Is Zero to Five Possible?
Pre-Kindergarten Research BlogArchive for February, 2009
1) Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan for Lifetime Success Through Education
Title: Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan for Lifetime Success Through Education (n.d.)
Summary: Barack Obama and Joe Biden plan to give funding to states to create or improve high quality early education care for pregnant women up until age five because high quality pre-school and early care are important for children to develop properly and succeed later in life.
Topic: zero to five plan
Category: Non-profit institutional
What is it? A campaign report outlining the Obama-Biden plan for pre-kindergarten education
Publication Information:
barackobama.com, no publication date or location
Author: Obama for America
Location: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf
Accessed: 2/22/09
Support
Barack Obama, president
Joe Biden, vice president
These sources represent the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the November 2008 election’s pre-kindergarten education proposal.
Audience and Agenda:
This source aimed to reach constituents as it was funded by Organizing for America, an organization supported by the Democratic Party. This bias shows because it states the plan, and follows up with why it should be implemented. It also is available for reference to see our current president’s plans.
Usefulness:
This source will be useful because it outlines, in detail, Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s zero to five plan and is my only source that serves that function. I will integrate it with my other sources because a lot of them show research to support the plan, and this source will follow them to show how it will be applied. I will show how Obama’s plan reflects the research, but also how it deviates from the findings in the research. For the most part, it stays consistent with research, but some funds could be distributed differently, as commented by Larry Schweinhart.
Works Cited:
Audio Slideshow
1) The Sandbox Investment*
The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics (2007)
Summary: Preschool should be a top concern for Americans because the benefits to society and the individual outweigh the expenses.
Topic: zero to five
Category: Academic Journalistic
What is it? Book
Publication Information: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007
Author: David Kirp, Ph.D., Education Professor at UC-Berkeley
Location: Knight Library
Accessed: 2/20/2009
Sources:
James Heckman, Economist
Lawrence Schweinhart, President of High/Scope Education Research Foundation
Zell Miller, Politician from Georgia
These sources represent three advocates of universal preschool that come from different backgrounds, one in education, one in economics, and one in politics.
Audience and Agenda:
This book ranks #43,746 on Amazon.com’s sales ranking. It was written to chronicle and highlight the recent developments in the pre-kindergarten movement. The audience Kirp focuses on is policy makers and other industry insiders. He is a credible source, an education professional from Berkeley, and focuses on all aspects of the pre-k movement.
Usefulness:
This source will be useful because it is a collective summary of what the majority of my other sources focus on. It includes reference to the The Perry Preschool Study as well as my interviewee, researcher Larry Schweinhart. This source puts my subject in context and shows how it will be applied. It also discusses political issues, which is not covered in the majority of my other sources. I can use this source, which includes problems and solutions to the pre-k program, to make a quality refutation.
Works cited:
Amazon.com
1) Interview with Larry Schweinhart
Title: Interview (February 18, 2009)
Summary: President of High/Scope Research foundation, Larry Schweinhart, Ph.D, found in his research that there are long term societal benefits to pre-kindergarten programs that began at both ages 3 and 4, and believes that because it benefits society more than the individual it is a public good and should be publicly funded.
Topic: zero to five
Category: Expert Citizen
What is it? skype interview with Dr. Larry Schweinhart
Publication Information: Not published
Author: Larry Schweinhart
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Accessed: February 18, 2009
Support:
Larry Schweinhart represents an expert source who supports early pre-k, but also sees flaws in current government allocation of funds.
Audience and Agenda:
Schweinhart formerly performed extensive academically accepted research that supports pre-k education. His work has been done to support the High/Scope preschool approach, and also to inform lawmakers of the benefits of preschool programs.
Usefulness: This source will be useful because it adds expert opinions to specific questions on my research. I will use integrate the information and opinions of Dr. Schweinhart when explaining faults in current spending and how spending should be made. He also gave expert insight on why preschool should be publicly funded and not privately in addition to why public preschool has been unsuccessful in the past. He answered all of my questions without leaving anything out and gave me names of people I should contact.
Works Cited:
Natalie-in class should question interview
Question: Should the state department of the Obama Administration double foreign aid for Africa?
