The Pre-K Debates: Current Controversies and Issues

Targeted or universal pre-K? Direct instruction or learning through play? These and other debates are heating up as more and more young children across the country gain access to pre-K programs. Now there's a single volume that spotlights today's most urgent pre-K debates, explores each one from all sides, and paves the way for sound, educated decision-making.

Edited by a founder of Head Start and two other highly respected experts, this forward-thinking book gathers a who's who of more than 40 leading thinkers in early childhood education for a rigorous examination of the most-debated pre-K issues. In a clear and compelling point-counterpoint format, this book gives current and future decision-makers multifaceted perspectives on critical questions:

• Should pre-K be targeted or universal?
• What kind of teacher preparation should be required, in terms of credentials and education?
• When should pre-K services be provided and for how long?
• Where should pre-K be provided-in public schools only or in other early childhood programs?
• What should the primary focus of instruction be— academics or the whole child?
• Should pre-K be structured around direct instruction or learning through play?
• How can we ensure quality and accountability in pre-K programs?

Readers will also get a helpful synthesis of the major themes of the pre-K debate, investigate lessons learned from model programs in two states (New Jersey and Oklahoma), and identify key issues for future research and debate, including education policies for English language learners and children with special needs.

Whether used as a reference or a preservice text, this landmark book will prepare early childhood administrators, policy makers, and researchers to make informed decisions about the future of preK— so all young children will have the best chance at school success.

Rachel Chazan-Cohen, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University in Virginia. Previously, she was a senior research analyst and Coordinator of Infant and Toddler Research in the Office of Planning Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She trained in developmental and clinical psychology at Yale University, where she earned a doctoral degree, and at Tufts University, where she earned a master’s degree. She is particularly interested in the biological, relational, and environmental factors influencing the development of at-risk children and, most especially, on the creation, evaluation, and refinement of intervention programs for families with infants and toddlers.

Deborah Daro, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 1313 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Dr. Daro's research and written work focuses on developing reform strategies that embed individualized, targeted prevention efforts within more universal efforts to alter normative standards and community context. She holds a doctorate in social welfare and a master's degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Greg J. Duncan, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Department of Education, University of California, Irvine, 2001 Berkeley Place, Irvine, California 92697. Prior to his 2008 appointment at the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Duncan was the Edwina S. Tarry Professor at the Northwestern University School of Education. For more than 3 decades, he has published extensively on issues of income distribution, poverty and welfare dependence, and child development.

Ellen C. Frede, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Early Learning, Research, and Training, Acelero Learning, Inc., 63 West 125th Street, 6th Floor, New York, New York 10027. Until recently, Dr. Frede served as Co-director at the National Institute for Early Education Research. She is a developmental psychologist who specializes in research to inform policy and practice and helped design and administer New Jersey's successful Abbott Preschool Program.

Jocelyn Friedlander, Research Assistant, National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 226, New York, New York 10027. Ms. Friedlander received her bachelor of arts degree from Yale University.

Bruce Fuller, Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Tolman Hall 3659, Berkeley, California 94720. Mr. Fuller's work focuses on the sociology of the family, early education, and decentralizing organizations. He authored Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle Over Early Education (Stanford University Press, 2007).

Mark R. Ginsberg, Ph.D., Dean, College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, Virginia 22030. Dr. Ginsberg's career spans a 30-year period as a professor, psychologist, and skilled administrator. He has published extensively in the areas of education, human development, and human services.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., is the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor in the School of Education (and Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science) at the University of Delaware. Author of more than 200 articles and 16 books (some for lay audiences), her work is focused on language development, playful learning, media for children, and early spatial knowledge. Her latest book, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children reached the New York Times best seller list. She has won numerous awards for her research and is passionate about bringing out developmental science for use by families and schools. Routinely interviewed by radio, television, and print media, she speaks regularly to academic, policy, and lay groups, spreading the field's scientific findings.

Rebecca E. Gomez, M.Ed., Graduate Research Fellow, National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 226, New York, New York 10027. Ms. Gomez is a doctoral student in early childhood policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has worked for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, and the State of New Hampshire helping to build professional development systems for early childhood education practitioners.

Todd Grindal, Ed.M., Doctoral Student, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Mr. Grindal studies the impact of programs and policies on young children and their caregivers. He is a recipient of the Edward J. Meade, Jr. Fellowship from the Institute for Educational Leadership and has been named an Emerging Education Policy Scholar by the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Rob Grunewald, M.S., Associate Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Public Affairs, 90 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55480. Mr. Grunewald conducts regional economic research and writes articles on economics and banking issues for Minneapolis Fed publications. He also writes articles and papers on the economic benefits of investing in early childhood development and frequently speaks to policy makers, business leaders, and the media

Cathy Momoko Hayakawa, M.A., Research Assistant, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 51 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455. Ms. Hayakawa is completing her Ph.D. in child psychology at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Her research interests focus on generative mechanisms of early childhood interventions, specifically the intersection of parent involvement and family structure.

