THE NATIONAL POLICY DIGEST
FROM
NATIONAL POLICY TEAM
VOL. 1, ISSUE 16
SEPTEMBER 16-30, 2012
Bringing you the latest in state and federal early childhood development policy and research.
Questions, Comments, Suggestions for Improvement? Contact Anna Torsney-Weir.
CONTENTS
Federal Updates.................................................................................................................................2
Policy Trends and Analysis .................................................................................................................3
New Research ....................................................................................................................................3
Upcoming Events ...............................................................................................................................4
News from the States .........................................................................................................................4
Arizona ..........................................................................................................................................4
Illinois ............................................................................................................................................4
Louisiana .......................................................................................................................................4
Maine ............................................................................................................................................5
Michigan ........................................................................................................................................5
Mississippi .....................................................................................................................................5
New York .......................................................................................................................................5
Oregon...........................................................................................................................................6
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HIGHLIGHT: HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED
Journalist Paul Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power
of Character, claims many education reform efforts are bound to fail if they don’t address the
non-cognitive qualities children need to succeed in school and beyond. The seeds for these
qualities are planted in early childhood with a good bond between parent and child, which can
protect a child from toxic stress. Education Week relates the book to other work being done by
James Heckmann and WestEd. Read more here.
FEDERAL UPDATES
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The Senate voted 62-30 to approve a continuing resolution that will fund the government for the first
six months of fiscal year 2013, from October 1, 2012 through March 27, 2013. The bill, already passed
by the House of Representatives, maintains spending at fiscal year 2012 levels, plus a 0.612 percent
increase across the board. Read more here.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced to the National Journal that if President Obama wins a
second term, he will stay in his job. Duncan is likely to spend much of his time in a second term
focusing on ways to rein in spiraling college tuition costs - a significant barrier toward the president's
goal of doubling college graduations by 2020. Read more here.
The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) announced a series of funding awards:
 More than $9.9M in Enhanced Assessment Grants (EAGs) to three state education agencies—Kansas,
Maryland and Oregon—to improve their state academic assessments. The primary measure of
school success under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is proficiency on state
assessments. Read more here.
 $52M to 23 Comprehensive Centers across the country to increase the capacity of states to help
districts and schools meet student achievement goals. Fifteen regional centers will provide training
and technical assistance to state education agencies in implementing and administering programs
under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Seven content centers will provide researchbased information and tools. One center will be established in each of the following areas: standards
and assessment implementation, great teachers and leaders, school turnaround, early learning,
college and career readiness, innovations in learning, and building state capacity and productivity.
The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University was awarded funding to
establish the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes. Read more here.
 $28M for 46 first-time grants that aim to improve literacy skills for students in high-need districts and
schools. Funded for the first time under the Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) Program, grants
are designed to increase student achievement by promoting early literacy for young children and by
motivating older children to read. Read more here.
 $6.4M to SRI International to establish and operate the National IDEA Technical Assistance Center
on Early Childhood Longitudinal Data Systems. The project will support states in building and using
early childhood longitudinal data systems to more efficiently respond to Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA) data requirements. The project also will focus on improving outcomes for
children with disabilities through data-based decision making. Read more here.
 More than $1.1M in grants to three projects that will support early intervention and preschool
programs in the effective use of assistive technology with young children with disabilities.
For more Federal Updates, see the First Five Years Fund’s website here.
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POLICY TRENDS AND ANALYSIS
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ARRA Funding: A new U.S. Department of Education report examines distributions of ARRA funds
per pupil at the state level, grouping them by various indicators of need such as student poverty,
budget gaps, and percentages of students attending persistently low-achieving schools. The authors
find that 25 percent of states that had the highest per pupil spending received an average of $435
more per pupil than the 25 percent with the lowest spending. The trend is mostly explained by $4.4B
in Race to the Top grants which were awarded primarily to higher-spending states.
Census Data: The Census Bureau released American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2011, with
reports showing state and metropolitan area poverty and income, as well as a separate report
showing health insurance coverage for 19 to 25 year olds - an age group that gained health care
coverage through the new health care law. The report finds more than 48M Americans poor in 2011,
up 2.2M from the previous year, or 15.9 percent of all Americans. In 12 states plus the District of
Columbia, more than one-quarter of children were poor. See more on child poverty here.
