Kresge answers call for preschools
Photo: Douglas Schaible
President Barack Obama will announce today a national effort to ensure that every American child is prepared for kindergarten, a goal he shares with the Kresge Foundation, which has pledged $20 million in grants for Detroit programs as part of the goal.
Hearkening back to his 2013 State of the Union address, when he proposed new investment in early childhood education, Obama has called on foundations, businesses, elected officials and philanthropists to help build a universal network of programs to improve school readiness.
Obama will announce the initiative, called Invest in US, at a White House Summit on Early Education today. He may have better luck at building a better bridge from birth to school than immigration or health care. A Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research voter poll found that children getting “a strong start in life” is second only to “increasing jobs and economic growth.” Additionally, 71% of voters support spending on early childhood education.
The effort includes investments of more than $1 billion in grants to as many as 20 states to improve early learning.
Michigan is not one of those states.
But Michigan has Kresge, whose president, Rip Rapson, said a universal network is possible.
Until then, Kresge will fund successful efforts that could become part of a national systemic, approach. It has awarded its first three grants to the Detroit Parent Network ($150,000), Starfish Family Services ($1 million) and the Community Foundation ($500,000) for Southeast Michigan to launch the Detroit Head Start Innovation Fund to improve the quality of all Head Start programs in Detroit. The new grant continues work begun with a $1.5-million Kresge grant awarded last year.
“It’s a wonderful serendipity,” he said. “We at Kresge have been trying to pull together a more concerted strategy for early childhood development that would take sharper shape. ... That they began working on a national plan of action struck us as perfect timing. Being able to bridge the national support of the president’s office and the local efforts we’re trying to stitch together couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
Rapson said the money is secondary to the need for strategy.
“In some ways, this is far more than an infusion of money. It has to be the creation of a system of how we approach early childhood development and school readiness. There are so many points of light in Detroit. People are doing family based care and Head Start. But I think we lack a system that, from top to bottom and side to side, really prepares our young people for school. At the end of the day, a combination of funding and partnerships both locally and with national players and a heightened level of awareness ... to build a system. We have to create a systematic way to reach kids from birth to 5.”
Rapson suggested creating a kind of consortium in Detroit that matches what the president hopes to do among states across the country, a task that is difficult at best and full of trip wires drawn by heads of programs who like doing things their way.
He recalled attempting to do something similar in Minneapolis as head of the McKnight Foundation.
“A number of early childhood providers resisted very strenuously efforts to create a collaborative network,” he said.
Over time, he convinced them that there was greater value in collective work rather than myriad small efforts. From it came Ready for K, a statewide initiative that changed the way Minnesota approaches early childhood education.
Rapson, and the president, for that matter, are on the money. If the country had a single system of excellence, a single focus on ensuring that all children are ready for school, it would improve graduation rates — no matter the school district, no matter the state.
It would not matter whether families relocated or teachers quit.
It would put children first.
“The stakes are too high,” Rapson said. “With all our efforts to restructure K-12, we won’t make progress until we have a system that prepares kids for school — and for life.”
It also can mean persistence.
Sharlonda Buckman heads the Detroit Parent Network, whose Pathways to Literacy program has been deemed worthy of a new grant. It sends parent coaches to visit other parents at their homes to work with them and their children ages 11/2 to 5 years to make sure they’re ready.
Buckman introduced me to 27-year-old Dominique Peoples, said that when her son Terrell’s coach ended their session, he “wasn’t quite ready.”
“I went to check my mailbox,” she said. And 4-year-old Terrell “had my phone and called (the coach) back and said, ‘Let’s read this book again.’ ”
Buckman said the literacy program’s goal is to reach children from the beginning.
“We spent a lot of time intervening in situations that were already off track,” she said. “We decided that if we were going to get in front of this thing, we’d have to start sooner.”
“What the coach does is model different techniques for teaching their kids,” Buckman said. “There’s a 12-week curriculum, and they leave them with a lesson each week. It involves a lot of reading and reading to your child.”
Peoples said she loves the program.
“It helped me as far as teaching him and showing me different ways to teach him to read,” she said. “Instead of getting frustrated, it taught me patience. ... It’s like a parenting class without being a parenting class for us and our children.”
Terrell begins Head Start in February and kindergarten in the fall. His mom says he is prepared.
“Oh, yes, he’s ready now,” his mom said. “He already knows how to write his name. He knows his colors.”
Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com
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