James J. Heckman, Ph.D., Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Dr. Heckman directs the Economics Research Center and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Education and Humanities, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904. Dr. Hirsch is author of The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them(Anchor Books, 1999), The Knowledge Defi cit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children(Mariner Books, 2007), and The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools (Yale University Press,2010). He is Founder of The Core Knowledge Foundation.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology, Temple University, Weiss Hall, 1701 North 13th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122. Dr. Hirsh-Pasek is Director of the Infant Language Laboratory at Temple University and Cofounder of The Ultimate Block Party. Among her awards is the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology. Her research in the areas of early language development, literacy, and infant cognition resulted in 11 books and more than 100 publications.

Marilou Hyson, Ph.D., is a national and international consultant in early childhood development and education. Formerly Associate Executive Director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Marilou's professional work and publications have focused on social and emotional development, children's approaches to learning, and early childhood teacher education. Marilou was an SRCD Fellow in the US Department of Education and Professor and Chair of the University of Delaware's Department of Individual and Family Studies. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at the Foundation for Child Development.

Sharon Lynn Kagan, Ed.D., Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and Family Policy and Co-director of the National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 226, New York, New York 10027. Dr. Kagan is Professor Adjunct at Yale University's Child Study Center. Through her leadership in the field and her 15 books and 250 articles, Dr. Kagan has helped shape early childhood practice and policies in the United States and in countries throughout the world.

J. Ronald Lally, Ed.D., Co-director, WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies, 180 Harbor Drive, Suite 112, Sausalito, California 94965. An expert on early development, Dr. Lally has directed the work of WestEd's Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC) since 1985. He is one of the founders and a board member of ZERO TO THREE: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. For 40 years, working with state and federal governments, he has charted the direction of quality infant-toddler child care in the United States and abroad.

Edward Zigler, Ph.D., was Sterling Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Yale University and Director Emeritus of the Yale Center in Child Development and Social Policy. He was one of the planners of Project Head Start and was the federal official responsible for administering the program when he served as the first director of the U.S. Office of Child Development (now the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families). He was also Chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau. He regularly testified as an expert witness before congressional committees and had served as a consultant to every presidential administration since that of Lyndon Johnson. Dr. Zigler conducted extensive research on topics related to child development, psychopathology, and mental retardation and authored hundreds of scholarly publications.

Dr. Gilliam is an Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at Yale University. He is also the Director of Yale's Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. His research involves policies regarding early childhood education and child care, ways to improve the quality of early childhood services, the impact of early childhood education programs on children's school readiness, and effective methods for reducing classroom behavior problems and the incidence of preschool expulsion.

Barbara T. Bowman is a pioneer in the field of early childhood education. Throughout her career, she has been an advocate for young children, applying knowledge about child development to her work integrating policy and practice. She is a founder and past president of Erikson Institute and has held local and national leadership positions in public education and professional organizations. She is currently on the faculty of Erikson Institute.

Debra J. Ackerman, Ph.D., Associate Director, Understanding Teaching Quality Center, Rosedale Road, MS 02-T, Princeton, New Jersey 08541. Dr. Ackerman is an education policy researcher. Her work focuses on the effects of policies and program elements on teachers' practice and students' learning outcomes.

Sandra J. Bishop-Josef, Ph.D., Assistant Director, the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, 310 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511. Dr. Bishop-Josef's research interests include child maltreatment, child and family services, and the application of research to social policy.

Barbara T. Bowman is a pioneer in the field of early childhood education. Throughout her career, she has been an advocate for young children, applying knowledge about child development to her work integrating policy and practice. She is a founder and past president of Erikson Institute and has held local and national leadership positions in public education and professional organizations. She is currently on the faculty of Erikson Institute.

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education, Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 39, 254 Thorndike, New York, New York 10027. Dr. Brooks-Gunn directs the National Center for Children and Families (http://www.policyforchildren.org). She is interested in factors that contribute to both positive and negative outcomes across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, with a particular focus on key social and biological transitions over the life course.

Margaret Burchinal, Ph.D., Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute, CB 8185, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599. Dr. Burchinal is a senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute. She has served as the primary statistician for many child care studies, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development study of early child care and youth development; the Abecedarian Project; the National Center for Early Development and Learning 11-state prekindergarten evaluation; and the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study.

David Lawrence, Jr., President, The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, 3250 SW Third Avenue, Miami, Florida 33129. Mr. Lawrence is University Scholar for Early Childhood Development and Readiness at the University of Florida. He is a nationally known journalist who retired in 1999 as publisher of The Miami Herald to devote his energies toward building a movement on behalf of high quality early childhood development, care, and education.

John M. Love, Ph.D., President, Ashland Institute for Early Childhood Science and Policy, 1016 Canyon Park Drive, Ashland, Oregon 97520. Dr. Love received his Ph.D. in child behavior and development from the University of Iowa and retired in 2010 after 18 years with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey, where he directed the national evaluation of the Early Head Start program. He currently consults with various agencies on early childhood program evaluation issues and is developing a program of research with the Ashland Institute.

