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|  | News Items Posted On: March 29, 2006
Showing stories 1 - 4 of 4.
IN - Poverty, Race Factors in Early Childhood Learning
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, March 29 @ 12:13:45 EST by emohan
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There is a direct correlation in Allen County between the economic well-being of children and their academic achievement, a new Condition of Children Report shows.
Further, because the income of black households in Allen County is generally less than for all other groups, academic achievement is also generally lower, the report shows.
The two findings are set against a disturbing backdrop: The percentage of children living in poverty in Allen County (18.1 percent) exceeds the nation (17.4 percent) and Indiana (13.3 percent), according to Census figures.
“We’ve simply got to figure out a way to reverse these trends,” said Nancy Flennery, impact team manager/kids for United Way of Allen County. “We just can’t keep losing more children and in essence that’s what’s happening.”
Among the findings of “The Condition of Children: Socioeconomic and Racial Disparity”:
* Economically disadvantaged students scored significantly lower in 2005 in reading and math proficiency in Allen County schools than non-economically disadvantaged students.
* A similar educational trend was reported among black students. Black children are more likely to be born to an unmarried woman and they are more likely to live in poverty.
* Access to quality early care and education programs is hampered by limited availability and affordability. The cost of placing a child in one of Allen County’s 12 nationally accredited child care centers can be as much as $9,308 a year.
* Only 30 percent of children under the age of 6 in Allen County live in a home where there is a secure family income and a parent is available in the home full-time.
* Allen County has a higher percentage (69 percent) of households in poverty that have a female head of the household with children younger than 18 than the Indiana average (61 percent) and the U.S. average (55.2 percent).
Full text available at WANE-TV
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NC - Raising standards for child care centers
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, March 29 @ 12:07:13 EST by emohan
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North Carolina, already considered a national leader when it comes to high standards for child care, is raising the bar again.
While day-care teachers and directors applaud the state's push for high-quality child care, some are concerned because new rules mean they'll have to go back to college and face increasingly high-stakes classroom audits to keep their centers' quality ratings from falling.
The state says the changes will improve the quality of care at the more than 9,000 day-care centers and homes across North Carolina. But some child-care center owners fear the new system makes things harder on centers at the top end of the quality ratings, while requiring little additional effort from those at the bottom.
The new system "spends too much energy fine-tuning the Cadillacs and no energy on the dilapidated Pintos," said Vernon Mason Jr., director of a day-care center in the Eastern North Carolina town of Wilson.
"This basically punishes those who have tried the hardest."
The changes are coming in an overhaul of the state's star-rated licensing system, first implemented in 1999 and widely considered a model for how a state can spur improvements in child-care centers.
The system rewards day-care centers and homes that improve quality with additional points under a five-star rating scale, with five stars being the highest. The stars go on the centers' licenses, and have become a key tool parents use when deciding where to enroll their children.
Under the old system, centers and homes won points for teacher education levels, the quality of their programs and how well they complied with the state's basic day-care regulations.
The tougher new rules, which should win final approval this spring, make getting the full complement of stars harder. Starting in 2008, child-care providers won't get any star points for complying with basic state regulations.
Most used to rack up points for that. Now they'll face more pressure to score high on teacher education and program quality. State officials say research shows those two issues are key to providing good child care.
"For parents, it will give an even more accurate picture of the quality in their centers," said Anna Carter, an official with the N.C. Division of Child Development.
Full text available at the Charlotte Observer
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KS - Kansas Kids Count survey shows poverty edging up
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, March 29 @ 11:51:31 EST by emohan
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Over the last year, Kansas’ poverty rate has edged up while two anti-poverty tools — the Head Start and Early Head Start child-care programs — have become slightly less available.
Those are the findings of the latest annual Kansas Kids Count survey, released today by Kansas Action for Children.
The survey measures 22 gauges of child well-being. Scores improved in 14 of 22 categories. Teen violent deaths in 2004, for example, decreased by 29.8 percent relative to the average of the preceding five years. Substantiated reports of child abuse in 2004 fell by 19.3 percent relative to the average from 1999 through 2003.
But because poverty affects so many dimensions of a child’s life, Kansas Action for Children focused on the fact that the percentage of Kansas children qualifying for a free school lunch during the current school year is 9.4 percent higher than the average of the preceding five years. Free lunch qualification is considered a solid, and the most current, measure of child poverty.
Head Start and Early Head Start, federally funded child-care and pre-school for low-income children, became a bit harder for poor Kansas families to enroll in. Availability of Head Start and Early Head Start slots during the current school year decreased by about 8 and 4.9 percent, respectively, compared to the average of the preceding five years.
Full text available at the Kansas City Star
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AZ - Group puts 'little libraries' in low-income preschools
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, March 29 @ 11:43:27 EST by emohan
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From a nook in the preschool at a homeless shelter in Sunnyslope, 4-year-old Tyler Wilson pulls a brand-new copy of Miss Spider's ABC from the shiny wood bookcase.
It used to be that the books here were mostly tattered discards, donated to the shelter when their original owners were finished with them.
Now the corner bookcase in the new little library is stuffed with hardback books with shiny covers and pushed up against a mural of a blue sky and towering green-leaved tree. In the other corner is a media center, where the 3- and 4-year-olds listen to music and books on tape.
This is one of the first libraries placed in preschools and child-care centers in low-income areas across the Valley as part of Libraries for Literacy, a new program by Southwest Human Development, a Phoenix-based non-profit agency.
Like all children getting ready to learn to read, the little ones at Vista Colina need to build vocabulary and phonemic awareness, or what words mean and how they sound, and be familiar with books.
Those early literacy skills can determine how well they do in school, said Karren Wood, a literacy expert with Southwest Human Development.
The agency provides 50,000 families in Maricopa County with services in education, health and child-abuse prevention annually.
Along with books comes a year of training for teachers and caregivers in early literacy skills, how best to read to children and get them ready to read on their own.
So far, six libraries are in, and there are plans for nine more, with donations to the program totaling almost $108,000. The staff at Off Madison Ave., a Tempe marketing firm, put in the library at the Sunnyslope's Vista Colina Emergency Family Center.
Full text available at The Arizona Republic
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