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ONLINE PRESCHOOL - AN OXYMORON

Should Your Three-Year-Old Attend Online School?

If you read only one blog entry from this medley, it should be this one.

The latest "reform" insanity is online preschool.

By preschool, I mean a developmentally appropriate environment where young children can experience social interaction, develop an understanding of literature by being read to, and have direct contact with the real world.

Developmentally appropriate does not mean that three- and four-year-olds do so-called "academic" work on worksheets or computers. It means approaching instruction based on research into how children develop and grow. Preschoolers need clay and water-tables, not worksheets. They need blocks, watercolors, and dress up clothes, not tablets and calculators. They need climbers, sandboxes, and slides, not standardized tests and "performance assessments." They need to experience the world with their whole bodies and all of their senses.

Why then, would anyone think that young children would benefit from something called an "online preschool?"

We have tried it in Indiana. The legislature wasted $1 million for an online preschool...the same legislature that is filled with lawyers, businessmen, and career politicians who know nothing about early childhood education.

Peter Greene takes on online preschools in this post...including UPSTART, the program in use in Indiana.

Never mind that everything we know says this approach is wrong. Much research says that early academic gains are lost by third grade; some research says that pre-school academics actually make for worse long term results. If most of your 5-year-olds are not ready for kindergarten, the problem is with your kindergarten, not your 5-year-olds.

Turning to technology does not help. A study released earlier this year by the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, found that most "educational" apps aimed at children five and younger were developmentally inappropriate, ignoring what we know about how littles actually learn.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

“Disruption” Using Technology is Dangerous to Child Development and Public Education

Nancy Bailey discusses "disruption," technology, and how "reformers" are finding new ways to damage the learning process.

Early childhood teachers express concern that tech is invading preschool education. We know that free play is the heart of learning.

But programs, like Waterford Early Learning, advertise online instruction including assessment for K-2. Their Upstart program advertises, At-home, online kindergarten readiness program that gives 4- and 5-year-old children early reading, math, and science lessons.

Technology is directed towards babies too! What will it mean to a child’s development if they stare at screens instead of picture books?

Defending the Early Years recently introduced a toolkit to help parents of young children navigate the use of technology with children. “Young Children in the Digital Age: A Parent’s Guide,” written by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed.D., describes the kinds of learning experiences that will help them develop to be curious, engaged learners...

SOLVING THE SCREEN TIME PROBLEM FOR YOUR LITTLE ONE

Young Children in the Digital Age: A Parent’s Guide

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, senior advisor to Defending the Early Years, has written a guide for parents who are struggling with technology issues for their children. The Parent's Guide is an easy to read summary of what young children need and how much screen time is appropriate. It includes tips on how to put the concepts into practice.

Many parents find it hard to make decisions about screen time for their kids because advice comes from different directions and often conflicts. In the field of child development, we have decades of theory and research that can be very helpful as a guide for screen and digital device use with young kids. These ideas can be a resource for you to depend on when you are trying to figure out about any screen, app, or digital device your child might want to use.

READING, NOT RELIGION, IN SCHOOL

Counterpoint: Don’t preach, teach

We live in a pluralistic society...and the founders decided that every citizen has the right to their own religious beliefs. The nation's judicial system, charged with interpreting the Constitution, has taught us that government must remain neutral in religious questions. To that end, public schools are not allowed to indoctrinate children in a particular religion. Some teachers and administrators try, but, while they believe they are doing "the work of the Lord" they are actually breaking the law of the land.

While teaching about religion is allowed, and beneficial, there are places for religious preaching in American life...the home...the church, not the public school.

The reason for this becomes clear when you stop and think about the mandate of public education in a pluralistic society. Public schools should give all kids an equal sense of belonging and respect their rights. In the United States, where religious freedom is woven into our cultural and historical DNA, thousands of religions have flourished — and a growing number of Americans choose no faith at all. School boards, principals and teachers must embrace this reality, and this means they must not be in the business of deciding which religious beliefs matter for students, and which don’t. Decisions about when, where, how and if we pray are among the most intimate and personal ones we make. They are for families and individuals to decide.