Alison Lutton, M.Ed., Senior Director of Higher Education Accreditation and Program Support, National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1313 L Street NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005. Ms. Lutton's 30-year career in early childhood education includes direct work with children and families, consulting, community college faculty, and administrative positions. She has 20 years of experience in the development of early childhood professional standards and accreditation systems.

Kathleen McCartney, Ph.D., Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 13 Appian Way, Longfellow Hall Room 101, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Dr. McCartney's research program concerns early experience and development, particularly with respect to child care, early childhood education, and poverty. In 2009, she received the Distinguished Contribution Award for the Society for Research in Child Development.

Genevieve Okada, M.A., Doctoral Student of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093. Ms. Okada received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master's degree in the psychology of parenthood from New York University, where she worked closely with Dr. C. Cybele Raver and Dr. J. Lawrence Aber. As a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, she is specializing in psychological anthropology, and her primary research interests include parenting, child development, race, ethnicity, religion, and identity.

Robert C. Pianta, Ph.D., is Dean of the Curry School of Education, Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Teaching and Learning and Novartis U.S. Foundation Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. A former special education teacher, Dr. Pianta is a developmental, school, and clinical child psychologist whose work focuses on assessment and improvement of teacher-student interactions and their role in fostering children's learning and development.

Dr. Pianta is a principal investigator on several major grants including the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education and the Virginia Education Sciences Training Program, and he has worked closely with the Gates Foundation-funded Measure of Effective Teaching project.

He is the author of more than 250 journal articles, chapters, and books in the areas of early childhood education, teacher performance assessment, professional development, and teacher–child relationships, and he consults regularly with federal agencies, foundations and universities.

Helen H. Raikes, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She received her doctorate in child development from Iowa State University. Previously, she has had teaching positions at the University of California, Davis, and at Iowa State University. Among other foci, she has maintained a career-long interest in secure base relationships for infants and toddlers and first created an attachment-based model while Director of Infant Toddler Programs and Director of Research at the SRI/Saint Elizabeth and Gallup Organization Child Development Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. She was also a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Policy Fellow at the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the time the Early Head Start program began and co-directed the national research for that program. Today, her work focuses on programs for children in poverty, with special emphases on infants and toddlers, children at greatest risk, and optimal timing of intervention as it relates to developmental trajectories, school readiness, and later success, as well as on innovative continuous program improvement efforts using research and evaluation. She is a board member of the Nebraska Early Childhood Endowment Board, the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, and the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation and is a member of the National Forum on Early Childhood Program Evaluation.

C. Cybele Raver, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Applied Psychology, The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University, Kimball Hall, 246 Greene Street, Room 403W, New York, New York 10003. Dr. Raver directs New York University's Institute of Human Development and Social Change. Her research focuses on self-regulation and school readiness among young children facing economic hardship, and she examines the mechanisms that support children's positive outcomes in the policy contexts of welfare reform and early educational intervention.

Arthur J. Reynolds, Ph.D., Professor, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 51 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Chicago Longitudinal Study, one of the largest and most extensive studies of the effects of early childhood intervention. He also studies the effects of early childhood intervention on children's development from school entry to early adulthood and the family and school's influences on children's educational success.

Art Rolnick, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 301 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. Dr. Rolnick is Co-director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the University of Minnesota, and is working to advance multidisciplinary research on child development and social policy. He previously served at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as Senior Vice President and Director of Research and as Associate Economist with the Federal Open Market Committee-the monetary policy-making body for the Federal Reserve System.

Elizabeth Rose, Ph.D., Library Director, Fairfi eld Museum and History Center, 370 Beach Road, Fairfield, Connecticut 06824. Dr. Rose is a historian with interests in family history, education, and social policy. She is the author of The Promise of Preschool: From Head Start to Universal Pre- kindergarten (Oxford University Press, 2010) and A Mother's Job: The History of Day Care, 1890-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Lawrence J. Schweinhart, Ph.D., President, HighScope Educational Research Foundation, 600 North River Street, Ypsilanti, Michigan 48198. Dr. Schweinhart has been President of HighScope Educational Research Foundation since 2003 and a researcher there since 1975. His research has focused on evaluative research on the practices and effects of early childhood programs, especially the HighScope Perry Preschool Study.

Deborah Stipek, Ph.D., James Quillen Dean and Professor of Education, Stanford School of Education, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. Dr. Stipek received her doctorate in developmental psychology from Yale University. She served 10 of her 23 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, as Director of the Corinne Seeds University Elementary School and the Urban Education Studies Center and joined the Stanford School of Education as Dean and Professor of Education in January 2001.

Ruby Takanishi, Ph.D., President and CEO, Foundation for Child Development, 295 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor, New York, New York 10017. Dr. Takanishi works at the Foundation for Child Development, which initiated a 10-year commitment to promoting the integration of early learning programs with K-12 education reform in 2003. Her interest in how research on children's development can inform public policy and programs is a lifelong concern.

Judy A. Temple, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, 149 Humphrey Center, 301 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. Dr. Temple's research focuses on economic evaluations (including cost-benefit analyses) of education interventions. She is a co-principal investigator with the Chicago Longitudinal Study, which has followed more than 1,200 students from low-income neighborhoods from kindergarten into adulthood.