Since then, preschools have struggled to create native-language programs. 

Now, preschools that receive state funding are bracing for another challenge: new state rules that will require staff who teach English learners to have bilingual certification. The rule doesn’t kick in until next year, in July 2014, but schools and districts are already looking for ways to recruit staff given the perennial shortage of bilingual educators.

The state currently has 1,525 teachers who have both a bilingual or English as a Second Language endorsement as well as a preschool teaching certificate. On paper, that is enough teachers to meet the need, says Illinois State Board of Education spokeswoman Mary Fergus.

But some of these teachers are not in the active teaching force at all, while others may be teaching in the early grades (an early childhood endorsement covers up to 3^rd grade). Others are not teaching in areas where they may be most needed.

“The distribution of [English learners] is not always in line with where the teachers are,” Fergus notes.  

A 2012 study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Human Development documents the geographic mismatch: In Illinois ZIP codes where at least 20 percent of the population is Latino, the study found just one preschool teacher certified to teach bilingual or ESL classes for every 50 preschool-aged English learners.

Relying on recruiting, creativity

Martin Torres, senior policy analyst at the Latino Policy Forum, points out that some districts are ready to meet the challenge, but others are not. “There is a dearth of those [bilingual] professionals entering the pipeline,” he says.

Torres praised the state’s move to provide scholarships for teachers to earn the needed endorsements with federal Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge funds, as well as a CPS program to provide training for a cohort of 100 teachers. Plus, some districts are using state bilingual education money for teacher scholarships, Torres adds.

Chicago Public Schools says it won’t know how many teachers might be needed until the fall. A spokeswoman says the district “aggressively campaigned” last fall to get more teachers to start certification programs and over 100 teachers enrolled at City Colleges, National-Louis University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“Based on the trend of schools in need, we feel the cohort program will meet the required needs,” according to the spokeswoman.  Teachers who finish the coursework should be certified by spring 2014, just before the deadline.

CPS says it will also begin training principals in July on the bilingual pre-K requirements and monitor school to ensure compliance.

At Bateman Elementary, Principal Pat Baccellieri is searching for teachers and hopes to recruit future hires from Loyola University, which will soon require all of its graduates to be endorsed in bilingual or English as a Second Language education. In the coming year, Bateman will have Loyola student teachers “working side by side” with Bateman teachers, Baccellieri says.

In the meantime, the school relies on creativity to ensure students get native-language instruction.

Classes include a mix of English-speakers and Spanish-speakers, but students change classes for part of the day so that Spanish-speakers can get bilingual instruction even if their teacher doesn’t speak Spanish.

For the future, the school is considering a dual-language model in which all students would learn in both Spanish and English.

“I just think it’s a better way to go,” Baccellieri says. “It’s actually supporting the development of both languages.”  Typical bilingual programs aim to boost content knowledge in a student’s home language but ultimately transition them to learning solely in English.

But Baccellieri notes challenges that loom down the line, given cuts in state aid.

“With increasing need, increasing demand and increasing policies, support is reduced, and it doesn’t make sense,” he says.

At Casa Central, Deputy Director of Children and Youth Services Amanda McMillen says the school works hard at “making sure we have Spanish-speaking staff within the classroom.”

Books, too, are in both English and Spanish. But much of the instruction is still in English, with support to Spanish-speaking students as needed.

McMillen says one new staff member has the required certification and two more are working toward it. She hopes that all four of Casa Central’s preschool classes will eventually have certified staff. She’s also interested in a dual language program but notes that “there hasn’t been too much direct guidance [from CPS] at this point.”

Creating a pipeline

One goal of bilingual education in the early grades is to make sure young children are exposed to rich, high-level language so they become literate in their native language.

The state requires bilingual teachers to pass a test on the foreign language they will be teaching in. But some observers worry that the standard isn’t high enough and that newly certified preschool teachers – many of whom aren’t native Spanish-speakers – won’t be able to teach children with enough fluency and high-level vocabulary to promote children’s growing literacy.

Sandra Warner, principal of the Early Learning Center in West Chicago District 33, explains the dilemma. “We’ve either found native speakers who don’t have the early childhood certification, or we’ve found teachers who have a Type 04 [early childhood certificate] who speak some Spanish but aren’t native speakers,” Warner says.

To work around this problem, the district has created its own pipeline of former teacher assistants--native Spanish-speakers who have earned their early childhood certificate. “We set up a road map for them,” Warner says.

Elgin District U-46, which runs a dual-language program that is 80 percent Spanish in preschool and kindergarten, has found bilingual teachers partly by recruiting them from Spain. But that’s a short-term solution, since the teachers’ visas are temporary. Three teachers will leave at the end of the current school year.

In the long run, Elgin U-46 is working with area universities – top staff members have quarterly meetings with representatives from Northern Illinois University, Eastern Illinois University, Illinois State University and Judson University – to drive home its needs.

“The biggest key has been for us to communicate with our university partners that we need bilingual preschool teachers that have their ELL [endorsement],” says Julie Kallenbach, Director of Early Learner Initiatives for the district.

Sharon Giless, director of English Language Learners at Waukegan Public School District 60, says her district has provided tutoring to help several existing teachers pass the state Spanish skills test. Once they pass the test, they can teach bilingual classes temporarily while they take courses for an endorsement.

Before the district began bilingual preschool classes, Giless notes, students learned a little English but received much of their instruction from Spanish-speaking aides. But even with bilingual classes and more English instruction, children’s language test scores at the end of preschool showed that they needed a kindergarten class almost entirely in Spanish. 

“The idea of bilingual support from the teacher assistant is good, but the delivery of instruction really comes from the teachers,” Giless says. “There is something lost in translation. Having preschool in English  doesn’t make them English speakers.”

Chicago’s J.B. Pritzker announced a $20 million commitment to launch the Early Childhood Innovation Accelerator, an initiative that will rely on social impact bonds—bond investors receive a return based on goals met by social programs—to pay for early childhood programs for disadvantaged children. (The first project, with United Way of Salt Lake City, will provide preschool for 450 youngsters.) And at a panel moderated by former President Bill Clinton, a Target Corp. official announced that Target would donate $1 billion to K-12 education in the coming year, with a focus on early literacy, while Sara Martinez Tucker of the National Math and Science Initiative cited statistics on math and science education and plugged the Common Core State Standards as a needed step toward better STEM learning. The conference continues Friday. (Catalyst)

LITERACY COURSES FOR TEACHERS: As the state changes its system of tracking teacher licensing, new teacher candidates will have to take more reading coursework – including classes in reading methods, reading in content areas, and serving special education students. Also, substitute teachers will have to pass a basic skills test for the first time, in order to renew their licenses. The summer issue of Catalyst In Depth tackled the topic of literacy in the middle grades and high school, when content-area reading becomes particularly critical.

BUDGET BATTLE: As principals got a better sense this week of their school's budget for the coming year, officials with the Chicago Teachers Union and privately run charter schools — which rarely agree on anything — both sounded an alarm over the effects of potential funding cuts. (Tribune)

CTU WARNING: As Chicago Public Schools principals sort out their new student-based budgets for the 2013-14 school year, the Chicago Teachers Union on Thursday reported deep cuts in the budgets of many schools.  (Sun-Times)

UNION PREDICTS CUTS: The Chicago Teachers Union charged Thursday that school budgets for the coming school year are down between 10 percent and 25 percent compared to this year, and that new positions provided as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s signature longer school day initiative will likely be the first to be cut. (Catalyst)

IN THE NATION
VIRTUAL SCHOOLING: The Philadelphia school system will open a new, full-time online school this coming fall, a program that the district promises will offer the academic flexibility and customized learning that many students and families demand. In creating its online program, Philadelphia joins a number of other big-city school districts that have founded virtual schools as a way to either add to the list of school choices available to parents or persuade families that have already chosen alternative online programs outside their systems to come back. (Education Week)

THE RETURN OF TRACKING: It was once common for elementary-school teachers to arrange their classrooms by ability, placing the highest-achieving students in one cluster, the lowest in another. But ability grouping and its close cousin, tracking, in which children take different classes based on their proficiency levels, fell out of favor in the late 1980s and the 1990s as critics charged that they perpetuated inequality by trapping poor and minority students in low-level groups. Now ability grouping has re-emerged in classrooms all over the country — a trend that has surprised education experts who believed the outcry had all but ended its use. (The New York Times)

During a recent visit, a parent educator had Smith carry out an activity with her son that involved putting items in a container, then having him pull them out and examine them. The goal: to promote learning by capitalizing on a young child’s natural inquisitiveness.