A: Natalie believes that we should not double foreign aid for Africa until the system for is reformed. Currently, aided African governments use funding for personal benefits, use aid to make their country appear needier in order to receive more aid, and become dependent on aid.
Natalie’s 3 top sources:
1. The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid
The Council of Foreign Relations published a debate between William Easterly, an economics professor who claims that increasing the aid will have a negative effect on the government and Steve Radelet, who claims that the only way to achieve the UN’s mellenium goals, which he, in part, created, is to increase the aid.
2. In the Village Where Aid Makes a Vital Difference
A case study published by Independent, reports on a study, “Millennium Villages,” in which the government awarded aid to select African Villages instead of the federal governments. The project aimed to work from the bottom up, targeted local problems, and successfully improved the quality of life for the Africans that received aid.
3. Aid Dependency Blights Africa: the Cure is in the Credit Crisis
A Ph.D who grew up in Zambia and authored the book Dead Aid recalls never receiving any aid as a child and believes that the economic crisis be beneficial for Africa’s economy. If the countries who support African nations decrease funding because they can’t afford it, suffering African nations must learn to support themselves.
3) Source Notes: The Economics of Education
Summary: Preschool education increases children’s chances for success in elementary school and later life which will improve the economy because less of our tax dollars will be spent on social welfare programs.
Topic: zero to five
Category: Business Institutional
What is it? An online report
Publication Information: Entergy Co; 2008; Arkansas
Author: Oppenheim, Jerrold; MacGregor, Theo
Accessed: 2/12/09
Support:
Research and Policy Committee of the Center for Economic Development
US Department of Health and Human Services
Megan Tench, Boston Globe
Each of these sources contributed to research and publications supporting the economic benefits of creating universal quality preschool.
Audience and Agenda: This report, published by Entergy, was published to inform business leaders of the importance of high -quality preschool education. Hugh McDonald, CEO of Entergy, supported the study, not only to support the community, but his business; approximately 20% of his customers live below the national poverty level. Entergy used the study to convince the business community that pre-k programs deserved funding by using the economic angle, with the support of the business community and child advocacy groups, the study was presented to policy makers with overwhelming success in Arkansas.
Usefulness: This source will be useful because it was supported by a high-powered man with selfish motives. He successfully hypothesized that high-quality preschool would improve the economy. The target audience of the source is business and community leaders, and it argues that the economy will benefit from preschool education for low-income children. The source leaves out charts and specific details; however it provides an in depth summary of the findings of the study.
Works Cited:
http://preknow.org/community/profiles/mcdonald.cfm
3) Protect Our Kids from Preschool*
Protect Our Kids from Preschool (Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2008)
Summary: The Wall Street Journal reports evidence that preschool will not benefit children in later life because despite the increase in preschool attendees, national test scores.
Topic: Zero to five
Category: Mainstream Journalistic
What is it? A web version of an editorial found in the Wall Street Journal
Publication Information: Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2008, New York, NY
Author: Dalmia, Shikha and Snell, Lisa
Location: http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121936615766562189.html
Accessed: 2/12/09
Support:
Barack Obama, president
James Heckman, University of Chicago laureate in economics
Education Week, education journal
These sources represent Obama’s claims that universal preschool will benefit all, a University of Chicago laureate who worked side-by-side with Obama, but rejects his claims, and a journal that analyzed the decrease in student performance in states that implemented universal preschool.
Audience and Agenda: The Wall Street Journal is typically considered a right-winged newspaper. The article was printed in the opinion section in August, 2008, before the election of democrat, Barack Obama, who supports pre-school funding. It was printed to discourage people from believing that Barack Obama’s policies would be successful, and also to expose evidence that preschool does not benefit students academically. Wsj.com is estimated that 2.4 million people view the website per month and it has just over one million subscribers. The print version of the Wall Street Journal has nearly two million subscribers.
Usefulness: This article is to prove that preschool will benefit society. The evidence used is weak and doesn’t include any specific studies. The article states that although preschool attendance increased in the past 30 years test scores have not. The study fails to include the demographics of the people who have began attending preschool. Universal preschool mainly focuses on equal chances for low-income students, and it is possible that their attendance has not increased. Additionally, funding hasn’t increased for preschool even though more children attend. This lowers the quality which David Kirp, in his book The Sandbox Investment, stresses is most important in order to see long-term benefits from a pre-school program. It claims that Pew Charitable Trusts and Pre-K Now are ignoring important evidence and aims to discredit their extensive findings.
