NAEYC Opening Session

The minute Greg Scelsa & Steve Millang took the NAEYC stage for the opening general session we were out of our seats and dancing together! These musicians have been educating, motivating, and entertaining folks for 35 years. Mark Ginsburg then welcomed us to Washington, D.C., home of NAEYC. He shared with us www.flu.gov a helpful site that has information about measures we can all take to prevent further spread of the H1N1 virus.

NAEYC President Sue Russell recognized: 25 scholarship recipients, NAEYC board members, candidates for board, and described the Legacy Leadership Fellowship. She then welcomed the first Secretary of Education to address NAEYC -- Arne Duncan. Cheers were heard throughout the conference center as Secretary Duncan exclaimed, “We need to get out of the catch-up business…We need to do what works and stop doing what isn’t working.” He stated that our biggest challenge continues to be uneven quality of programs. He referenced the I Have a Dream Foundation http://www.ihaveadreamfoundation.org/html/ and explained that early learning is no longer an afterthought but instead recognized as the first and most critical stage of human development and that every child, from cradle to career, can learn and thrive.

“Early learning is on the cusp today of transformational reform,” says Secretary Duncan. The dramatic expansion of state-funded preschool programs in the last decade is one of the most significant expansions of free public schooling since World War I, when kindergarten became standard in public schools. The National Institute for Early Education Research reports that 1.1 million children now attend state-funded preschool programs in 38 states, with 108,000 children added last year alone.

The NAEYC Call to Action for the 111th congress and the new administration cites several supporting statistics in a call to, “prevent the gap, sustain children’s successes, and reap economic benefits for the nation by helping young children and their families thrive.” In this report, NAEYC points out that, “Less than half of our nation's poorest preschoolers are able to enroll in Head Start and fewer than 5 percent of eligible infants and toddlers are enrolled in Early Head Start.” Secretary Duncan described the Early Learning Challenge Fund that channels $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/earlylearning/elcf-factsheet.html . He also emphasized the important partnership between Department of Education and Health and Human Services explaining that it’s time to recognize the links between education and health and realize that they are not separate entities.

Secretary Duncan concluded by stating that early childhood advocates face two overarching challenges. The first is to build a coordinated system of early care and education for young children that builds better transitions for children from birth through third grade. As Lyndon Johnson foresaw, the best early learning system in the world is of little use if a disadvantaged child goes on to spend kindergarten through third grade in a lousy school. He referenced the Harlem Children's Zone as an example of closing the achievement gap http://www.hcz.org/ .

The second great challenge to early learning programs is to accelerate the shift from judging quality based solely on inputs to judging quality based chiefly on achieving the best outcomes of children's development and school readiness. Secretary Duncan stated, “If we are going to do what works—and abandon what doesn't—early learning systems need to document, assess and adapt more readily. And the administration intends to work hand-in-hand with you to support that shift and your ongoing efforts to improve the quality of early learning programs.”

For a full transcription of Secretary Duncan’s remarks at NAEYC, go to: http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/11/11182009.html