The parent educator also checked Jeremiah’s development and screened for hearing problems and other potential concerns. If red flags are raised, Smith will get a referral to an agency for help.

Smith’s deep involvement in the program led her to become a home visiting recruiter, through POWER-PAC, the acronym for Parents Organized to Win, Educate and Renew – Policy Action Council. POWER-PAC is sponsored by the nonprofit Community Organizing and Family Issues, known as COFI.

“I get to sign up other moms who may not be as attentive to children as I am, who may not have access to books, who may not have car seats,” says Smith, who lives in Englewood. “It makes them better parents as well.”

Smith has guided other parents through the program, like a mother whose 2-year-old rarely spoke. “By 2 years old, they should be saying full sentences,” Smith points out. “[The mother] had never done anything about it. When she was introduced to the home visiting program, they let her know that he should see a speech therapist.”  The boy’s vocabulary has since increased.

Another plus has been social support. “I get to bond with other moms and dads, and we get to share stories about our children,” Smith says. “I am more aware of what [my son] can do and how advanced he is, and also what to look for in the next few months.”

The goal of home visiting programs (some if which work with expectant mothers as well as new moms) is to ensure that the youngest children get on track for a healthy start in preschool and are eventually ready for kindergarten. Studies have found that home visiting programs can improve children’s odds of graduating from high school and not having to repeat a grade, as well as their health and social skills. Economics researcher and Nobel Prize winner James Heckman has found that birth-to-3 programs have even greater economic returns than preschool.

New federal grants for home visiting, authorized as part of health care reform legislation, began flowing to Illinois in 2011. In Chicago’s Englewood, West Englewood and Greater Grand Crossing neighborhoods, these dollars have increased both the reach and potential impact of home visiting initiatives by opening up more spots for families and amping up community outreach for screening and placement.  

Plus, through a new partnership called the South Side Early Learning Network, more inter-agency collaboration is starting to take place. The collaboration’s goal is provide help for home visiting families that, through screening, are identified as being at-risk for domestic violence, mental health problems and other issues.

Chicago is just one of six places in the state that are doing similar work. The others are Elgin, Rockford, Cicero, Macon County, and Vermilion County.

Statistics bear out the need for extra services. Screening tools have found that 16 percent of women who are screened for home visiting services may be victims of domestic violence, and 23 percent may be suffering from depression, according to data from a state presentation on the program that took place earlier this year.

The collaboration relies on coordinated intake, in which institutions in the same neighborhood now send families to a single agency--Children’s Home + Aid Society—for screening to determine if they qualify to participate and which agency is the best fit. Previously, agencies screened families themselves.

The federal grant funds will also pay for research on the effectiveness of home visiting, including a national overview; an evaluation of doulas, professionals who provide support with pregnancy issues and childbirth, then conduct home visits once a baby is born; and a study of the Fussy Baby Network, which provides support for parents whose infants won’t stop crying. The results will be presented to Congress sometime in 2015.

Expectations are high. Illinois has promised the federal government it will show progress in improving maternal and infant health; decreasing child abuse, child injury and emergency visit rates; and decreasing the incidence of domestic violence.

Building a network, overcoming barriers

The South Side Early Learning Network, convened by COFI, promotes the collaboration and help agencies work through any problems that arise.“Our role is to bring the various partners together and help them shape an agenda for how they want to move forward on early learning goals for the area,” says Tracy Crowder, senior organizer at COFI.

So far, the network has had four meetings and has drawn 80 different participants, including CPS, area preschools and schools, the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, and advocacy groups such as the Ounce of Prevention Fund and Illinois Action for Children.

Rosazlia Grillier says she thinks some of COFI’s work – including its report “Why Isn’t Johnny in Preschool?” – was a catalyst for the work now being done by the South Side Early Learning Network’s work. Grillier is a trainer and community organizer at COFI.

Among other findings, the report found that families weren’t participating in early childhood education because of a confusing system and “a lack of coordinated services.” The single referral system makes it easier for families. “You’re not telling 500 people your same story and still not getting the services you need,” Grillier says.

Despite the benefits, some parents are reluctant to participate in home visiting. Smith says they may fear that strangers coming into their home will be nosy.

“I tell parents, the program is not that personal.  They don’t come in looking in your house, looking through cabinets and things like that,” Smith says. Families might also think the home visitor won’t understand their concerns. “They think, ‘It’s just a job, so how could this person possibly know what I need?’ ” Smith adds.

Other hurdles exist, such as unpredictable work schedules, families who have lost their housing and need to move, or animosity from partners or roommates toward the home visitor.

To bring people in the door, POWER-PAC and other agencies have sent recruiters out to knock on doors in the neighborhood and give families information about the program, says Grillier. Screenings are also done at hospitals, food stamp application centers, or even at high schools to reach teen parents.

Workers also visit health clinics, homeless shelters, child care centers and preschool programs, all in an effort to talk to parents about what the program does. Even community organizations are referring families to the program.

“By all working together, we almost create a dragnet,” says Jan Stepto-Millett, vice president of early childhood services at Children’s Home + Aid Society of Illinois.

The ultimate goal is for word-of-mouth to become the major marketing tool, says Liz Heneks, vice president of programs for ChildServ.  “We are looking at how do we create avenues for clients to bring in their friends and talk about the program?”

Through the collaboration, agencies also can refer clients to each other’s programs. For instance, Children’s Home + Aid Society’s fatherhood program now includes fathers whose children are in other agencies’ home visiting programs.

“I think it allows us to provide more useful salient services to the families, and provide it in a way that encourages us to partner rather than compete,” Stepto-Millett says. “In this age where there are all kinds of fiscal pressures, it is really important to be careful about getting everything we can out of each dollar. By doing this, we reduce duplicative services.”

Stepto-Millett says the extra outreach means families are coming in that “weren’t even on the radar” before.

Coketha Hendricks of Henry Booth House says the connections among agencies have strengthened services, and that she is now able to access resources that “you wouldn’t have even thought about a 0-to-3 program connecting with.”

“I have got contacts with people in the schools, programs that deal with ex-offenders, DCFS-involved families,” she says.

 “The reason he’s giving you is that the library is too small. How can you prove that? What is some fact about the library that will show it’s too small?” she prompts the class.

 “Some people think it’s too small,” one boy says.

But this is not the answer Butler-Wilson is looking for. She pushes the students to give facts to prove their point.  A girl suggests one, saying, “More people keep coming in [the library] and there’s not enough room.”

Learning how to construct written arguments, the goal of this lesson, is an important element of the new Common Core State Standards, set to begin phasing in next year. Last year, Dumas was one of 35 schools that became “early adopters” of the standards and were given money to pay for substitutes while teachers worked on model lesson plans aligned to the standards. The lesson plans became the basis for curriculum guides.

(Dumas and two other early adopter schools, Canter and Armstrong, are closing. The Dumas building in Woodlawn will stay open as children from nearby Wadsworth transfer over and the school is renamed Wadsworth.)

As CPS begins to phase in the standards, one group of teachers will have a particularly tough task. Teachers of young children will have to expose students to high-level ideas without relying on strategies that are not geared toward young children; for example, too much desk work that could easily frustrate them and, in turn, make learning more difficult.

In fact, many early childhood teachers have long resisted efforts to impose academic expectations on young children. The Common Core standards have re-ignited the debate, and the fear that tasks meant for older students will be “pushed down” to younger children.

But educators say that, with careful work, teachers can learn to adapt. At Dumas and other early adopter schools, preschool and primary teachers are striking a delicate balance, slowly incorporating lessons that teach Common Core concepts and skills to young children at a level and pace that are developmentally appropriate.

Principals also say young students can handle the Common Core, if teachers give them the right support.

When very young students respond to a topic by talking about their likes and dislikes, Dumas Principal Macquline King says, teachers refer them back to the text they have read. “We understand what you like, but what does it say in the text?” she explains.

Nancy Hanks, the principal at Melody Elementary, says that a lesson in which students look for details in a text can be made accessible to those who don’t write yet: Some students may write the details, some may draw them, and others may dictate them to the teacher, she explained at a Chicago Principals and Administrators Association panel.

“In raising the bar, [students] jump right up to it,” Hanks believes.

Hanks once saw students drawing pictures of dolphins after reading a book about dolphins, but realized that the pictures didn’t have specific details in them. So she told them to re-do the pictures. Some of the details the new pictures showed included dolphins’ spouts and dolphins coming up for air.

