Alfie Kohn on Universal ‘high-quality’ Pre-K
But here’s the catch: Very few people are talking about the kind of education that would be offered — other than declaring it should be “high quality.” And that phrase is often interpreted to mean “high intensity”: an accelerated version of skills-based teaching that most early-childhood experts regard as terrible. Poor children, as usual, tend to get the worst of this.
Seattle Mayor Murray and Councilmember Tim Burgess “quality” pre-school programs are to open in 2016. Many of these classes will be taking valuable classroom space within the Seattle Public School system but I’ll save that for another post.
From the post Universal Pre-K in Seattle: Reasons to be cautious I wrote:
In the Mayor’s Preschool Program Action Plan, “quality assessments” will be linked to funding: “The efficacy evaluation will provide valid estimates of the effectiveness of the program in achieving its goal of improving children’s preparedness for kindergarten with sufficient precision to guide decisions about the program” (Mayor’s Plan page 18)And there is to be a “prescribed curriculum” that the assessments will beAlfie Kohn on Universal ‘high-quality’ Pre-K | Seattle Education: