¹ú²úÊÓƵ

Hawaii, Illinois Make Steps Towards Enhanced Pre-K

Hawaii’s program just cleared a big hurdle. The Hawai’i legislature, in a special session Wednesday night, Gov. Linda Lingle’s (R) veto of the program, which would create an Early Learning Council to for 6,000 more students and coordinate early childhood services in the state. Gov. Lingle because of its administrative burden on existing agencies and the projected cost ($170 million over 10 years) but insists that she supports pre-k initiatives in the state. Meanwhile, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) on June 30 to extend funding for the state’s pre-k program, Preschool for All, through 2010. This is good news for Illinois, which is already a national leader in pre-k. The Preschool for All initiative, begun in 2006, serves 27 percent of 4-year olds and 19 percent of 3-year-olds in the state and is working to become a universal program for 3- and 4-year-olds by 2012.

Boys Do Better in Preschool With More Girls Around

Boys get a developmental boost when they share preschool classrooms with girls, according to a by Arlen Moller, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Moller and his colleagues studied 806 low-income children in 70 preschool classrooms in Rochester, N.Y. and found that on assessments of thinking skills, social abilities, and motor proficiency in classrooms with more girls than boys. Girls’ performance on the same measurements, on the other hand, did not appear to be affected by classroom composition. Moller said that , especially when considering performance of children from different ethnic groups, but added that his data should throw caution to arguments for greater sex segregation in early education.

Head Start in Figures

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) has released of Head Start services across the country including program composition, enrollment figures, and data on family services. The reports, which draws data from the 2006 Head Start Program Information Report (PIR), follows the release last month of data about the in enrollment and teacher quality.