Rhonda Atkins, a preschool teacher at Dumas, says that meeting with kindergarten teachers and learning about the standards helped her align lessons with the expectations her students will face when they leave preschool.

Teaching students about counting money entailed getting a book about money that was appropriate for preschoolers, Atkins explains. “You talk about something preschoolers understand--has anybody ever gotten money for [their] birthday or for Christmas? Did you get coins? Did you get dollars?”

She also asked parents to count loose change with their children to reinforce the concept at home.

Other concepts Atkins introduces include shapes, ordinal numbers (first, second, third and so on) and writing.

“Children have been working on how to write sentences. My very high-level students are able to write paragraphs,” she says. “There’s only a few, but you try to push them further.”

Breaking down complex texts

Cardenas Elementary Principal Jeremy Feiwell says that having students read more complex material has paid off with higher test scores on the NWEA MAP assessment, which measures the ability to understand complex texts and is given to children as young as 3^rd grade. The ability has “skyrocketed” among Cardenas students, Feiwell says.

Referring to evidence from the text is an important part of the Common Core, and Feiwell says even children as young as 1^st grade can do it. Proof hangs on the wall of Maricela Aguirre’s 1^st-grade classroom, where a collection of student work shows answers to questions about a story featuring animals, with evidence to back up students’ thoughts. “How did the pig outsmart the wolf? How do you know?” reads one prompt.

In a pre-K classroom, teacher Maria Morin reads the story “Thinking One Can,” an earlier version of the story that became the classic children’s book “The Little Engine That Could.”

But this story is read aloud from a teacher’s guide, with only one picture.  Morin tells her students it will be more challenging to listen to the story without looking at pictures to tell what is going on.

At the end, Morin asks students what lesson the story is trying to teach. After some discussion, she re-reads the sentence where the story sums up its moral.

Feiwell explains that Morin’s teaching shows two shifts spurred by the Common Core. First, Morin is showing students how to summarize main ideas using evidence from the text. Second, by exposing children to a story without pictures, she is helping them get ready to understand higher-level books down the road.

In Elizabeth Rickey’s 3^rd grade class, students work through a play about the Greek mythological character Medusa, who was transformed into a monster when a goddess turned her hair into snakes.

“We were doing a shared reading of a play about Medusa, and we were looking at it through her perspective,” Rickey explains. She asked students taking on Medusa’s role to answer questions like “What do you think about the way Athena treated you?” and “Why do you think she changed your hair into snakes?”

“It’s a really challenging thing to put themselves in the character’s shoes,” Rickey says.  At the same time, they are talking about how to differentiate their own point of view from that of the author.

From basic arithmetic to understanding concepts

In 2^nd-grade teacher Eva Verta’s room at Columbia Explorers Elementary, students practice counting, using math worksheets with pictures of manipulatives.

“Remember, I should be able to follow how you’re counting by checking your labels,” Verta reminds the students. She speaks directly to one boy: “You know what, Emilio? I cannot read your mind when I look at these labels. I can’t see how you counted. I look at yours and I say, ‘Hmm, how did you get 501?’”

With the Common Core, math must go beyond just getting the right answer. Students must be able to explain their thinking and demonstrate understanding—in this case, by labeling each item in the drawings.

Columbia Explorers is not an early adopter school, but has been incorporating the English standards for a couple years. This year, the school began to implement the math standards.

Principal Jose Barrera says that based on the school’s experience, redesigning lessons will be hard work.

“Nothing’s going to happen with CPS giving you this magic kit,” he says. “You have to take ownership, 1,000 percent.”

In 3^rd-grade teacher Jennifer Ford’s room, some students practice multiplication tables on worksheets. Other children, working in groups, say them out loud using flashcards.

Before long, Ford gathers the whole class in a circle. Picking one number at a time, she has students surround her for an exercise. The first number she gives out is five.

One by one, each student in the circle reels off a math fact of his or her choosing that involves five:

“Five times one is five.”

“Six times five is 30.”

“You got it,” Ford says.

“Five times six is 30.”

“Five times ten is 50.”

Curriculum coordinator Beth West explains that one Common Core goal is to make sure students master skills “fluently” so they can use them with ease. In the earlier grades, this includes a sizable dose of mental math.

Terry Carter, who is leading Common Core implementation at the Academy for Urban School Leadership, says schools run by AUSL are focusing mostly on math in grades pre-K to 3. AUSL manages 25 schools and is slated to take on six more with this year’s school actions.

The schools are working with the Erikson Institute’s Early Mathematics Education Project on ways to make math concepts accessible and appropriate for youngsters.

As part of the Common Core, Carter says, students must be able to explain and demonstrate their thinking using manipulatives and visual models.

Children should also learn to persevere in solving tough math problems.

“The Common Core likes to see the endurance and stamina of children to be inquiry-based. Children are allowed to struggle with a problem rather than being told or funneled [to an answer with] teachers breaking down every step,” Carter says.

To learn how to make those changes, AUSL teachers are working in groups to practice lessons.

One teacher teaches a lesson in another teacher’s classroom while colleagues observe. Then, they analyze what went well and what went poorly, and teach a revised version of the lesson to a different class.

Not necessarily a disconnect

Sandra Alberti, director of state and district partnerships and professional development for the nonprofit Student Achievement Partners, is hopeful about what the Common Core could mean for early childhood teachers.

“What the standards do is signal to early childhood educators and everyone in the system that… these are a list of things kids need time to develop, play with, and explore,” Alberti says.

In math, Alberti says, giving students more time with the material can slow down instruction and allow time for deeper conceptual understanding.

Currently, most math teachers teach strategies and tricks students can use to get the right answer.  “That’s not math,” she says.  Some curricula focus on concepts but fall short at having students actually practice enough problems. But, Alberti says, “We shouldn’t make a choice between having kids get the answer right and having them explain their thinking.” 

With reading, she says, the most important piece of the standards is to challenge students to engage with material above their level because that’s how they will grow as readers.

“It’s very hard for (students) to catch up to grade-level peers when everything we give them has been scaffolded,” Alberti says. “If they’re not given a more complex text, they’re not going to develop a more complex understanding.”

At Dumas, Butler-Wilson says that the Common Core can be a good fit for early childhood because the standards ask students to use their imagination and ideas. 

Students can master the standards, she believes, “but it requires everyone to change the way they think about teaching and learning. It requires the teacher to be more of a facilitator in the classroom as opposed to being at the front [teaching] one lesson the same way to all the students. The standards can’t be reached that way.”

Butler-Wilson recalls a math lesson that required students to do a scavenger hunt for items of a certain length –a foot, an inch or a yard – and made posters of the results. The goal was to help strengthen their understanding of the concept.

“When they would think about an inch, they would think about the things they discovered in the classroom,” she says.

Elizabeth Najera, principal of Velma Thomas Early Childhood Center, also doesn’t necessarily see a mismatch between Common Core expectations and what students should be learning in preschool.

A team of teacher leaders in the school has identified what they want children to know in order to be ready for kindergarten. One thing that’s key, she says, is making sure teachers intentionally design instruction to build on children’s knowledge.

Teachers at Velma Thomas try to use open-ended questions to develop higher-level thinking skills, even in very young students, and Najera sees that as a good fit. 

“Some of the things that are in the Common Core, I think they are not too different from what we are doing already,” she says.  But a lot will depend on how the district changes its expectations for preschool teachers, she adds. “I guess we kind of have to wait on that.”

Early Childhood Resource Page: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/early-childhood

Common Core Resource Page: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/common-core

They’re already eliminating one test that kindergarten and 1^st-grade students would have taken this spring, and another for preschoolers. Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett says the protests didn’t play a role in the district’s decision. Rather, she says, parents and teachers told her that the Northwest Evaluation Association’s “MAP for Primary Grades” test just didn’t provide useful feedback on instruction.

“I had been concerned and really wanted to take a deep look at how our district uses assessments – whether we are using assessment as a tool for instruction… or are we just testing because somebody said we should?” Byrd-Bennett said.

She added that tests can be “counter-productive if we are not using assessments in the way we think we should be” and that teachers in kindergarten and 1^st grade just don’t have time to use the tests to inform instruction.

However, those young students may still have more tests to take by the end of the year, because many network chiefs have principals use additional tests beyond those required district-wide. Byrd-Bennett is leaving open the possibility that some of those could be scaled back as well.

