A real head start

NEA Today, Apr 1999

A major gap in achievement divides students at opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale-and that gap widens as children advance through school. Dr. Craig Ramey, director of the Civitan International Research Center at the Universit, of Alabama in Birmingham, is examining wrys to remedy this crisis. The center will send a report to Congress this summer on the findings of the recently completed Head Start/Public School Early Childhood Transition Demonstration Project, begun in 1991.

How early should educa., tional intervention begin? We now have Early Head Start beginning in the first year of life. These programs are modeled on research that suggests that if we begin earlier, we can get better payoffs.

It's not surprising that if we wait until age four, when Head Start typically begins, children will already have substantial and measurable cognitive, linguistic, and social deficits. The extent to which these can be reversed remains to be seen.

What causes the gap in achievement to widen during the elementary years?

During the school year, children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to learn at the same rate as their more advantaged peers. But they start further behind-especially when these children are in a very good school system, since their peers tend to be well above average and tend to have lots of home support.

Over the summer, learning tends to fall off for disadvantaged children, while others go to camps, summer classes, and on vacation. You can see the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged students grow.

It looks as if schools aren't doing a good job. That's not true. Schools are getting a bum rap. It's the time out of school that's taking its toll.

Where should we put the resources?

It doesn't come as a surprise that we need to help disadvantaged children get more education all day long and through the summer. As a preventive, we must begin high-quality programs for disadvantaged children by the second year of life.

Additional effort must be made when youngsters get to school. This includes small class size, individual attention, and good after-school and summer school programs.

Then we can have disadvantaged students doing substantially better in school. No one knows how long you have to continue these efforts. After all, advantaged parents continue to offer support at least through college.

We have to face up to it. There's a major disparity between the haves and the have-nots because we're not putting sufficient resources into our schools. That's what the research shows.

Ramey's book Going to School (Goddard), co-authored by Sharon L Ramey, will be published July 1. Their book Right from Birth (Goddard), released in January discusses building a foundation for learning. Send E-mail to Ramey at cramey@uab.edu or contact the Civitan Center at 205/934-8900. On the Web at www.circ.uab.edu.