The Citizens Research Council (CRC), a respected Lansing based think-tank, recently released a report on the importance of high quality pre-school programs. The full report is quite extensive. The summary is four pages and an easier read.The summary says in part:
"High quality early childhood education and preschool programs that implement best practices have been shown to improve school success and graduation rates for disadvantaged children. This paper, one in a series of papers that CRC is publishing on important education issues facing Michigan, describes programs that invest in the “front end” of formal education: kindergarten, Head Start, and Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program. It also describes research on brain development that helps to explain why investing in early education may be a more effective strategy than other strategies that are being pursued.
The educational achievement gap between poor and non-poor children, and between minority and White children, has been at the center of education policy discussions for decades. Although it narrowed from 2005 to 2009, the achievement gap between White and Black fourth grade students in Michigan remains among the largest in the nation. Furthermore, Michigan
institutions of higher learning topped the lists of both public and private colleges and universities with the largest White-Black graduation rate gaps: Wayne State had the largest gap among public universities and Lawrence Technological University had the largest gap among private colleges and universities. Both the K-12 system and higher education are challenged
to address an achievement gap that, for many children, develops prior to school enrollment."
The CRC summary of the pre-school study can be found at:
www.crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2010s/2011/memo1104.pdf
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