Data Systems: The Early Childhood Data Collaborative released “Developing Coordinated
Longitudinal Early Childhood Data Systems: Trends and Opportunities in Race to the Top Early
Learning Challenge Applications”, which analyzes state Race to the Top- Early Learning Challenge
applications – specifically the data section – and identifies key trends among states with respect to
their development and use of data systems.
Family Supports and Engagement: National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) released “Building
a Competitive Future Right from the Start: How Paid Leave Strengthens 21st Century Families”,
which provides a brief history of paid family leave policy in the United States and abroad; synthesizes
cutting-edge knowledge about paid leave and its impact on family and civic life; and concludes with a
set of recommendations – for policymakers, researchers, public health and early childhood
stakeholders, business leaders, and federal, state, and local education agencies – to guide the work
going forward.
Quality Ratings: NCCP also released “Practices for Promoting Young Children’s Learning in QRIS
Standards”, which provides a further examination of the strength of supports for children’s early
learning in QRIS standards and an analysis of QRIS standards.
School Funding: A new report from the Center for American Progress, “The Stealth Inequities of
School Funding”, identifies states where combined state and local revenues are systematically lower
in higher-poverty districts, that is, states with "regressive" school funding distributions. Based on this
analysis, the authors focus on six states (IL, TX, NY, PA, MO, and NC) where children attending school
in higher-poverty districts still have substantially less access to state and local revenue than those
in lower-poverty districts. The authors then go beyond recent reports on school funding inequities to
uncover some nontraditional causes of these imbalances.
NEW RESEARCH
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Aggression in Early Childhood: A new study released by Penn State reveals that verbal abilities are
critical to mitigating aggression in young children. Based on the findings, the researchers believe that
children need to acquire verbal skills to understand the perspective of adults as well as to have a
form of communication apart from hitting other people. Children also need to develop cognitive skills
and executive function skills, so that they can understand that there are alternative options to
fighting and hitting. Read more here.
Head Start and Health: Anna Aizer of Brown and Flavio Cunha of the University of Pennsylvania
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studied the initial crop of Head Start students in the late 1960s to see who benefited the most from
the program. They found that students who were already doing well — those who had high birth
weights, whose mothers didn’t smoke during pregnancy, etc. — benefited the most. Read more here.
Critical Thinking in 0-3: Alison Gopnik, a psychology professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, reports that children from as young as 8 months old through preschool explore through
techniques that would seem familiar to any scientist: they make hypotheses and test them against
data; predict outcomes using statistics, and can infer the causes of failed actions. Read more here.
UPCOMING EVENTS
 October 4, 4:00-5:00pm ET: The Alliance for Excellent Education is hosting Incorporating Deeper
Learning and Personalization into a Race to the Top District Application. This webinar will provide
practical suggestions for designing new school models that exemplify deeper learning and
personalization. Register and submit questions here.
 October 11, 2:00-3:00pm ET: The Coalition on Human Needs is hosting a "Nonprofits Get Out the
Vote" web event. Register here.
 October 16, 1:00pm ET: The National Women’s Law Center is hosting a webinar on “Tax Credits: What
Families Need to Know”. Register here.
 October 23, 1:00pm ET: The National Women’s Law Center is hosting a webinar on “Tax Credits
Outreach Made Easy: Tips & Tools for Advocates”. Register here.
NEWS FROM THE STATES
ARIZONA
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Arizona is seeking federal approval to continue its Medicaid program for childless adults, which
lawmakers capped last year to help balance the budget. Without a federal extension, the program
will expire next year. Read more here.
ILLINOIS
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Chicago Public Schools named Peter W. Rogers as the new Chief Financial Officer. Rogers spent 23
years with Citigroup where he rose to be Chief Executive Officer of Diners Club International. Rogers
will be the third CFO under this one-year old CPS administration, following David Watkins and Diana
Ferguson, a holdover from the Huberman administration.
A new survey of more than 350 of Illinois preschool programs reveals a major shortage of early
childhood teachers who are trained to provide either bilingual or English as a second-language
instruction to students who are ELLs.
LOUISIANA
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Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration wants to shift $20M in hurricane recovery dollars for hurricanes
Gustav and Ike to fill in budget gaps in the state's free preschool program for at-risk students. The
proposal, which requires approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
was posted this week for public comment. Read more here.
Public school teachers seeking to recall Gov. Bobby Jindal and House Speaker Chuck Kleckley failed in
their efforts to oust the Republican leaders. The teachers were angered by Jindal's education reform
that will push more students into private and charter schools.