She says she has convened a meeting with chiefs of schools to let them know that she “probably will not” approve such tests unless chiefs can demonstrate they are effective at improving instruction, and that the appropriate training is in place for teachers.

The district’s Kindergarten Readiness Tool, given to preschoolers, will also be discontinued this year. 

Preschool teachers have complained in recent years about an increase in assessments, including the Kindergarten Readiness Tool and an observation done several times a year, called Teaching Strategies Gold.

3rd-grade test for 2nd-graders

Also, 2^nd-grade students will be faced with a harder test than before. Instead of the MAP for Primary Grades, they will instead take the same MAP test as 3^rd- through 8^th-grade students as they finish the year.  Byrd-Bennett says that’s to give 3^rd-grade teachers better data about their incoming students.

The information from the primary-grades test “was not as valuable because it’s a different type of test. It’s a test that has a lot of supports. Our 3^rd-grade teachers called it the ‘baby version’ of the MAP test,” explained Didi Swartz, the district’s Director of Assessments. The primary version has more pictures and audio to help students through questions. But, Swartz explained, “third grade is kind of a different beast.”

To take the MAP, students answer questions on a computer, typically for 45 to 60 minutes.  The computer gives them easier or harder questions depending on how well they’re doing, zeroing in on a child’s level.

This story has been updated to include information about the Kindergarten Readiness Tool.

The ruling in March came as the result of a complaint filed by the non-profit Health & Disability Advocates. Early Intervention programs provide services for developmentally disabled children from birth to age 3, when they are legally guaranteed transition into preschool special education.

The district has long suffered from a shortage of staff to evaluate preschool children for special services, and children in Early Intervention programs have also been affected. 

The complaint said that families have found delays at every step in moving into preschool, including meetings CPS is supposed to set up with parents and evaluations the district is supposed to schedule. The state agreed, finding that there are “district delays of a systemic nature in developing Individualized Education Plans for children referred from Early Intervention services.”

As a result, the state has ordered CPS to provide information on the status of each child who was supposed to transition from Early Intervention into preschool special education since Jan. 7, 2012.

The district was supposed to turn in that information by last Friday. It also must detail its plans for hiring more professionals to more quickly evaluate preschool students for special needs, and must prove that it is communicating with Early Intervention service providers.

Five children named in the complaint (representing more than 2,000 who were potentially affected by the delays) have also been awarded catch-up services to compensate for months of delays in services.

Amy Zimmerman, director of the Chicago Medical Legal Partnership for Children at Health & Disability Advocates, says her organization knows CPS is working on fixing the problems.

“We’ve been meeting with them and we are cautiously optimistic. But it’s a big system and I think [the Early Intervention issue] probably needs more time and attention than the resources they are currently giving to it,” Zimmerman says.

CPS would not offer details on its plans to make sure the transition process is brought into compliance.

Markay Winston, chief officer of diverse learner supports, said in a statement that "CPS is committed to providing the supports and services necessary to ensure our youngest students transition from early intervention into preschool programs that meet their needs in a timely manner."

Several center directors contacted by Catalyst Chicago say they have not yet received information about helping students transition to new programs. It’s unclear what, if anything, the district will do. One center director whose agency serves dozens of special-needs students said she got a clear message from a meeting with CPS this week: “I have to do my own plans.”

The deadline for applying to early childhood programs in CPS schools is less than a month away, and a number of agencies contacted by Catalyst Chicago on Tuesday said they had not been notified of the competition’s results.

The agencies are losing funding as part of CPS and the city’s “Ready to Learn” preschool funding competition.

In all, 41 agencies that were previously in part of CPS' Community Partnership Program will no longer be funded by the district. Of those, 17 will still receive some preschool funding through the city, but many will see a net loss of seats. Another 13 agencies did not apply for funding, and 11 agencies applied but did not receive any funds. 

Here’s a map of agencies and schools that lost or gained funding.

The city says it is using $10 million of new funding to offer 2,300 additional preschool seats, but no specifics have been released yet about where those seats will be.

Excluding children, paring services

Some of the families in the affected agencies pay “co-payments” for the program, with the rest of the cost subsidized through state Child Care Assistance Program dollars as well as CPS funds. But where families are not eligible for the assistance – for instance, if a parent is not working or in school during the time the program is operating – the agency relies on CPS for its funding.

With their CPS funding gone, agencies may have to exclude children who are not eligible for child care assistance, and pare down services to keep the classes running with funding that has been cut by more than half. 

Sharon Berkley, site administrator at Children’s Garden Child Development Center, says that most of the 20 preschool children in her program this year wouldn’t have been able to attend without CPS dollars. “We have lost a lot of jobs in this community, and many of our parents we serve don’t work,” she says. Without jobs, parents are only eligible for child care assistance on an intermittent basis, when they are attending class for GEDs or participating in job training.

Berkley says she will have to replace her current teachers with staff who have associate’s degrees or less. “That compromises the quality of the program,” she says.

Cachet Cook, director of First Start Child Care Academy, says her agency – which serves 38 children ages birth to 5 with CPS money – is in a similar position. Paperwork delays can leave families waiting for months to be approved for child care assistance, which pays for just half the children in her program.

The children whose seats are paid for by CPS will probably lose their spots. But for those whose seats are paid for by the state, a change in teachers could be coming.

“With the CPS program, we are required to have a Type 04 [certified] teacher. There is no way we can afford him without the funding from the city,” she says. She expects the infant-toddler teacher will also be laid off or have to take a pay cut.

Special needs students in limbo?

Other preschool programs are concerned about placement for special education students, as well as for those who are on the waiting list for special services because of the backlog of children in preschool who need to be evaluated. 

Brenda Owens, director of Kenyatta’s Day Care Center, says she has not heard anything about transition plans for three special education students who receive services from CPS, three students who are waiting to be evaluated, and an additional 14 students whose slots are paid for by CPS.

Michelle Redd, owner of Building Blocks Learning Academy in Englewood, says she hasn’t heard about transition plans for her students either. Thirteen of the 60 preschoolers enrolled at her agency are entitled to receive special services.

Though Building Blocks lost its funding, the city announced plans to open a 370-seat birth-to-5 center in Englewood, saying there are no providers who met quality standards.

Redd is puzzled by this, noting that children in her program have earned high scores on the district’s kindergarten readiness assessment. Magnet schools and other local elementary schools, Redd says, recruit students and parents from the preschool in hopes of finding high achievers.

A Community Partnership Program staff member told Redd that they were “baffled” as to why she failed to make the cut. Redd plans to take her case to local aldermen and the mayor’s staff.

If Building Blocks’ funding isn’t restored, she says, she will likely have to lay off certified teachers and replace them with teachers who have taken just a few college credits of early childhood development courses.

Looking to donations to fill gaps

At Ezzard Charles School Day Care Center, which has two locations in Auburn Gresham that serves 44 children from infants to age 3 and 40 preschool students, director Eldora Davis says she was “devastated” at losing funding. The school currently has about 25 students on the waiting list.

State child care funds help support seats for 80 percent of her students, but Davis says that the CPS dollars she is losing “make up for almost half of my budget. I’d like to know, if we didn’t receive it -- who did?”

The school has the second-highest possible rating in the state’s four-tiered Quality Rating System, and is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “We have always maintained compliance with what they asked us to do,” Davis says.

Staff members have gone back to school to meet CPS requirements, she adds. All of the school’s preschool teachers are state certified, and last spring, six staff received associate’s degrees and two received bachelor’s degrees.

Davis is hoping that donors can help her fill in the missing money until she can reapply for city funding down the road.

Pastor Bruce Ray, executive director of Lutheran Day Nursery on the Northwest Side, says his agency will seek donations to support scholarships for the five 3-year-olds who are in CPS-funded slots.

The agency did not reapply to be part of Ready to Learn, Ray says.

“Over the years we have become more concerned with how academic [the CPS program] has become,” he says. “The expectations in terms of reading readiness [and] kindergarten readiness were not really following developmental guidelines. We feel that especially in the areas of reading readiness, [CPS assessments] were expecting boys in particular to do much more than what they were developmentally ready to do.”

This story has been updated with additional information about the number of programs that did not apply for preschool funds, as well as the number of programs that lost CPS funding but are still receiving city dollars.

Less than a handful of schools lost their programs. Where schools with preschool programs are closing due to this year's school actions, their respective welcoming schools will all have preschool programs. Mays, Cullen, Burnham, Wells, Mollison, and Gompers elementaries will all be getting new preschool programs.

