a result of the welfare reform changes that happened in the mid-90s in the Clinton administration. We will need to do this regardless of our investment in preschool.

Washington thinks that improving the quality of this care is really important, and we’re investing in that as a state. The report is somewhat dismissive of childcare investments, and this won’t be adequate if we’re trying to improve Kindergarten readiness in any broad way.

There have been a number of news pieces covering this release:

NPR: What Good Preschool Looks Like: Snapshots From 4 States

Seattle Times: Washington’s preschool program praised as one of the best in national report

Education Week:  Here’s What High Quality Preschool Looks Like in Real Life

StreetInsider.com: New Learning Policy Institute Report Highlights Key Strategies for Achieving High-Quality Preschool (this is a weird source, but that’s the Internet for you.)

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 tend to confuse facts with fears, says Harold Koplewicz of the Child Mind Institute, so limiting access to news and watching what you say is advisable. Answer questions, but carefully. “Remember, you don’t have to give them more details than they ask for.”

I’m personally struggling about how we as a society can have millions of weapons like this in the hands of people who are clearly unhinged. What are we thinking? almost a decade ago I sponsored a bill that allowed judges to take guns away from people who have been committed to mental institutions because they are a danger to themselves and all of the rest of us. This seems like a straightforward thing, but was surprisingly contentious. It turns out to have been one of the few gun safety bills passed in multiple decades. There is something wrong with us as a society that we cannot make balancing decisions about issues like this.

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 start life pretty far from opportunity get on a better trajectory. These are pretty intensive programs that have to be done in very careful ways to work, but that are totally worth doing.

This job has got me focused on the pernicious effects of poverty much more than I thought it would. There are for sure painful management issues to deal with, there are the details of ensuring that kids are safe in thousands of child care facilities across the state and the need to focus on managing details of a budget that is almost 3/4 of a billion dollars a year, but the opportunity to make a difference in the trajectory of the life of a kid who would otherwise have been in deep trouble is pretty compelling.