Posted 10:01 PM by Susan Darst Williams

SPEAKING OF GOOD PULSE LETTERS:
LET'S HYPER-FOCUS ON PRE-K -- GRADE 3

Longtime Omaha politician Dick Galusha had a great Public Pulse letter in The World-Herald today. Although his politics are left-leaning, his stance on education's needed focus is great. Galusha says that we need to keep a tight focus on the effectiveness of what we're doing with students when they are ages 4-8, the primeau reading years. Couldn't agree more:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20120102/NEWS0802/701029985

Suppose we differ in "how" that should come about, though. I say that the more we've invested in taxpayer-provided, government Head Start, school-based preschool, and all-day kindergarten, the worse and worse things have gotten in OPS.

The very best thing that could happen in Omaha would be for every church to "adopt" a neighborhood and either provide on site, or help fund, quality preschool and private half-day kindergarten programming from the private sector. THEN the kiddies could read by age 6, and they'd be off to the races on their learning curves.

The government has shown that it does a lousy job in the itty bitty years. That's not government's job, anyway. Government nurseries were how they did things in communist Russia and China. Ew, ew, ewwww. It's long past time to rescue the sandbox set from the improper setting and overly structured environment of the government school system, and get them back into the arms of parents, grandparents, churches and other private sector folks, who do early childhood ed right.

Labels: focus on ages 4-8 in education, half-day kindergarten, private preschool