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MAINE
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Budget cuts enacted earlier this year at the state level are now being felt by many low-income
families with young children. As part of the measure to close an $80M budget shortfall earlier this
spring, the LePage administration and Republican lawmakers cut $2M of the $3.75M annual state
budget for the Head Start early childhood development program. Read more here.
The 2012 Maine Children’s Alliance Voter and Candidate Guide will be used at state and federal
issues forums to highlight key early childhood policy areas.
MICHIGAN
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The Center for Michigan’s Bridge Magazine special report on “Michigan’s Forgotten Four-Year-Olds”
presents a multi-part series exploring how 30,000 Michigan kids who qualify for free preschool are
not getting the education they need, due to inadequate state funding, logistical hurdles and poor
coordination of services. The Bridge’s analysis of state and federal data revealed that a child's
chances of getting high-quality, free preschool depends on where they live, even though the state
divides up money to give every child a roughly equal shot at free preschool. The Bridge’s special
report continues, with additional articles scheduled to be published on October 2nd and 4th. Read
more here.
Michigan's current cutoff age to enroll in kindergarten is Dec. 1. Under a law passed earlier this year,
the cutoff will be moved to Nov. 1 for 2013-14, Oct. 1 for 2014-15 and Sept. 1 for 2015-16. Read
more here.
Under a new policy that links welfare benefits to school attendance, starting Oct. 1, school districts
can report to the state Human Services Department families with students who are chronically
absent. Some advocates for families in poverty say they worried struggling parents are being singled
out without looking at the reasons why the children are not in school. Read more here.
MISSISSIPPI
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In addition to $2.75B to fund school districts, public school construction and teacher supplies, the
Mississippi Department of Education asked for funds to provide 25 grants of $100,000 each to
targeted school districts to create pre-kindergarten programs that line up with the state curriculum,
preparing children for kindergarten. Read more here.
The gap between the state's school funding formula and money actually being appropriated could
widen past $300M next year, raising new questions about the school funding formula's future.
Interim state Superintendent Lynn House told legislative budgeters the Mississippi Adequate
Education Program will need $300.6M more in the 2014 budget year than it received this year to
reach full funding. Read more here.
NEW YORK
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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that New York City will open an Educare school in the
Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn next year, introducing a cradle-to-kindergarten approach to
education for very young children in poor neighborhoods. The school will serve children between 6
weeks and 5 years old, similar to Educare schools that have been created in 17 other cities. Read
more here and learn more about Educare here.
Mayor Bloomberg also announced that New York City will convert 4,000 half-day pre-kindergarten
seats into full-day seats by next school year, continuing an expansion of early-childhood education
that experts say is critical to child development. The expansion will cost about $20M and result in
37,000 total full-day pre-K seats, in addition to about 23,000 half-day seats.
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Preschool children are struggling to get special education services under a new Department of
Education policy requiring that all families first try going through large agencies, like Omni or Sunbelt
Staffing, to find therapists, with the intention of streamlining the process and saving money,
advocates said. Read more here.
OREGON
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Oregon's Chalkboard Project has awarded grants totaling $180,000 to school district and university
partnerships that will design innovative models to prepare the next generation of Oregon teachers. In
total the grantees serve over a quarter of Oregon's K-12 students and 65% of teacher
candidates annually. The program, named TeachOregon, aims to prepare Oregon teachers for the
21st century and address Oregon's lack of diversity in its teacher workforce. The grants went to five
partnerships.
Alarmed by data showing that one in three Oregon children has untreated tooth decay, this month
the Portland City Council voted 5-0 to begin fluoridating its public water system in 2014. Until the
vote, Portland was the largest U.S. city without a water fluoridation policy.
The Ounce of Prevention Fund gives children in poverty the best chance for success in school and in life
by advocating for and providing the highest quality care and education from birth to age 5.
The Ounce National Policy Team partners with and supports early childhood leaders in states as they
advance a comprehensive agenda for at-risk children and families. We do this by providing individualized
strategy and policy consultation and resources; facilitating peer-to-peer learning and networking across
states; and supporting Educare Schools and the Educare Learning Network in the development of their
policy and advocacy work.
The National Policy Digest: a bi-weekly newsletter that shares up-to-date and noteworthy developments
in state and federal early childhood news, policy and funding changes, research, policy trends and
analyses, upcoming events, etc. culled from diverse sources in the field. To subscribe, please contact
Anna Torsney-Weir, National Policy Associate (atorsneyweir@ounceofprevention.org).
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