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Chattanooga: Efforts lay ‘important’ groundwork

By: Kelli Gauthier
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Sitting down. Sharing. Forming lines. Listening. Recognizing letters. Counting.

These are the lessons Scott Graham ingrains in his students, building routine in a classroom where no two days are alike.

Except for one 3-year-old, Mr. Graham’s students are all 4.

“Oh, I like the way Denver is sitting,” Mr. Graham says, pointing to a boy sitting cross-legged on a brightly colored, fuzzy alphabet carpet.

At the front of the classroom, Mr. Graham settles into a navy cushioned rocking chair and pulls out a book for story time.

“Tyler, are we doing what we’re supposed to be doing?” he asks a student wandering around the room. “Are we making good choices?”

Mr. Graham said he never wonders whether what he’s doing is worthwhile. He needs only walk down the hall to the kindergarten classroom at Lakeside Academy to see some of his former pre-kindergarten students listening to their teacher and focusing on their schoolwork, and he knows his efforts laid some important groundwork.

But a recent study by the Ohio-based Strategic Research Group questions whether the work of teachers such as Mr. Graham is really making a difference. The report, commissioned by the state to judge the effectiveness of pre-k, says that while students who attend pre-k perform better in kindergarten and first-grade math, reading and language classes, there was no statistically significant difference in the children’s performance by the time they reached second grade.

“There are many outstanding questions about the impact and effectiveness of the Pre-K program that remain unanswered,” the report states.

Shortly before the report was released, Hamilton County Schools announced it had received a $3.9 million Early Reading First grant to fund professional development programs at five pre-k sites in the county. The district was one of only 31 early childhood programs in the country to receive the grant.

“It will hopefully lead to better instruction and higher achievement,” said Pre-k Director Dr. Brenford Benford, who wrote the grant.

While she hasn’t read the recent report on Tennessee early childhood education, Dr. Benford said, she has examined other studies that show the importance of pre-k. Even if what the current study says is true, pre-k offers benefits beyond academic achievement, she said.

“We look at test scores as whether we’re successful, but if you look at long-term getting along with people, engaging with people, being able to problem solve, those things cannot be measured on a test,” she said. “There is no test for social and emotional development, but that’s one key to whether a child is successful in school.”

In Tennessee, low-income children are given first priority to participate in the voluntary pre-k program. Many of the children in Mr. Graham’s class wouldn’t get the exposure to learning and socialization without pre-k because their parents work multiple jobs or never finished school themselves, he said.

“Someone finally stepped up and leveled the playing field for these kids, and I see it working every day,” he said. “Everyone’s utopian way of raising children just doesn’t work in today’s society with today’s economy.”

Under Gov. Phil Bredesen’s leadership, the pre-k program has grown from about 3,000 students a year in 2003 to more than 17,000. Though the pre-k report is not all negative, Gov. Bredesen recently told The Associated Press there is still work to be done.

“It probably makes it fairly obvious we have some more work to do in the first, second, third grades to hang on to those kinds of gains,” he said.

This is the first year second-grade teacher Lynn Sutton has had students in her class at Lakeside who attended pre-k. She said it’s too soon to tell whether the students have an academic edge, she said, but she still can tell a difference.

“They understand school relationships,” she said. “They’ve done it all before.”

As for 4-year-old Claire Toliver, she’s happy right where she is.

“I like school. I like to play,” she says, emphatically. Pausing a few seconds, she adds, “And I like to share with my friends.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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