Works Cited:
http://www.reason.org/dalmia.shtml
http://www.reason.org/snell.shtml
4) Going to Scale with High-Quality Early Education
Title: Going to Scale with High-Quality Early Education (RAND Corporation 2005)
Summary: According to RAND Corporation, quality universal preschool programs have the potential to benefit underprivileged children, their families, and American society because by educating America’s youth, we can reduce crime and increase employment which will reduce the taxes that support law enforcement and unemployment benefits.
Topic: Zero to five plan
Category: Non-profit institutional
What is it? A technical report published online
Publication Information: RAND Corporation; 2005; Santa Monica California
Author: Christina, Rachel; Nicholson-Goodman, JoVictoria
Location: http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2005/RAND_TR237.pdf
Accessed: 2/12/09
Support:
D.J. Ackerman, researcher for Education policy
G. Adams and M. Rohacek, researchers for Early Childhood Research Quarterly
American Foundation of Teachers
W. Steven Barnett, Director of NIEER
These sources represent a variety of researchers from publications and non-profit organizations that support funding universal preschool and research ways to make it feasible.
Audience and Agenda:
This study was funded by the Early Childhood Funders’ Collaborative aiming to increase funding for preschool education. Their purpose is to facilitate networking and share information for funders to collaborate on specific projects that will inform and influence policy makers. RAND education is a non-profit organization with goals to improve every aspect of education.
Usefulness: This source report includes both benefits of universal preschool as well as consequences. It also shows that the benefits outweigh the consequences and offers solutions to possible problems in implementing universal preschool.
Works Cited:
http://www.gcyf.org/partners/partners_show.htm?doc_id=362950
2) A Vision for Universal Preschool Education
A Vision for Universal Preschool Education (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Summary: Psychology professors Edward Zigler and Walter S. Gilliam of Yale University and Stephanie M. Jones of Fordham University, assert in their book that extensive research proves the need for a universal preschool education system in the United States to improve the quality of life for the preschool attendees as well as all American citizens.
Topic: Zero to five
Category: Academic Research
What is it? A book found in the Knight Library
Publication Information: Cambridge University Press; 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY; 2006
Authors: Zigler, Edward; Gilliam, Walter S.; Jones, Stephanie M.
Location: Knight Library; call number: LB 1140.23.Z54; also in google books
Accessed: 2/12/09
Support:
Ramona Blackman-Jones, School Psychologist Trainee at Winthrop University
Richard M. Clifford, Senior Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institutes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Research Associate Professor in the School of Education, co-director of National Prekindergarten Center and the National Center for Early Development Learning
Matia Finn-Stevenson, a Research Scientist at Yale University and Associate Director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy
Christopher C. Henrich, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University
Margeurite Malakoff, Researcher in Pasadena California
Kelly L. Maxwell, Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute
Arthur J. Reynolds, Professor of Child Development at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota
Sally J. Styfco, Associate Director of Head Start Section at the Edward Zigler Center in Childe Development and Social Policy at Yale University and Research Associate at the Yale Child Study Center
Judy A. Temple, Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota.
These sources work together to analyze various benefits of universal preschool education.
Audience and Agenda: This source was published to inform other education and psychology professionals as well as policy makers of the importance of preschool education. It was funded by Yale University and state universities.
Usefulness: This source provides a psychologist’s professional perspective regarding high-quality early childhood education. It discusses how students should begin learning at a young age to best retain knowledge. The findings of Zigler and his colleagues contribute to the academic world. The book goes in depth on the subject and only leaves out recent information and information on Barack Obama’s policies because it was published in 2006.
Works Cited:
Top 10 Tips
- Follow the rule of thirds
- Pre-visualize
- Use lines, they are visually appealing
- take a lot of photographs
- have the sun shine on the subject; subject shouldn’t be in shadow
- If subject is moving or looking at something, allow room in the frame for them to be moving somewhere or looking at something
- Shoot a variety of angles
- Shoot a variety of backgrounds
- Don’t take posed photographs, wait for the subject to act natural; always have camera ready for a candid photo
- Focus on subject
