Slides from my presentation at Assemblywoman Barbara Clark's Career & College Readiness Education Workshop at the NYS Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, February 2011. The presentation can be found at: http://bit.ly/P9o1vv

1. Starting on Track to
Career and College
Readiness: Setting the
Course
NYS Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators
40th Annual Association Weekend
February 19, 2011
Amanda Lester, Policy Analyst, Office of
Assemblywoman Barbara Clark

2. Student Achievement
Dilemmas in the News
• Only 34 percent of 4th graders, 30 percent of 8th graders,
and 21 percent of seniors met at least the "proficient" level
on the 2009 NAEP Science Exam.
• Statewide, only 40.8% of general education students
demonstrated career and college readiness by graduation.
The actual graduation rate of 76.8% for this group of
students.
• In NYS, for every 100 students that enter the 9th Grade,
only 19 will graduate with an associate’s degree in three
years or a bachelor’s degree in six years.
• NYS offers the 2nd highest access to the GED, but the 2nd
lowest pass rate.

3. Where Does the Struggle
Begin?
“Children entering school ready to meet its
academic, social and emotional demands
are more likely to achieve success in
academics and life. States that want to
increase college readiness and success
must intervene in the earliest years.”-
Lee, J.M. and Rawls, A. (2010). The College Completion Agenda:
2010 Progress Report.

4. Where Does the Struggle
Begin?
• High school graduation rates and student performance on
benchmark tests demonstrate the problem after students
have already fallen behind.
• For many students, warning signs of academic problems
emerge in the early childhood and the elementary years.
• Early struggles with literacy, numeracy, inconsistent school
attendance, behavioral problems, and low levels of resiliency
are early indicators of emerging difficulties.

5. What happens when children
start out already behind?

6. What happens when children
start out already behind?
“Access to preschool education can have a direct
effect on the ability for children to perform
later in school.”
“Many of the educational disparities found in
students later in their educational careers can
be linked back to preparation disparities in
children when they enter kindergarten.”
- Lee, J.M. and Rawls, A. (2010). The College Completion Agenda: 2010
Progress Report.

7. What happens when children
start out already behind?
Child Poverty in NYS, November 2006
Source: Children’s Defense Fund
http://www.cdfny.org/reports/May%202007/ChildPoverty_NY_Nov2006.pdf
Race/Ethnicity Total Children Poor Children Percent Poor
All Children 4,453,562 865,102 19.4%
White Children 2,412,321 260,502 10.7%
Black Children 728,517 245,690 33.7%
Latino Children 905,320 302,151 33.3%
Asian Children 274,129 53,512 19.5

8. What happens when children
start out already behind?
As of 2006, almost one out of five children in
NYS lived in poverty.
Children living in poverty are …
• 2 times as likely as children living above poverty
to repeat a grade
• 3.5 times as likely as children living above poverty
to drop out of school
• Half as likely to finish a four-year college.
• Living in poverty in early life has a life-long
impact on schooling and employment.

9. What can we do to help
children enter the Education
Pipeline ready to learn?
Invest in programs in the early years
to address diversity in developmental
rates among children. This will
improve school readiness and reduce
the need to invest in remedial
programs in later grades.

10. Five Domains Attributed to
School Readiness
1. Physical well-being (health, motor development)
2. Social-emotional development (social skills,
emotion regulation)
3. Approaches to learning (ability and inclination to
use skills)
4. Language development (verbal language, emerging
literacy)
5. Cognition and general knowledge
-Stedron, J.M. and Berger, A (August 2010). NCSL Technical Report:
State Approaches to School Readiness Assessment.

11. What Do We Know About
How Young Children Learn?
• Children are natural knowledge seekers.
• Children’s learning is often guided by their need to
know.
• New knowledge and skills are constructed by making
connections with previously attained knowledge and
skills.
• Children learn through play (applied learning).
• Children build knowledge through repeated and
refined experiences with the same concepts, guided
by their curiosity and desire to become “expert”.
• Learning opportunities provided to children must
support the individual needs of the learner and social-
emotional development.