Most of the community agencies that are were not funded in the contest, roughly 25, are on the city’s South Side. About five are on the West Side, and just ten are on the North Side.

As part of the grant competition, all schools and community agencies that had been offering preschool had to reapply for their funding. They were judged on neighborhood need as well as factors like communicating with parents and reaching out to the neediest children. 

In the application, schools also were asked to provide evidence of their quality from teacher observations and assessments like Teaching Strategies GOLD and the Kindergarten Readiness Tool.

In one area, Englewood, the city is stepping in because it says there weren’t enough qualified providers who applied for the program. The city plans to open a birth-to-5 early learning center to serve 370 children in Englewood, because of a lack of quality applications to meet need in the area. Altogether, the city says it is spending $10 million more this year to provide 2,300 more preschool seats.

It is unclear how many children currently attend the programs that are losing their funding. Also, CPS did not provide information on how many seats each of the programs funded for next year would have, or on where the new community-based preschool programs would be located.

CPS also announced it will begin charging some families for preschool programs in CPS schools. The 97 percent of preschool students who qualify for free or reduced price school lunches will be able to attend for free, but others will be required to pay between $160 and $4,250 a year depending on income.

All families must now submit proof of income when applying for preschool, under a new application process with a deadline of May 3. Low-income families will get the first shot at available slots.

List updated April 8. Tuition-based preschools will not be affected, and CPS officials were still trying to confirm the fate of preschools at Montessori schools and special education schools.

New programs in elementary schools, other than welcoming schools

Dubois Elementary

Frazier Prospective IB

Faraday Elementary

Green Elementary

Neil Elementary

Orozco Elementary

Tonti Elementary

White Elementary

New programs in community agencies

Archer Ave. Learning Station, Inc.

Chance after Chance

Chicago Lighthouse for People who are Blind or Visually Impaired

Developmental Institute

Home of Life Community Development Corporation

Little Achievers Learning Center

Montessori School of Englewood

One Hope United – Northern Region

Community agencies previously in CPS Community Partnership Program that will not receive funding

Abraham Lincoln Centre

A-Karrasel Child Care Centers

Black Rhino, Inc. / Building Blocks Learning Academy

Bunnyland Developmental Childcare Association

Caring Hands A Step Ahead Learning Center

Chesterfield Tom Thumb Day Care Center

Children’s Development Corporation

Children’s Garden Child Development Center

Children’s House – Lake Meadows

Chipper Preschool and Kindergarten

Creative Mansion Children’s Academy

Ezzard Charles School Day Care Center

First Start Child Care Academy

Fresh Start Daycare

Happy Kids Learning Center

Institute for Positive Education (New Concept)

JFH Educational Academy / Jolly Fun House Playschools

Jones Academy

Keeper’s Institute Infant / Child Care

Kenyatta’s Day Care Center

Kids Place II

Kidwatch Plus

Kimball Day Care Center

Kove Learning Academy

Lava Inc / Chatterbox Preschool

Lee’s Cuddles N Care

Les Finch’s Learning Tree

Little Giant Child Care Center

Little Hands Child Creative Center

Little Leaders of Tomorrow

Little People Day Care and Kindergarten

Loren Children’s Learning Center

Love Learning Center / Day Care

Lutheran Day Nursery

North Kenwood Day Care Center

Pinks Child Care Academy

Precious Little Ones Learning Center

Ravenswood Community Daycare

Small Stride Academy

South Harper Montessori School

Tigloth

Tiny Tot Villa 

The previous preschool application instructions (last updated in November) do not note any such deadline; the deadlines varied from school to school.

Families will be able to apply online; in person at 13 sites around the city during business hours and at three sites on Saturday mornings; or at their local schools, but only during designated sessions where representatives from the program will be present.

The application form asks families to list their top three school choices, and for proof of family income and government benefits (a common eligibility measure for early childhood programs).

Before, parents filled out a less-detailed application – with questions only about students’ language, a family’s income range, and whether a student was homeless – and gave them to individual schools. With the new applications, CPS could potentially prioritize families system-wide based on need.

It was not immediately clear whether parents will be able to get spots in pre-K programs after the May 3 deadline. Families who apply by May 3 will receive offer letters by early June, and will be asked to register at their schools in person by June 17, according to the application booklet.

For years, early childhood advocates have criticized the maze of applications families must navigate to enroll in preschool.

Yet one principal contacted by Catalyst, who asked that her name not be used, says she is concerned the new application process will make it harder for schools to form a relationship with parents from the time that parents start looking into programs.

It might be hard on parents, she says, to go to a school but then discover they have to go somewhere else to register.

“It is probably in the long run easier to have a more centralized process, but in the short term (for) parents who have done this before and applied at the schools, it will be a change,” says another principal, Tatia Beckwith of Ray Elementary.

Separate systems for CPS, city

And even with CPS’ registration new process, it appears there will still be at least two separate application processes: one for CPS schools, and another for city-funded programs.

Gloria Harris, co-vice chair of the parent organization POWER-PAC, says that “we were in on some of the conversations” about the application process, “but we are still confused about it.”

“POWER-PAC parents have been advocating for a coordinated application process for early childhood programs for years,” Harris says. “(But) we are concerned that the sites are primarily focused on the CPS application process and would not be that helpful for parents who are trying to navigate all the different CPS and (city-funded) center-based programs. What we would recommend is that a (city) representative also be available at each of those sites.”

Harris adds that she is concerned many families will slip through the cracks because of the early-May deadline.

“We know from experience, from door-knocking in the summer, that in many cases families are not focused on enrolling their 3- and 4-year-olds until school starts,” she says. “We encourage a plan to reopen application sites either late in the summer or at the beginning of the school year to take another round of applications.”

She is also worried parents may not want to provide detailed information and proof of income for the application.

“It is just a short period of time. April 3 is today, so now they have less than a month,” Harris says. “I’m hoping it works and doesn’t confuse people.”

Matt Smith, a spokesman for the city, notes that the Department of Family and Support Services launched an online portal last November to streamline information about various preschool programs. But enrollment is still done program by program.

Giving priority to neediest communities

The move comes as program providers and advocates are anxiously awaiting word on who will keep preschool programs, given a new selection process, known as Ready to Learn, that aims to give more spots to high-quality programs and those that operate in the neediest areas of the city.

Final decisions were originally expected in February or March, but have been put on hold due to the school closings process.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Beckwith had not heard whether her school was one of those picked to offer a program. She says she has no idea if the school’s application will be successful.

The preschool program serves many children of University of Chicago graduate students. Many of the children, Beckwith points out, come from low-income families and do not speak English as their first language.

The plan has come in for criticism from some who fear it could make programs close and put teachers’ jobs at risk.

Brynn Seibert of SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana, a union that represents some preschool and child care staff, says the process has lacked community input.

“There’s no evidence that competition leads to higher-quality programs or better outcomes for young children. Some communities may lose Head Start and preschool slots, which will only further destabilize low-income communities,” Seibert said in a statement.

The Latino Policy Forum is also keeping an eye on the potential shift in early childhood seats. Education Director Cristina Pacione-Zayas says she’s been working to get Chief Early Childhood Officer Beth Mascitti-Miller “up to speed” on demographic trends in the district.

“Our concern is trying to make sure the resources align with the demographic shifts,” Pacione-Zayas says. “Latinos are only enrolled [in preschool] one-third of the time,” largely because of a lack of access to programs in Latino neighborhoods.

Tom Layman, vice president of program development at the child care advocacy organization Illinois Action for Children, says he hopes the new process will make the funding process more transparent.

He says there isn’t much new about the concept that early childhood programs should go to where the need is.  “I don’t think it should have been news to agencies but it was of course a new step” to say their funding would depend on it, Layman says.

“The city contracted with Chapin Hall to develop a ‘heat map,’ a map of communities that had large numbers of families in poverty and with other risk factors for children,"  Layman says. “At this point we believe the city went in the right direction, and we believe everything is in place for them to make their decisions."

New providers are also hoping they get funds.

Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, says that “a small handful” of charter schools applied to be part of the district’s new pool of early education providers.

Before the Ready to Learn process, Broy says, charters were often frustrated by the red tape required to offer programs.

This article has been updated to reflect Tom Layman's correct title and to include additional information on the preschool application process.