SEGREGATION YESTERDAY. SEGREGATION TODAY...

We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.

This is a long, but fascinating look at why and how our schools are still so segregated. You can even use the interactive chart to see how segregated your local school system is.

Will humans ever lose the "us" vs. "them" attitude. Americans haven't lost it yet. People still move their families in order to get away from, and reduce the fear of "the other." Sadly, we're not yet mature enough to understand that we are all one people...on one planet.

Once you look at the school attendance zones this way, it becomes clearer why these lines are drawn the way they are. Groups with political clout — mainly wealthier, whiter communities — have pushed policies that help white families live in heavily white areas and attend heavily white schools.

We see this in city after city, state after state.

And often the attendance zones are gerrymandered to put white students in classrooms that are even whiter than the communities they live in.

The result is that schools today are re-segregating. In fact, schools in the South are as segregated now as they were about 50 years ago, not long after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

INDIANA, GET OUT OF THE PRIVATE SCHOOL BUSINESS

Public schools' struggle correlates directly to state voucher support

Thanks to Tony Lux, former local superintendent in Indiana, for this list of ways Indiana has neglected its public schools, and how the state's voucher program has damaged public education.

• Since 2010, the total state budget has risen 17 percent.

• Since 2010, the consumer price index (cost of living) has risen 17 percent.

• Since 2010, the education budget has only risen 10 percent.

• Vouchers cost $150 million a year, and the cost is diverted from public school funding, resulting in an actual 7 percent increase in public school funding. (More than half the Indiana voucher recipients never attended public schools.)

• Without vouchers, every public school would get an additional $150 per student.

• Property tax caps have resulted in millions of dollars lost for many school districts.

• Public schools in poor communities annually experience a 10 percent to 60 percent property tax shortfall, equaling tens of millions of lost dollars for some.

• Remedies for lost revenue are no longer provided by the state. Districts now depend on local referendums.

• Lost property taxes that pay for school debt, construction and transportation must be replaced from state dollars intended for student instruction.

• A portion of state tuition support called the “complexity index” provides special funding to meet the needs of the poorest students. Not only has the complexity index dollar amount been decreased to “equalize” the dollars per student among all schools, but the state has decreased the number of students qualifying – for some schools – by half.

• Forbes magazine points out that Indiana is ill advisedly attempting to fund three systems of schools – traditional public, charters and vouchers – with the same budget it once used for only traditional public schools.

• The “money follows the student” mantra for charter school students creates a loss of school funding that is significantly and disproportionately more damaging than the simple sum of the dollars. If a district loses 100 students, the loss can be spread over 12 grades. A classroom still needs a teacher if it has 25 students instead of 30, but the district has lost $600,000 in funding.

• Of the 20 schools or districts receiving the highest per-pupil funding, 18 are charter schools, none of which are required to report profit taking.

• Since 2010, teacher salaries have dropped 16 percent.

There needs to be an end to the expectation that the only solution for schools, especially those in the poorest communities, in response to uncontrollable losses of revenue, is to cut, cut, cut programs, teachers, support staff and salaries regardless of the negative effect on students.

INTERESTING EXTRAS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE

Kindergarten difficulties may predict academic achievement across primary grades

Identifying factors that predict academic difficulties during elementary school should help inform efforts to help children who may be at risk. New research suggests that children's executive functions may be a particularly important risk factor for such difficulties.

Humpback whale songs undergo a ‘cultural revolution’ every few years

Like any fad, the songs of humpback whales don’t stick around for long. Every few years, males swap their chorus of squeaks and groans for a brand new one. Now, scientists have figured out how these “cultural revolutions” take place.

Just four articles with excerpts. This is what we're doing in the name of "border security" to the children coming to the U.S.

Separating kids from parents at the border mirrors a 'textbook strategy' of domestic abuse, experts say — and causes irreversible, lifelong damage

If you only read one article from this list, read this one. I've quoted extensively from it because it contains so much important, and disturbing information.

