Early Lesson

8/2/2019 Early Lesson

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Transcript

Stephen Smith: From American Public Media, this is an AmericanRadioWorks documentary.

Evelyn Moore: I would do whatever we needed to do to prove that this many

African American children were not retarded.

Fifty years ago, a group of people set out to prove that poor, black childrencould succeed in school.

Louise Derman-Sparks: We really want your kids to make it.

David Weikart: What could we supply that was missing for these kids thatweren't doing well?

Their solution was preschool, and it worked.

Dudley Goodlette: It's about giving them a hand up early rather than a hand

out later.

There's been a preschool revolution in America. But today's programs maynot live up to the promises of the past.

I'm Stephen Smith. Over the coming hour, "Early Lessons" from AmericanRadioWorks. First this news.


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Faye Wright: Good morning Kayla, good morning D'Mariya.

Student: Ooh she looks pretty.

Smith: It's just after eight in the morning. We're in the preschool classroomat River Breeze Elementary School in Palatka, Fla., which is in the sort ofnortheastern part of the state. Children are being dropped off by theirparents. Very rainy morning this morning, so there are a lot of wet raincoatsand backpacks. But they put them in their cubbies, get right down to a gamewith their teacher Ms. Faye.

Wright: Let's see what letters La'ron has on his board.

Student: 'F,' 'F ...'

Wright: This is an 'F' for ...

Student: Fish!

Wright: Fish.

This classroom represents an enormous change in American educationthat's been going on recently. A whole new grade is being added to theAmerican child's educational career, the year pre-kindergarten, preschool.Time was when most four- and five-year-olds were at home or maybe theywent to a daycare. Now most children are in school. In fact here in Florida,voters actually changed the state constitution to say that every four-year-oldhas the right to a preschool education.

Students: 'J.' Juh, juh, juh.


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Wright: Letter?

Students: 'A.'

Wright: Sound?

Students: Ah, ah, ah.

Wright: Why is this red?

Students: It's a vowel.

Wright: Because it's a vowel. Let's name our vowels.

Students: 'A,' 'E,' 'I,' 'O,' 'U,' and sometimes 'Y.'

From American Public Media, this is an American RadioWorksdocumentary, "Early Lessons." I'm Stephen Smith. So how did this happen?How did preschool become so big in America? The answer is research.Preschool is perhaps the most researched idea in all of education. But itkind of came about by accident. To find out how preschool in this countrystarted, you've got to go back about 50 years and learn about a man whohad no experience, and frankly no interest in early childhood education, butneeded to solve a problem. Here's producer Emily Hanford with the rest ofthe story.

[Music: Summertime - Booker T and the MGs - The Best Of ... - RhinoAtlantic]

Emily Hanford: This story begins in 1958 in Ypsilanti, Mich., a small cityoutside of Detroit. Back then, all of the African American children in Ypsilanti


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went to one segregated elementary school - the Perry School. A teacherfrom that time says it was the only school in the city that had no playground,

just a dusty field filled with thistles and thorns. And here's what happened in1958; a young graduate student came along and noticed how badly a lot ofstudents at this school were doing. His name was David Weikart and he wasnew on the job as director of special education for the Ypsilanti PublicSchools. No one was talking about achievement gaps back then. But it wasso obvious to Weikart. Most white students in the school system were doingfine, but a lot of African American students were repeating grades, droppingout, and being assigned to special education - so it was his job to help them.And he thought to himself ...

David Weikart: Does it have to be this way? What could we supply that wasmissing for these kids that weren't doing well?

Weikart thought there was something wrong with the schools if one group ofstudents was doing badly while another group was doing fine. But mostpeople didn't see it this way. They thought there was something wrong withthe children.

Evelyn Moore: Educable, mentally retarded.

That's the label that a lot of poor, black children got, says Evelyn Moore.She was a special education teacher. She says students ended up in herclass because they scored low on IQ tests.

Moore: You know at that time, once you had an IQ test, you had the IQ.

