There’s much to celebrate about pre-K in DC

As a former teacher, passionate education watcher, and eventual future parent in DC, there are a lot of things I want to change about the way we educate kids. It’s easy to overlook where we’re doing well and have already improved greatly. One such area is pre-kindergarten education.

President Obama made early childhood education a central focus of his State of the Union address and visited a pre-K classroom in Georgia. Unlike much of the nation, DC has already had the conversation about the need for high quality pre-K and has leapt ahead of other systems. What exactly makes our city’s model different from other cities or states?

Pre-K has the potential to start every child off in school with rich educational experiences that set the tone for the rest of their schooling. My own pre-K classroom had a diverse group of children from around the city. There, as one example, we researched, debated, and analyzed “if whales are mammals or fish” through conversations, fictional stories, nonfiction books, Google searches, and perhaps a field trip.

There are a few key unique factors about DC’s system: parents buying into the community, teacher pay equity, and strong developmentally-appropriate practice and rigorous expectations across settings.

Involved parents: There are plenty of obvious benefits for families to have free full-day preschool for their 3- or 4- year old: they have a place to send their kids as they head off to work for the day, and there are choices around neighborhood schools, specific curricula, and school models.

With many pressures on families to afford and access high quality childcare, DC’s pre-K model provides that and much more. Also, by having parents of young children involved closely with schools from an early age, parents have an opportunity to see their child as a student served by the system, thus further committing to this system.

At one of my previous schools, I saw a unique model for any American school: a classroom with students from various income levels, neighborhoods, races, ethnicities, and first languages. As a city, I think pre-K is helping create the kind of schools we want have — serving all kids and families together.

Pay equity: Early childhood educators in most of the country are typically paid abysmal salaries compared to their K-12 counterparts. In DC, public school pre-K teachers in DCPS and charters make the same salary and benefits, while following the same schedule.

For a field where quality teachers are hard to find and keep because of the lack of competitive wages, this is no minor victory. For educators, this means the city is honoring their work — educating kids in the key skills they’ll need to thrive now, in kindergarten, and beyond — with the same pay. For families and students, such a pay scale means attracting and retaining the highest quality teachers in the earliest years of schooling.

DC’s commitment to early childhood equal pay is one of its most remarkable aspects. It’s also what contributes to the relatively large cost per student compared to some other state pre-K structures. Of course, there continue to be serious wage gaps for those who educate preschoolers outside of DCPS and charters, as well as those who work with infants and toddlers.

Quality: The most important strength of DC’s system is also the most crucial for preschoolers’ development and growth: overall, DC schools are models of programs that deeply understand how children learn and develop, utilizing what the early childhood education field calls “developmentally appropriate practice.” Programs also show a strong understanding of high expectations and ambitious outcomes for all kids.

DC has many strong programs for ensuring kids are ready for kindergarten, not only academically but also with social emotional skills and the ability to solve problems. Pre-K classrooms engage in activities like reading stories, singing songs, having students choose independent work time in “centers” such as science or blocks, and engaging in small group projects.

Many schools in DC Public Schools also use the Tools of the Mind curriculum, which builds on these pre-K routines with activities specifically designed to develop children’s cognitive skills by helping them understand, describe, and reflect on their own choices and actions. For instance, students in a Tools of the Mind classroom may spend time listening to their peers “read” words and texts from a story and they describe their own plans for roles they will take on in center play, such as a flower shop owner in art or a surgeon in the library.

My own former school, Bridges Public Charter, serves students with and without special needs together in inclusive classrooms. Teachers are able to build intentional goals around each student’s unique needs, ensuring each child enters kindergarten successfully. Across the city, very young children are being challenged in appropriate settings that recognize the way they learn best.

Of course, this current system wasn’t built in a day, or without push and pull from leaders across the city, including the grassroots Pre-K for All DC campaign. And there is plenty we still need to do to build opportunities and equity in the DC system for all learners, birth to adulthood.

This forum will give us a place to have conversations about some of the current issues we face and how they might be resolved. That said, DC has built one of the most comprehensive systems for preschoolers, families, and educators around the county — and it is one we can be proud lives in DC.