With the program set to expand to three more schools with funding from Target, classrooms were on display. One visitor, Stephen Zrike Jr., chief of schools for the Pilsen-Little Village Elementary Network, noted the impact of the initiative. He called the amount of reading and writing being done by Cardenas students “unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” The Children’s Literacy Initiative, supported by research showing that teacher coaching and collaboration can improve instruction, aims to expose teachers to best practices in early literacy and build a community of teachers who are working to strengthen their teaching. The goal: to help young children learn to read during their earliest years in school--a key time for building literacy, especially if children come from low-income homes (as do 87 percent of CPS students).  Poor readers from poor families face among the worst educational outcomes, and high-quality literacy instruction is also important to build on the gains children make in preschool and ensure that they don’t “fade out.”

CLI’s promising results in Philadelphia, where participating schools made greater gains than other schools, helped it win a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation “validation” grant. It

The federal funding will end in 2014-15, but CLI has a plan for sustaining its presence in Philadelphia with a $1 million grant there, and is eyeing Chicago for a similar expansion as soon as fall 2013. The program has applied for another grant from Target Corp. in hopes of making it happen.

CLI hopes to reach five more schools with its “model classroom” program in the next two years. Under its long-term expansion plan, instead of just model classrooms, entire schools will become “model schools” that disseminate literacy best practices among others in the area, serving as “hubs of knowledge.” Teachers and principals from model schools will mentor those from nearby schools – in some cases, even including charter schools and private schools.

A lesser amount of training and coaching would be offered to surrounding schools, with the model school serving as a lab to help teachers learn.

But Jen Weikert, CLI’s director of external relations, says that “a key part of this growth plan is getting the district to buy in.”

Once CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett gets past the current school closings issue and takes a closer look at curriculum and instruction, Weikert says CLI hopes that early learning and early literacy become a priority and the Byrd-Bennett commits to working with the program over the long term.

“We don’t want to be in a position where year to year, we are working with the district,” she says. “We want to be in a position where we are partners working toward shared goals.”

A key goal of CLI’s expansion is to train a larger number of teachers in key skills for teaching reading by getting different organizations that work on early literacy, including teacher training programs, to focus on the same key skills.

“We need more general practitioners who are well versed in early literacy,” says Weikert.

In a pilot program, the organization offered training in teaching phonics and phonemic awareness to 50 student teachers in Philadelphia, plus instruction on how to keep “running records,” a snapshot of a student’s reading ability at a specific point in time.

Growth and challenges

With the help of the Target Corp. grant, eight CPS elementary schools participating in the federally funded project were joined in spring 2012 by three more schools – Manierre, Brenneman, and Armour.  In fall 2012, two more schools, Manuel Perez Elementary and John Walsh Elementary, joined with funding from the Chicago Tribune Charities and others.

The Target-funded schools made progress: 66 percent of 3^rd-grade students at the Target-funded schools met state standards on the ISAT reading assessment, compared to 57 percent of students in a comparison group of schools.

But before winter, staff had to navigate a change in CPS leadership--and the challenges of implementing a large-scale program in an unstable environment began to surface.

Some schools suffered from high turnover among teachers and other staff. Manierre and Brennemann landed on the list of schools that CPS could potentially close.

At Manierre Elementary, the principal left and a number of teachers did, as well. At Brennemann, between 55 and 75 students left because the school switched to a year-round, Track E calendar and the model classroom teacher left – forcing the program to start over with another one. [Even so, Brennemann posted an increase in scores.] Another model teacher had to change grades.

 “We can bring teachers that have changed roles up to par with their peers,” Weikert notes. Principals also receive coaching, which can help bring a new principal up to speed.

What about teachers who leave a school? “Wherever those teachers land, the children are benefiting from the best practices they have gained with CLI,” Weikert asserts.

Adding resources, focusing on instruction

In teacher Margaret McIlvain’s room at Manierre, newly outfitted with a rug for literacy instruction and extra books so that children can decide what to read, coach Vanessa Villanueva leads a Message Time Plus lesson, where students work together to dissect a “message” written on the board from the teacher or from a reading.

Villanueva later explains that in McIlvain’s room, the furniture will soon change to feature tables with book bags on the back, rather than desks. “It’s more about having the kids use their whole classroom, so they’re not confined to their desks,” she says. 

Weikert says it’s not just about having furniture that is more appropriate for young students, but about training teachers in how to use it.

“So much of the first dose of coaching has to do with classroom culture. It is the basics of how do you run your classroom – how do you get the most out of your students, and how they get the most out of you?” she says.

The program is also helping McIlvain and other teachers hone in on how to help students learn to sound out words in the context of sentences and books.  “Teachers in low-income schools need the skills to teach phonics – and they need to teach it faster and better than others, because their kids are coming in with such deficits,” Weikert says.

 “I realized there are some words in this book that are difficult for a 3^rd-grader,” McIlvain says. She has students clap and chant the spelling of the words “them,” “their” and “would.”

“Today we are going to talk about how to stretch out a word and write it,” the coach says.

“To show your d…”

“Dog,” a student says.

“That’s good, I hear predicting!” she says

As she writes the words, she starts by saying sounds and lets the children prompt which letter she should write.

“B-oh-sss-sss,” she says as students guess the letters. When a girl shouts out a second “s,” the coach asks her why. She points out that it’s at the end of a word and has an “sss” sound.

“That’s a rule you have learned over the years,” the coach explains.

When she is done, the class reads the message together: “To show your dog who’s boss, hold him by the muzzle. Dogs need a serene environment, so pet him so he can feel relaxed.”

“I want you to put your thumb up every time we come to a word we stretched out or spelled together,” Villanueva says.

When the group has finished reading, she asks for student volunteers. “Point to a word that you know, that you could maybe teach kids something about,” she says. Daquera picks “relaxed.”

“What’s the first sound in ‘relaxed’?” she asks. “R”, Daquera says, naming the letter, but the coach prompts her to give the sound--“rrrr.”

Next, she quizzes the girl on whether “relaxed” is something that is happening now or that already happened. And she asks the class to think of other things that they did in the past, pointing out that the ending “-ed” usually means something already took place.

Another student chooses to help teach the class about the word “serene.” Coach Villanueva says that because of the long “e” in the middle of the word, there needs to be a silent “e” on the end.

As each student gets up in front of the group, they are praised with a cheer for how well they are doing.

After more lessons in spelling patterns and sounds, the coach guides the class through the steps on a poster titled “How to Spell a New Word.”

She points out they can stretch it out to hear each sound, write each sound, check if it looks right, compare the sounds in the word to a word they already know, and look around the room at the word walls for help.

Villanueva explains that guessing the spelling will help their teacher understand their writing better, and that it’s fine to try and spell a word themselves instead of asking the teacher how to do it.

At the end of the lesson, Villanueva explains that she is also helping McIlvain learn how to create a classroom with more positive behavior expectations, where students collaborate and support each other.

In a post-conference, she asks McIlvain if she thinks students feel confident with the material. “They do,” McIlvain says, but notes that attention is still a problem. She suggests putting students who are not focused on the lesson in the front.

Next, Villanueva points out that when she spelled the word “enough” as “enuf,” students were upset because they knew it was wrong – allowing them to make the connection that the letters “gh” can make the same “fff” sound as “F.”

The other 3^rd -grade teacher in the school, Jemil Haywood, also received coaching through CLI – 30 hours, versus McIlvain’s 75. (Haywood has since moved to teaching 2^nd grade).

On another day, McIlvain wraps up an Intentional Read Aloud – story time, but carefully planned so that it expands students’ understanding of literature – by having students compare and contrast the book “The Rough-Faced Girl” with a more traditional version of the Cinderella story.

Finishing up a third year

At the end of this school year, CLI will have given coaching, training and resources to kindergarten through 3^rd grade teachers at all eight Investing in Innovation-funded schools, Weikert says.   “Through Investing in Innovation, we will be able to have the research and gold seal of approval behind us. This is just the beginning of what we are going to be able to do in Chicago.”

The Investing in Innovation program began by working with 3^rd-grade teachers, then added kindergarten and 1^st-grade teachers in the second year, followed by 2^nd-grade teachers. Each teacher will receive three years of coaching. After that, hands-on coaching will end and the project will aim to build on teachers’ sense of self-sufficiency through “model classroom meetings” with other teachers in the program.

During one such meeting in fall 2012, seven teachers from the Target-funded group of schools – who are still receiving coaching – gathered at Children’s Literacy Initiative offices downtown.