12. What Do We Know About
How Young Children Learn?
The human brain develops more in
the first three years than at any
other subsequent period.

13. Child Development from
Birth-8
• Birth- age 8 are the most important years
in developing the mental capacity for life-
long learning.
• There is a link between brain development
and later cognitive ability.
• Children need to be exposed to language
rich, cognitively stimulating environments
in their earliest years.

14. The Grade 3 Imperative
• Failure to read proficiently by the end of Grade 3
is linked to higher rates of drop-out.
• The inability to read by the end of Grade 3 has a
cumulative effect.
• The transition between Grades 3 and 4 include
moving from learning to read to reading to learn.
• Failure to demonstrate reading proficiency by
Grade 3 will then require remedial intervention.

15. The Grade 3 Imperative
Based on current trends, 6.6 million low-income children from birth-
age 8 are at increased risk of dropping out of high school or not
graduating on time because they won’t be able to meet the NAEP
proficient reading level by the end of Grade 3.

16. What is
Prekindergarten?
Prekindergarten (Pre-K) can be defined as the first
formal learning experience that a child has prior
to entering Kindergarten.
– Pre-K has typically focused on children ages 3-5 years
– Pre-K occurs in a variety of settings, with varying
degrees of quality*
– Children come to Pre-K with a range of developmental
diversity and prior experiences
– Quality Pre-K experiences can help to reduce the
variation Kindergarten readiness

17. Is Traditional Pre-K Enough?
Expanding the Pipeline to B-16
Even with interventions beginning at the traditional
Pre-K age, children with fewer language
experiences by age 4* continue to lag behind
their peers once they begin school.
*By age 4, children of professional parent had heard 48 million
words, while children from lower income families had heard only
13 million words.
Often, parents and children in disadvantaged
families need support beginning at the child’s
birth to provide the developmental experiences
necessary to achieve school readiness.

18. How does B-5 education empower
student learning in K-5?
High quality early learning experiences for
children Birth-5…
• Promotes school readiness
• Improves brain development, emotion regulation
and social skills
• Improves language acquisition and literacy
• Provides common experiences with core knowledge
• Increases family and parent involvement
• Reduces likelihood of grade retention and later
remediation
**B-5 experiences should be linked to K-5 through
transition and continued support.

19. Benefits of B-5 Education on
Human Capital Development
Each $1 of investment in preschool
education yields about an $11
return in benefits to society.
-Reynolds, A.J., White, B.A.B., and Robertson, D. (2011). Age 26 Cost-
Benefit Analysis of the Child-Parent Center Early Education
Program. Child Development, 82(1), 379-404.

20. Benefits of B-5 Education on
Human Capital Development
The Child-Parent Center Early Education
Program…
Followed students in preschool program beginning at age 3 until
age 26, the entire program served students ages 3-9 years.
Over time, preschool program participants showed:
– higher rates of college completion
– completed more years of education
– significantly lower rates of felony arrest
– higher rates of insurance coverage
– lower rates of depressive symptoms

21. Benefits of B-5 Education on
Human Capital Development
The Child-Parent Center Early Education
Program…
Over time, K-12 outcomes included:
– Significantly lower rates of grade retention
– Lower rates of special education placement
– Lower incidences of child maltreatment
– Fewer out of home placements
– Fewer juvenile arrests
– Higher rates of attendance in 4 year colleges
– Employment in higher-skilled jobs.

22. Summary
• Providing support and educational opportunities to
parents and children beginning at birth can close
the achievement gap by addressing variations in
developmental diversity.
• Birth-8 are critical years to laying the cognitive
foundation to lifelong learning and education-
reliant opportunities.
• Early learning and prekindergarten programs are
shown to improve success outcomes for children
into adulthood.
• B-5 programs that include parent engagement
strengthen parent-child connections and in turn
improve educational and life success outcomes for
children.