A report was recently released investigating preschool programs throughout the nation. Preschools in Arizona didn\u2019t receive great results.<\/p>\n
\u201cArizona is really toward the bottom of the pack,\u201d said Steve Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.<\/p>\n
The report, which was released Wednesday, shows that only 4% of 4-year-olds and 2% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded preschool program last year.<\/p>\n
Those numbers are well below the national averages. Nationwide, in 2018, 33% of 4-year-olds and 5.7% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded preschool programs.<\/p>\n
In addition to the low enrollment numbers, the state\u2019s preschool programs only met three of the 10 quality standards of the report. This is attributed to large class sizes and low teacher qualifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news in our report is that Arizona did make some progress in terms of increasing spending on the programs to raise quality,\u201d Barnett said.<\/p>\n
According to Barnett, Arizona\u2019s fluctuation in the last few years in enrollment and funding stood out to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Arizona could get on a schedule to make regular improvements \u2013 small steps forward in the right direction \u2013 a lot more children would have access and a lot fewer would miss out on the opportunities they need to get a good start,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The chief policy advisor for First Things First, believes the report shows that there\u2019s room for improvement for preschool programs, but that her organization has its own way of rating the quality of preschool programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we rate a program, we actually go into the classroom and we observe the teacher working with the children. We observe the entire learning environment, and we take that information into account when we say that a program is either meeting the quality standards or not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her group is responsible for a program called Quality First. Quality First assesses early learning programs, rates the programs, and identifies areas of improvement.<\/p>\n
According to Alvarez, in 2013, when Quality First began rating programs, only a quarter met or exceeded the quality standards. In Quality First\u2019s most recent ratings, 74% of programs met or exceeded the standards.<\/p>\n
Alvarez believes the improvement is due to her group\u2019s dedication to providing support to early learning programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that this entire approach does work to improve the quality of early learning that children are receiving,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A report was recently released investigating preschool programs throughout the nation. Preschools in Arizona didn\u2019t receive great results. \u201cArizona is really toward the bottom of the pack,\u201d said Steve Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The report, which was released Wednesday, shows that only 4% of 4-year-olds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1929,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/1929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theumphx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}