"What they are doing to these children and parents is inhumane," Cardoso told Business Insider. "If we just look at the research evidence, anyone can see that these tactics will have long-term consequences for children and families."

Dr. Lisa Fortuna, medical director for child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, told Business Insider that "in situations of stress, the only way that children can cope is if they have a caregiver with them that's taking care of them and that's there to protect them."

The removal of a caregiver can create acute distress that harms a child's ability to cope and self-soothe, which can lead to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In vulnerable developing brains, that can be especially harmful.

...

"Historically when things have happened like this — from the literature — when you have this accumulation of trauma and you break up families, you have a direct negative impact on the children, the caregivers, and potentially intergenerational bad effects," Fortuna said.

The US and Canada have a long history of separating Native Americans from their families. Researchers have linked the experience of Native Americans who were pressured to relocate away from tribes and family groups in the 1950s to problems with substance abuse and depression. Depression and juvenile behavior issues even persisted through the next generation as well.

...

She said that using children to manipulate adults' decisions — as Sessions' policy is intended to do — "is an eerie mirroring" of a "textbook strategy of people who abuse their partners."

In domestic abuse situations, one partner often uses control of children as a way to "manipulate their partner, maintain control over their partner, or coerce their partner," Heffron said. "Except now it's children being manipulated and being used as pawns to control a whole community of people, a whole population of people who are trying to seek safety."

...

"We've heard from families that have said they would rather risk the plight of coming to the United States and possibly being detained than face sure harm or even death in their home countries," McKenna said. "It's a policy that's just not going to be effective because it's not addressing the core reasons of why these families and these children are coming to the United States. It's just this pervasive violence that's perpetrated by the gangs and narcotraffickers which control communities."

Family separation also violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which specifically states that "a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will."

"I think we should be a society that understands that we need to take care of children. If they come to our borders and they are families, we can't harm them," Fortuna said. "We have to deal with policy and immigration issues, I understand that, but it cannot be policy that harms people directly, intentionally."

What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued statements against it — representing more than 250,000 doctors in the United States. Nearly 7,700 mental-health professionals and 142 organizations have also signed a petition urging President Trump to end the policy.

“To pretend that separated children do not grow up with the shrapnel of this traumatic experience embedded in their minds is to disregard everything we know about child development, the brain, and trauma,” the petition reads.

Maltreatment and the Developing Child: How Early Childhood Experience Shapes Child and Culture

by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

Disrupted Development

While most children experience safe and stable upbringings, we know all too well that many children do not.

The very biological gifts that make early childhood a time of great opportunity also make children very vulnerable to negative experiences: inappropriate or abusive caregiving, a lack of nurturing, chaotic and cognitively or relationally impoverished environments, unpredictable stress, persisting fear, and persisting physical threat. These adverse effects could be associated with stressed, inexperienced, ill-informed, pre-occupied or isolated caregivers, parental substance abuse and/or alcoholism, social isolation, or family violence. Chronic exposure is more problematic than episodic exposure.

In the most extreme and tragic cases of profound neglect, such as when children are raised by animals, the damage to the developing brain – and child – is severe, chronic, and resistant to interventions later in life.

Persistent Fear and Anxiety Can Affect Young Children’s Learning and Development

From the Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University

...contrary to popular belief, serious fear-triggering events can have significant and long-lasting im- pacts on the developing child, beginning in infancy. Science tells us that young children can perceive threat in their environment but, unlike adults, they do not have the cognitive or physical capacities to regulate their psychological response, reduce the threat, or remove themselves from the threatening situation. Research also shows that very young infants can learn to fear certain places, events, or people. These learned fear responses may disrupt the physiology of the stress response system, making it more difficult for the body to respond appropriately to typical, mild stress in everyday contexts later in life. Furthermore, when fear is learned, normal situations and circumstances can elicit responses that are harmful to a child’s development.