For this week's assignment, I have chosen option two: selecting a topic research that I believe would greatly and positively impact the well-being of children and their families. For me, this topic would be the impact of budget cuts on programs which benefit young learners and their families.
Teachers from every state in the United States have seen the negative impact of a lack of funds for early childhood education (Boadi, 2013). There is plenty of research which shows just how important early childhood education is. However, it seems as though education is in a constant state of panic, unsure from year to year if funding will be available, and if programs will continue of be closed.
I would hope that this research would finally make an impression on politicians and policy makers. I know that research currently exists to illustrate this point, but so far, those in control of the money don’t seem to be paying attention. Despite the fact that they KNOW that funding quality preschool programs for all children is one of the best ways to invest in the future of our country, they continue to slash funds, denying services to thousands and thousands of children each and every year. My goal would be to find a way to make them accept this fact and act on it, not merely make campaign promises.
Resources:
Boadi, K. (2013). Sequestering
nation: cutting off access to pre-k education and child care. Center
For American Progress. Retrieved from: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2013/07/01/68644/cutting-off-access-to-pre-k-education-and-child-care/
Kathy,
ReplyDeleteResearching the impact of reducing funds would be an interesting topic to study. I am also finding that there are consequences to receiving the funding. My district has been fortunate to fund the addition of some social workers; however, they seem to feel they need to justify the funding of these people by increasing the responsibilities of each of them. For instance, four years ago when I was hired to work in the district, we had one full time social worker for the early childhood department. By January, the district had secured funding for another social worker. The addition of this social worker was supposed to lessen the work of the one we had so that more teachers/children would be helped, however, with the addition of this social worker the district decided to add more schools to their case loads. Previous to hiring the second social worker preschools that were in district elementary buildings were served by the elementary social worker. When the second early childhood social worker was hired, they were now supposed to serve the preschools in the elementary buildings as well as the preschools in our preschool only buildings. Again last year we were able to fund a third social worker who is part time, but instead of reducing their work load they have given them additional responsibilities. I feel that it seems each time there is more funding, instead of it providing better services it creates more paper work to justify the funding.
Rachel Tegeler
Hi Kathleen,
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t agree more there is so much funding that goes untouched with the k-12 programs that they could start by using that untouched money and giving it to early childhood programs. If politicians and policy makers started here that would make a great start to the future of high quality early childhood programs; because like you said funding quality early childhood programs for all children is one of the best ways to invest in the future of our country.
I believe there is a lot of wasted funding done in early childhood research. Those funding dollars could go directly to programs that need more assistance in providing what is right for children. I despise that politicians want more research in order to lobby for policy change. Research has been done. Head Start and Perry Project have long since provided information that states whats needed to advance children and family support. Its just an excuse not to do the right thing.
ReplyDelete