“With the Chicago Board of Education, money is limited, and principals aren’t always given the amount of money needed to supply each classroom,” says Sylva Spraggins, a 3^rd-grade teacher at Armour Elementary. “To have the complexity [of books] the Common Core State Standards is looking for is hard. The complexity of the texts is so much better than a lot of the programs that schools can get for cheap.”

All the teachers have copies of others’ read-aloud collections, so they can share books, Spraggins says.

Laura Carbajal, a kindergarten teacher at Armour, says that with the Intentional Read Aloud, “kids are more engaged in the reading. It’s more focused. It takes more planning.”

A few weeks later, in class, Carbajal and coach Sharon Lyons have the students sing a song about Message Time. “My message today is going to be from the book ‘The Grouchy Ladybug,’ ” Lyons says. “It’s going to be about the bug.”

The vocabulary words are “grouchy” and “aphids.” The sight words are “and,” “of,” “on” and “the.”

“Let me see a grouchy face,” Lyons says.

She introduces the topic by asking students what aphids are. “Who eats the aphids?” she asks next. Then she reviews the sight words students will see in the message.

As Lyons writes the message out, students predict what she is trying to say. “The grouchy ladybug sat on to…” she writes. The students chime in, saying “the.”

“Can I write ‘the’ with ‘t-o?’ ” she asks. The students realize they are mistaken about what she is going to write, and follow along as she finishes: “The grouchy ladybug sat on top of the leaf and it ate aphids.”

 “This is the time in the message that three students come up,” Lyons says. One girl chooses to focus on the word “the.” They “dribble and shoot” the letters in the word to review its spelling.

Then comes a more sophisticated lesson. Lyons draws a box around both instances of “the” in the sentence and asks if they look the same. The girl says no. Lyons points out it’s because the “T” in “the” at the beginning of the sentence is upper-case.

Carbajal says the preschool teacher at the school also uses Message Time Plus, and observes how she does it to learn from her.

“It’s like the ball keeps rolling – what she can do for my kindergartners, and what I can do for the 1^st graders?”

Among the findings:

-- Graduates are outscoring their classmates on the reading portion of the ISAT: 67 percent of Educare students now in elementary school passed the reading portion of the ISAT, compared to 57 percent of a comparison group of students in the same schools.

-- In both preschool and 3^rd grade, students scored higher than the national average on measures of social-emotional learning.

-- On a vocabulary test, students scored slightly lower than the national average but did just as well, compared to other students nationwide, as they had in preschool.

-- Fewer than half of the students who received special services at Educare still needed those services in elementary school.

A report on the study appears in the journal Early Education and Development.The findings were presented this week by Ounce of Prevention.

A hallmark of the Educare program is a focus on helping parents find the best elementary school for their children, as well as helping children make a successful transition into kindergarten.

Educare has begun to focus on sending children to better schools. The percentage of students attending neighborhood schools shrank from 66 percent in year 1 of the study to 38 percent in year 6 of the study, when 62 percent of students went to charter, contract or magnet schools.

 Portia Kennel, senior vice president of program innovation at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, says the experience of participating in Educare sets up families to continue building social relationships and accumulating “social capital” after they leave the program.

“We are creating a culture of parents who are armed out there to make sure their child gets the best education, and see themselves as responsible,” Kennel says.

The study also found, however, that some parents have struggled with schools that don’t value their input – and with helping students with homework once it gets more complicated.

Parents of Educare graduates, Kennel said, have now started an alumni network to continue the support they received in the program.

Principal Kenya Sadler proudly shows off this new feature of her school. Sadler raised private money to install it because she thought the specially designed environment would benefit the children in her schools’ two classes for children with autism.

Now, Sadler is desperately hoping that the room doesn’t wind up behind shuttered doors, unused. She’s also worried about the students in the autism program, not to mention the rest of her students, plus their parents, whom she fears will be left scrambling if Brown is closed. Brown’s building is 34 percent utilized and it is a Level 3 school, making it a prime candidate for closure.

Sadler’s concerns underscore one of the underlying factors in the hot-button issue of school closings. As enrollment dwindled at schools now considered underutilized, principals and central office administrators often took the opportunity to fill the empty rooms. Often, the empty space was transformed into classrooms for special education children—called cluster programs, since they drew children from a cluster of nearby schools—or into pre-kindergarten classrooms.

More on school closings

Schools still on the list after commission recommendations

Maps

Under-utilized schools continue to shed students

Most underutilized schools in black neighborhoods

History of school closings

Neighborhood high schools losing area students

Like the one at Brown for autistic students, special education cluster programs draw students with severe disabilities from all the other area schools.

More than half of all special education cluster programs are in underutilized schools, according to CPS data. Though CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has taken some of the underutilized schools off the table, a third of the schools still at risk of being shut down house special education cluster programs.

Advocates are worried that district officials are not taking a strategic look at special education. For one, they note that the utilization formula does not take into account the fact that separate, self-contained classrooms for special education students are legally mandated to have smaller class sizes. If the smaller classes were accounted for, some schools would not be considered underutilized.

In a letter to the School Utilization Commission, Rod Estvan of the group Access Living points out that if all schools on the list were shut down, CPS at a minimum would have to find space for 60 special education classes. Estvan calls that a daunting task.

Margie Wakelin, an attorney for Equip for Equality, says that a group of attorneys have raised the issue of what happens to students with disabilities in the midst of school closings. They fear that the closings will have a disproportionate impact on special education students.

When the district has shut down schools with cluster programs in the past, Wakelin says she has been contacted by parents who reported that their children didn’t get the needed special education services when they were transferred to new schools.

“To just say that the IEP (individual education plan) follows the child is not enough,” Wakelin says. Sometimes the receiving school doesn’t get a student’s complete file for months after the start of the school year.

Plus, it can be hard for children with emotional disabilities to transition to new schools, she says.

Preschools also an issue

Also, most of the schools still on the list—nearly 90 percent—currently house pre-kindergarten programs. At the same time city and CPS officials are making decisions about school closings, they also are in the process of re-distributing preschool slots, says Maria Whelan, president of Illinois Action for children. Early childhood officials are “well aware” of what is going on at CPS, she adds.

Brown Elementary, located on the Near West Side, also has a pre-kindergarten program. Though the rest of the grades might lack students, Sadler points out that the preschool has a waiting list.

The Near West Side has experienced an explosion in new residents, many of them families with young children. At Brown, neighborhood children come to the preschool, Sadler says, and it attracts a diverse group. But in kindergarten, the diversity disappears.

The neighborhood has a wealth of elementary school for these middle-class parents to choose from. Two new magnet schools opened over the past decade, and the Near West Side now has more specialty schools than any other community in the city.

Sadler says she has started a discussion with the preschool parents about what it would take to get them to stay.
“We are fighting against the grain,” she says.

Brown, however, is not alone in its dilemma. The principal of a half-empty school in Englewood says that whenever a child leaves his preschool, he can quickly fill the spot with another child from the waiting list. (The principal asked that his name not be used.) Englewood and other predominantly black communities have the most schools at risk of being shuttered.

This year, the principal says, he had to fill out a long application for the city’s new competitive process that will award preschool funding to schools and community organizations. It was an arduous task, one that he would rather have avoided if the school is going to be shut down anyway, he says.

If the school is closed or doesn’t receive preschool funds, he fears that neighborhood children won’t go to any preschool at all. Most of the children walk to the school with parents or older siblings.

“If it is too far, they will just leave the little ones at home,” he says.

Antoinette Thomas, who has taught in the preschool for nine years, says that providing the program to her students in the low-income neighborhood of Englewood is especially important. “If they take the preschool away, it will be a disservice to our community,” she says. “This is what levels the playing field.”

Inside the school, Thomas has a big classroom with a turtle and a hamster. Like most preschool classes, it is divided into different areas, such as the dramatic play area, the science area and the alphabet area.

Whelan says the city has devised an intricate process in which officials will look at small areas in a community and determine the demand for preschool. Funding will be awarded accordingly.

Because the school closing process and the preschool competitive process are happening simultaneously, Whelan is hopeful that children will not be left out.

“Right now, the early childhood program is extremely flexible,” she says.

Assets that parents want

Since special education and prekindergarten classes serve the most vulnerable students, advocates are especially worried about how they will fare under the closings process. But CPS data also shows that underutilized schools tend to have the assets that parents want.

According to CPS data, almost all elementary schools have libraries. The difference is that 90 percent of schools at capacity or overcrowded schools have a library and a librarian, but only 75 percent of underutilized schools have a librarian.

