Reply to Would free Pre-K in East and North Moco improve the school system?

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Reply to "Would free Pre-K in East and North Moco improve the school system?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Isn't the damage already done by pre-k? That's Hart and Ridley study concluded that the lack of early vocabulary in children was never made up later on.  Haven't they studied Head Start and found that the initial gains wear off when students hit the wall halfway through ES? They have little background knowledge of anything so once they learn how to read, they can't comprehend what they are reading. [/quote]

EH, what they found is that the benefits of Head Start wear off *in the absence of further high quality intervention."

So, Head Start can't fix structural inequalities, but Head Start + high quality education does produce better outcomes than no preschool, even no preschool + high quality elementary school. [/quote]

The high quality education should include tracking, because what is needed is the background information that is necessary to comprehend what you have learned to decode.  Asking everyone else to sit in a classroom while teachers introduce basic animals, colors, numbers vs. letters, weather vocabulary, directions like up and down, etc. to kids who are aliterate is too much.  Let's address the needs of all kids by letting teachers focus on a specific segment of the population and not expect miracles.[/quote]

You're absolutely right, but it is VERY hard to justify tracking in early elementary because you end up boosting exactly the kids who come in with the advantages. So my kid comes in reading and doing basic math because we are well-educated middle class people, so then they get tracked, so then they get ahead, so they get further tracked. It institutionalizes privilege. So...figure out how to do it without just solidifying class structures and we may actually get there. [/quote]

I disagree.  I came from a poor immigrant family.  My parents were poor but highly valued education and my mom took me to every single free program she could find (ex. At the library).  We took the bus everywhere because she did not know how to drive.  Both parents could not always help me with homework, but made sure that we understood it was a priority.

This has nothing to do with being white and/or privileged.  You don’t need to be rich to teach your kid his numbers and letters and shapes.  And you do not Bee to be rich/White to let your kid know that your family values education.  [/quote]

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