Reprinted from the Huffington Post, July 28, 2010, with permission from the author, Ellen Galinsky.

A front-page story in the New York Times today (July 28) by David Leonhardt is provocatively titled “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers”. In what is described as an “explosive” new study, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shed new light on the importance of quality early childhood teaching. The researchers examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who were part of a Tennessee experiment, Project Star, that took place in the 1980s. In this study, students from similar socio-economic backgrounds were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classes. At the end of the year and into the first, second, and third grades, some classes made more progress than others. These differences were statistically significant, yet like other studies, as the children grew older, the difference began to fade out by junior high school, when assessed by test scores.

Importantly, the forthcoming study by the economists looked beyond test scores.  The children in the study are now about 30 years old and so other indicators of life success can be used. The economists found that the students who learned more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college, were less likely to become single parents, were more likely to be saving more toward their retirements, and importantly, more likely to be earning more. And therein is the title of the article. As Leonhardt writes, $320,000 is the “present value of the additional money that a full class of students [with a standout teacher] can expect to earn over their careers.”

As Leonhardt makes clear, the economists don’t know exactly what these good teachers did to make the difference. While smaller class size and the composition of the class did make some difference, these factors don’t come close to explaining the results. So what does?

Leonhardt writes that it isn’t hard to come up with guesses: “Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime—patience, discipline, manners, perseverance.”

But this is more than speculation. A decade of reviewing the research on early learning has led me to the same conclusion.  As I reviewed study after study, across multiple disciplines, from developmental psychology to neuroscience, it became abundantly clear to me that life skills make a difference in children’s short-term and long-term success. And so I wrote Mind in the Making to make a case for intentionally focusing on promoting life skills in children. When adults promote life skills, children thrive.

For example, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Columbia University and a group of other academics recently reviewed six studies that followed children over time, offering a rare opportunity to evaluate what kinds of skills or knowledge acquired early in life matter most to children’s later successes. They compared children’s school achievement in math and reading between the ages of eight and 13 to assessments of these same children between ages four and six. Out of literally hundreds of analyses, only three skills that children had when they entered school were strongly related to their later success in reading and math. Two are obvious: the children who had good math and reading skills when they entered school had good math and reading skills years later. But the third skill is less obvious. It is “attention skills.” As Brooks-Gunn says: “Attention [skills] allow children to focus on something in a way that maximizes the information they get out of it.”

Similarly, Megan McClelland and her colleagues of Oregon State University have found that the skill of focus and self control is predictive of children’s literacy, vocabulary, and math skills in preschool and in kindergarten. For example, children who scored highly on a task they use to measure this skill in the fall of kindergarten had spring math scores that were the equivalent of almost 3.5 additional months of math learning, 1.7 additional months of literacy learning, and 1.9 additional months of vocabulary learning.

All of the skills I see as life skills—such as focus and self control, perspective taking, critical thinking, and taking on challenges—are based on executive functions of the brain, functions that take place in the prefrontal cortex. These skills involve using working memory to keep a number of different things in one’s mind at the same time while paying attention, thinking flexibly, and inhibiting the tendency to go on automatic pilot. Executive functions are always driven by goals.

I have worked in the field of education for four decades now and I have watched the field follow the desire for one quick fix after another. Thus, I hope that the publication of this important new study will not only be used to supercharge structural reforms—better pay for teachers, efforts to help teachers improve, and efforts to remove the lowest performing teachers. As important as these reforms are, if this is all we do, it won’t be enough.

We can and must also focus on what teachers teach — and it’s not just the content. David Leonhardt’s speculation must not be forgotten if we are to reduce the achievement gap and if we are to help all children have better life success: “good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime.”

The Library of Congress, along with the Ad Council, are encouraging parents to read with their children. According to Florida State University, this activity makes children more willing to read and increases the frequency of their reading. They hope to promote a steady daily reading experience for young children, which is difficult for many harried parents, but quite crucial. The messaging is geared around summer vacation, when many children, particularly those from low-income families, experience what is referred to as a “summer slide” in their reading skills. According to the Center for Evaluation, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, reading four to five books during the summer “can prevent reading achievement losses among elementary school students that might normally occur (at that time).”

