News Sep 11, 2013 at 4:00 am

Three Hurdles to Universal Preschool in Seattle

George Pfromm

Comments

2
Right now we have expensively trained teachers for older children and teens. These students largely test as idiots. My brain is pocked with survey report trivia indicating general failure to identify territories of military adversaries on maps, etc. Some of this information is terrifically easy to impart face-to-face. T/S ratios of 20 or 30:1 don't permit that kind of tutelage.

I taught a weekly Spanish class in an elementary school in Bozeman, MT. It was humiliating. Teaching 35 kids simultaneously was totally beyond me. More recently I've tutored kids in Spanish and French, and enjoyed great results. I'm not a talented teacher; tutoring is easier.

Frequent, intensive tutelage is the most surefire rescue. Fortunately, literacy and arithmetic skills that exceed those of smart toddlers are still terrifically common among adults and massively indebted uni students. Meaningful, reliable employment is not as common, even at low wages.

It would seem silly to impose an artificial scarcity of people who can outsmart lil tykes by excessive credentialing. We do more good for workers, generally, if we tighten labor markets by the frequency of public hiring than by souping up particular jobs.

Aren't some of those closed schools eligible sites for activation as pre-schools?
3
The key is more one on one interactions for teacher and children. Less children in classrooms provide more opportunities for this. Also support for special needs children have to be strong and consistent and not just a pat on the back of the teacher and telling them to "do their best job they can". That is not an acceptable solution. What happens with the group of teachers who are teaching in pre-school, infants and toddlers in classrooms all over Washington right now? Are they going to have to go back to school in order to get a livable wage?
4
Thanks Goldy for this column. From my experience on the board of a parent-run early childhood education center it's virtually impossible to build a facility in Seattle. When we got kicked out of the church that housed our program for over 30 years, we found a house in Wedgewood to convert but couldn't because the city required 10 parking spaces for the teachers in addition to 5 parking slots for parents, or about $250,000 worth of parking. We tried for 2 years to get a variance promising to NEVER to pay our teachers enough to own a car, but no luck. We found another church basement to serve 45 kids.

And as for educational requirements for teachers, I've encountered very talented teachers with no advance degrees. Not everyone needs a degree for a high-quality program. Most important is to have a director with education to establish the curriculum and then have enough time to training teachers.

Thanks again for covering this important issue.


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