Yes, there are online preschools. And early childhood experts say they stink.
In February 2015 I wrote a post with this headline: “And now, online preschools. Really.”
Given that medical experts warn against too much screen time for young children, and given that early childhood experts say the best way for young children to learn is through structured play, it might have seemed that online preschools didn’t have much of a future.
Guess again.
As early childhood education has increasingly become focused on what is called “rigor,” or an academic focus, which means that kids spend a lot of time in chairs, online preschools have gained a foothold. In 2015, Utah sponsored the first state-funded online “preschool” of its kind, called UPSTART. And the company has expanded pilot programs to at least seven other states, according to the nonprofit Defending the Early Years, which commissions research about early childhood education and advocates for sane policies for young children.
Here’s how the Hechinger Report, an independent nonprofit that reports education news, described some of them in this October 2018 post:
Some online preschool programs boast “award-winning curriculum” and offer money-back satisfaction guarantees. Others offer subjects like science and art and virtual field trips to animated farms. One kindergarten-readiness program offers children the promise of academic growth in as little as 15 minutes a day, five days a week. It receives funding from the state of Utah to provide online learning to rural children and has launched pilot programs in several states across the country, including Mississippi...Online preschool programs have been growing in recent years, and thousands of parents have signed their children up. The programs offer everything from educational games to a full preschool curriculum complete with boxes of activities that are shipped to a student’s home and a teacher’s guide for an adult. Most online programs are offered by for-profit companies, although perhaps the fastest-growing is UPSTART, which was developed by the nonprofit Waterford Institute and is advertised as a kindergarten-readiness program. That program has been used by children in Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina, rural Ohio and Philadelphia, and is used by 30 percent of Utah’s 4-year-olds. In 2013, the Waterford Institute received an $11.5 million federal grant to expand the program to rural children in Utah.
This past October, more than 100 early childhood experts and organizations signed a statement calling for an CONTINUE READING: Yes, there are online preschools. And early childhood experts say they stink. - The Washington Post