To support those efforts, the Library of Congress has selected Curious George, a long time popular story book character, to feature in its public service campaign. The ad copy is inviting: “What makes a curious reader? You do!” and “Share curiosity. Read together.”

This campaign is well timed with an emphasis on intergenerational learning and inquiry. We hope that the campaign is indicative of a needed movement within the publishing industry, as well as toy and electronic game spaces, towards “play together” and “learn together” experiences.

The Cooney Center recently published the report Can Video Games Promote Intergenerational Play & Literacy Learning?, authored by Cynthia Chiong, Ph.D., with a particular focus on literacy among struggling and diverse readers across lower and middle-income families. The publication explores the solid benefits that can occur when parents and kids play games together.

Visit the Library of Congress Curious George page

Read full New York Times article Promoting Literacy the Curious George Way by Jane L. Levere

Download Can Video Games Promote Intergenerational Play & Literacy Learning?

*Warm* Summer greetings!

The Cooney Center is looking for partners to swap and share with on our new Website — and yours!

Let us know if you’re interested in sharing content across our platforms (text, video, etc.). We might also be interested in having you as a guest blogger on our site (and us on yours.)

You can contact me here on my page. 

Thanks! Marj

Cooney Center recommends!

You’ll want to check out Ellen Galinsky’s new book Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, which explores the science of childhood brain development and early learning. Collaborating with top researchers in cognitive science, Galinsky identifies seven life skills, including critical thinking and communication, that foster learning and mastery.

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The 2010 NBA Championship was not the only prize on the line at the Los Angeles Staples Center, on June 16, as four finalists competed in a quick pitch competition to win the first-ever Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning. Hosted by the Entertainment Software Association at its annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the Cooney Center Prizes mobile learning category culminated in a quick pitch competition where each finalist presented their concept and engaged in a Q&A session with panel of distinguished judges.

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Reprinted from Huffington Post, July 5, 2010.

Written together with Esther Wojcicki, Creative Commons Board Chair

America is celebrating.

The Fourth of July is a time for parades, parties, BBQs, fireworks—we certainly have much to be thankful for here in America, the most innovative country on earth.

But one area of American life that is consistently resistant to innovation is our education system. On our nation’s birthday–a cause for celebration of our founders’ audacity, independence, courage and innovation skills– we are sadly mired in the muck.

Perhaps most tellingly, we cannot even teach our kids how to read well and comprehend the complex issues our generation has utterly failed to address! Millions of kids are reading below grade level in fourth grade, a key measure of school success. Why should everyone care how well kids read at the fourth grade?

Because children who are below grade level by age ten tend to stagnate and eventually give up and drop out in high school. Harvard educational psychologist Jeanne Chall famously called this phenomenon the “fourth grade reading slump,” where children cannot make the transition from learning to read to “reading to learn,” which hinders their learning in all other subjects. International comparisons show that because of these early literacy setbacks America is losing the global race in science and math, areas central for 21st century skilled jobs.

While national policies such as No Child Left Behind have strongly emphasized the need to teach key reading skills like decoding and phonemic awareness in the early grades, far too many students hit a wall by fourth grade and by high school more than 7000 students per week are dropping out, a national crisis that costs us billions of dollars in lost wages, according to Alliance for Excellent Education in Washington, DC.

It has been 25 years since the landmark study A Nation at Risk, and we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to ramp-up children’s mastery of basic skills. Unfortunately, the current approach to solving the literacy crisis is locked in a time warp, almost totally removed from the ubiquitous digital media consumption that currently drives children’s lives outside of school. Unless the American education system changes course quickly to integrate literacy and digital culture into our current educational paradigm, academic achievement gains will continue to stagnate.

To rectify the reading problem, we need to make sure that children have been exposed to a wide ranging vocabulary with complex words and ideas before age five. Kids who are read to frequently or who have a regular dialogue with parents or family members are exposed to a wide variety of experiences which prepare them for school. Unfortunately, today many low income children do not have this luxury. They have unemployed parents and difficult living situations and schools that failed to teach early literacy in a way that compensates for the lack of these skills.

It is here that digital media can make a vital contribution.

Educational video games, simulations, modeling tools, handheld devices, and media production tools can allow students to see how complex language and other symbol systems attach to the world. Digital media has the potential to increase the “book” vocabulary, and the concepts attached to such words, for children whose families are unable to do so.

In the classroom, digital media also have other major advantages. These media teach students to master the production of knowledge, not just the consumption of knowledge. Kids learn to create videos, write blogs, collaborate online; the also learn to play video games, do digital storytelling, fan fiction, music, graphic art, anime and even more.

Their informal process of learning, collaboration, and transforming passion into knowledge is desperately needed in schools today. Despite sluggish gains in reading, our nation has not seriously integrated digital tools and new teaching practices into all classrooms. Schools of education are still failing to teach student teachers how to integrate digital media in the classroom. For example, most teachers, experienced or newcomers, have never even heard of Open Education Resources (OER), which offers thousands of free online resources for teachers; nor have they heard of Creative Commons, an open licensing format to help teachers share work and work collaboratively.

We recommend the following for policymakers, business leaders and practitioners to consider help make schools more effective.

Establish a Digital Teacher Corps
Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. Most practitioners are unskilled in embedding new media in powerful instructional practices. A Digital Teacher Corps should be established to work in the lowest-performing elementary schools in order to train teachers to help students learn to read by transforming information for discovery and problem-solving.

Provide Incentives for Schools of Education to Update Curriculum
Teacher training programs should be modified so that all beginning teachers learn how to use online collaborative tools, video production tools, blogging tools, mobile tools and a variety of commercial and non-profit programs targeting the classrooms. Frequently young teachers know how to use these tools on a personal level but not in the classroom.

Design Alternative Assessments and Include Project Based Learning in Standards
Besides measuring traditional skills, assessments should be measuring skills based on project based learning, digital skills, problem solving skills and collaboration skills. Assessments drive the curriculum and so we need new assessments to drive a 21st century curriculum.

Support After-School Programs and Create a “Digital Hangout for Kids” in Every Community
Kids are already spending nearly seven and a half hours every day consuming all types of media, but very little of this time is spent on quality media or intentional learning, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Let’s building on national models like Communities in Schools, First, Computer Clubhouse, Club Tech of the Boys and Girls Clubs, and the Quest to Learn, Digital Youth Network and School of One models in Chicago and New York City.It is time to extend the learning day and create a place in every community where young children can gain confidence in their literacy and interactive technology skills.

Establish Model Digital Schools in Every State
Highly successful, innovative small charter schools such as High Tech High, Green Dot and KIPP Academies have proven that kids can learn essential literacy skills starting in early childhood with a personalized curriculum, integrated technology, and skillful teachers. Each state should establish at least one digital partnership elementary school as a model and demonstration site. These schools should be laboratories for testing many different digital approaches to learning and assessment, as well as for testing different ways to break down the barriers between in- and out-of-school learning. They could become a hub for the professional development of digitally savvy teachers.

Modernize Public Broadcasting

Public broadcasting leaders at PBS, CPB and independent production companies such as Sesame Workshop have taken important steps to launch children’s educational media into the digital age. Building on the success of dynamic new transmedia properties such as The Electric Company which is making learning to read cool again, further investment is needed with formats such as games, virtual worlds, and social media that will engage children in both literacy and digital skills. Educational media companies should also make available publicly-supported productions to educators at low or no cost via the internet and new communities of practice.

Check out Esther Wojcicki and Michael H. Levine‘s Huff Post on Teaching Literacy in a Digital Age.

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The Cooney Center is pleased to introduce our new Website, designed to engage a growing community in understanding the research, learning innovations and industry trends that matter most for children and families in a digital age.

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The Cooney Center Team