More than 80 percent of underutilized schools also have science labs and 96 percent have computer labs.
Sadler, like many principals, has used her classrooms to provide a slew of extras for her students—usually by relying on grants or outside partners to foot the bill.

Brown Elementary has a fitness center, paid for by the Chicago Bulls, whose parking lots are across the street from the school.  Sadler has arranged for a personal trainer from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition to work with the gym teacher on developing a program.

The school also has a STEM lab and a teacher to teach engineering, whose salary is paid for with a grant. 
One room is set aside for volunteers who come in on a daily basis to read with children who are struggling academically.  Sadler has recruited 75 volunteers.

Plus, Brown has a parent room, with a couch and computers donated by a partner. Parents can use the room to work on their resume, and some of the preschool parents come to hang out while their children are in the shorter program, which operates for 2-1/2 hours.

Yet Sadler doesn’t want the school to become a magnet or other specialty school. She wants it to remain a place where neighborhood students have the right to a seat.

“We have a lot of resources here and don’t want to be just another name on the list,” Sadler says.

In a recent review, Children’s Home and Aid Society of Illinois failed to meet new standards that took effect in 2012, officials at the U.S. Department of Human Services announced Thursday. That means its grant money could be up for grabs once its current contract with the federal government expires.

Programs must now compete for funding if they have financial or management problems, if on-site monitoring reviews find issues, or – starting this year – if they score in the lowest 10 percent of programs on a classroom observation tool.

The agency says it needs to re-compete due to administrative issues, not safety or classroom quality problems. 

Jan Stepto-Millett, vice president of early childhood services at Children’s Home and Aid Society, says federal reviewers found the organization didn’t meet federal standards for how frequently certain information is reported to the organization’s board. “They were administrative standards that had nothing to do with our program’s health and safety of children,” Stepto-Millett says.

Mike Shaver, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Children’s Home and Aid, says he feels the process was fair but adds that “it is frustrating to find that a set of administrative operations, that have little to do with what goes on in the classroom, can compromise and unsettle the whole grant process.”

Other local programs that have passed since the new standards went into effect include CEDA’s Head Start program and Howard Area Community Center’s Early Head Start program.

The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services (which administers programs in dozens of community agencies and Chicago schools), Chicago Commons Early Head Start, El Valor Head Start, and the Ounce of Prevention Fund will all face reviews in the coming two years.

Yet when Advance Illinois recently released its 2012 report card on Illinois public education, early education received for the second time an Incomplete.  This was informed by national rankings, enrollment patterns and data when available on dozens of key metrics. Significant information gaps persist in early education, however, that, as a state, we must address if we are to target resources and services to the students most in need of early support.

Providing a strong, early start to young children is one of the state’s most powerful opportunities to close the achievement gap before it begins, and we collectively must build upon our early work in this area.

First, however, I would offer some context for the grade and direction for how Illinois might fill the information gaps that continue in early education.

New information on kindergarten readiness

Illinois improved access to early education during the past decade and today enrolls 20 percent of 3-year-olds and 29 percent of 4-year-olds in state-funded preschool programs, making Illinois a leading state in this effort. The rate of growth slowed recently, however, as the economy worsened and state funding declined. Unfortunately, fewer children may be served in the coming year due to a $25 million cut to the state’s early childhood block grant this year.

National research suggests that before they even begin kindergarten, 4-year-olds who live in poverty are nearly 14 months behind their classmates. But in Illinois, when students arrive in kindergarten – the front door of the K-12 education system – the state knows little about where they stand cognitively, emotionally and socially. This critical information would help educators target resources and supports that students need early in their academic lives. As importantly, information about students’ kindergarten readiness encourages families to engage sooner and in smarter ways.

The good news is this fall, Illinois piloted a developmentally-appropriate kindergarten readiness measure that is expected to roll out statewide in 2015-16. This is not a paper and pencil test. And this is not about high-stakes exams. This is about giving teachers tools, training and a common language to observe and describe student development and identify what we need to do – as educators, as parents, as adults – to meet them where they are.

The lack of clarity about student readiness is not the only information gap that constrains Illinois’ early education efforts.

As a state, we know little about the quality of children’s early education experiences, the demographic and economic backgrounds of students served in state-funded programs and whether students eligible for bilingual early education instruction, in fact, receive the services that state law now requires. Such information would help identify gaps and target resources at a time when Illinois has finite amounts of them.

Because of this critical information gap, Advance Illinois assigned the state an incomplete for early education, as it did two years ago in The State We’re In: 2010.  (Illinois’ K-12 and postsecondary education systems received a C- and C+ respectively.)

Notably, Illinois held its ground as student poverty increased.  The next step is to ensure that more students achieve at high level.  Illinois faces a real challenge in determining how best to develop and support its youngest children, particularly those born in poverty.

Whether supported by research or our own observations, we know the early years provide the best window to eliminate the achievement gap before it takes root. This is vital if the state is to improve academic outcomes and opportunities for all students.

Reading by 4th grade essential

The hard truth is Illinois is not getting the majority of students where they need to go, and this fact has not changed in the past decade. When Advance Illinois looked at key milestones in a student’s academic life, we found that one-third of students succeed. For the rest, the education system simply isn’t working.

This is particularly striking in 4th grade. One-third of Illinois 4^th-graders read proficiently, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress, and decades of research suggests this is one of the most powerful predictors of future success. Students who do not transition from learning to read in the early grades to reading to learn by this point often fall further behind and are at greater risk of dropping out.

The trend continues throughout the state’s education system. For every 100 Illinois students who begin high school, for instance, less than one-third will go on to earn a two- or four-year degree.

As a state, we cannot wait until high school to intervene. The good news is we’re not.

For the first time in a long time, Illinois has a broad reform plan that aims to strengthen the education system from the early years through college graduation day. This requires building upon initiatives that enroll more children in early education programs, creating a developmentally-appropriate method to gauge student development early in their schooling, providing school report cards that help families understand how schools and districts serve students and how to engage in their child’s education as well as raise expectations for students and educators alike.

Lasting improvement takes time and the impact on student achievement does not happen overnight. Funding cuts made in recent years exacerbate what already is challenging work. But Illinois is on its way and can succeed.

As a state, we all have work to do.

Robin M. Steans is executive director of Advance Illinois.

Child care agencies’ own policies will determine what happens to staff who don’t meet the requirements, says Chicago Department of Family and Support Services spokesman Matt Smith.

Federal regulations call for half of Head Start teachers nationwide to have bachelor’s degrees by fall 2013. But the regulations also appear to prohibit the government from sanctioning any program that fails to comply.

The city requirements, Smith points out, exceed federal guidelines but are in line with the mayor’s Early Childhood Initiative, which will include teacher qualifications as among the criteria that determine whether programs are able to keep their funding in the 2013-2014 school year.

Assistants, too, will be required to have an associate’s degree or a CDA (Child Development Associate) credential. The city estimates that 8.5 percent of these staff might not meet the requirement. 

During the 2011-2012 school year, there were 837 Head Start preschool classroom lead teachers and 130 Early Head Start infant and toddler lead teachers in Chicago, according to federal program data.

A total of 263 lead teachers have enrolled in city-funded bachelor’s degree programs. Of those, 113 have graduated and the rest are pursuing degrees. Just 60 teacher assistants have earned associates or CDA credentials, but 200 more are working on them through city-funded programs.

A number of studies have supported the idea that bachelor’s degrees among teachers might lead to improved learning for preschool students, but it’s been tough for researchers to find definitive proof – largely because teachers with bachelor’s degrees tend to be in programs that are better-quality for other reasons, like more resources. 

Academics, time, money keep teachers from completing degree

Some early childhood quality advocates also promote a bachelor’s degree requirement as a way to professionalize preschool teaching.

But there are many obstacles to achieving the goal.

A 2010 Illinois Education Research Council policy brief, “Examining the Chicago Early Childhood Teacher Pipeline,” found that a backlog of students who had not yet made it into education methods classes are slowing down the pipeline. Many students don’t even make it into early childhood education programs, sometimes because of prerequisites like the Basic Skills Test required of all prospective teachers.

Lack of academic preparation is one reason why students don’t make it into programs.  Other candidates are side-tracked because they need to work.

The study found that one-third of students who planned to enroll in early childhood classes reported that conflicts between work and class time impeded their progress; one-quarter said financial issues did.

Norma Jones, a former Head Start lead teacher who now works in the infant and toddler program at Centers for New Horizons’ Effie Ellis Early Care and Work Center, says