She says people believed deeply in the idea of IQ. Everyone was born witha certain amount of intelligence - a quotient - it was genetic, fixed for life.Education wasn't going to change it. But Moore says some of her studentsweren't really retarded.


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Moore: They know all the baseball players, they know all the words to thesesongs, so they can learn to read.

Moore thinks some children were being shoved off to special ed becausethey had behavior problems. And too many were black kids from poorfamilies. That bothered special education director David Weikart, becauseonce students were put in special ed, no one really expected them to learnmuch. They were pretty much doomed to failure. Weikart wanted to dosomething to help those kids succeed. So he went to a meeting of schoolprincipals armed with charts showing how poorly African American studentswere doing. When he was done with his presentation, nobody said anything;

some of the principals went to the window for a smoke, one just sat there,arms crossed tightly; others left the room. Eventually they returned. Theysaid there was nothing they could do. The children were just born that way.

Weikart describes this scene in his memoir. He died in 2003. This interviewis from a video made the summer before he died.

Weikart: So from that, I decided - well, how could I affect these kids? Andhelp kids do better in school? Because I couldn't change the schools. Andthat was then, well, obviously you do it before school.

So, preschool. Now this was a radical idea in 1958. Some families whocould afford it sent their children to nursery school - but nursery schoolfocused on learning how to play and share. Weikart wanted to create a real

school for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Weikart: There was no evidence that it would be helpful. There wasn't data.

But Weikart had a hunch that early environments really matter. He thoughtpoor, black children weren't learning the kinds of things that were on IQtests at home. School wasn't helping them develop their skills either. So

Weikart set out to invent a new kind of school; not just a school just for 3-


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and 4- year-olds, but a school that would finally give African Americanchildren a chance.

[Music]

When teacher Evelyn Moore heard that a man in Ypsilanti was setting up aprogram to help poor black children with low IQs, she called him up. And hehired her.

Moore: I was passionate. I would do whatever we needed to do to prove that

this many African American children were not retarded.

When Evelyn Moore moved to Ypsilanti in the summer of 1962, it was asegregated city. White people lived on the north side. A lot of them workedat nearby universities and had good jobs in the auto industry. AfricanAmericans lived on the south side, in the neighborhood around the PerrySchool. They worked as janitors, domestics, store clerks - if they could find

jobs at all. There was a lot of unemployment, a lot of poverty. But it was asafe neighborhood, Evelyn Moore remembers that. Everyone knew eachother. And in the summer of 1962 Moore and three other teachers fannedout into the neighborhood, looking for children for the preschool.

Moore: Knocking on doors, knocking on doors; I don't believe we had ascript.

Louise Derman-Sparks: Many people wouldn't open the door to me. I thinkthey thought I was a social worker or a government worker.

This is teacher Louise Derman-Sparks.

Derman-Sparks: Gradually word got around that the four of us were

recruiting children for a preschool program.


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And then it wasn't a hard sell.

Moore: Because many of these children, I don't know how many, theirsisters and brothers were in special education. So their mothers knew, theyknew what could happen, and so they saw this as an opportunity.

Moore says she clearly remembers two things about going into people'shomes during that summer of '62. The first is how dark the homes were;lights were low, shades were drawn. She thinks it had to do with the way

people felt. But the other thing she remembers is that in almost every home,there were two pictures on the wall: John F. Kennedy and Martin LutherKing.

Moore: That was noticeable to me, and I guess they represented hope atthat time for people. And in terms of the project I think the young kidsrepresented that hope too, to parents. I mean that, they may have to give upon the older kids, but here's a new possibility.

[MUSIC: A Change is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke - A Change is GonnaCome - ABKCO]

The first day of the Perry Preschool was in October of 1962. The teachershad plans for cooking, painting, digging in the dirt. This was not going to be

a school where children had to sit quietly and take directions from a teacher.They were going to do projects and experiments. They were going to getmessy. And on that first day of school, the children arrived, holding theirmother's hands, all dressed up in their Sunday best.

Moore: These people were sending them to school you see, and whenyou're in school, you look like you're going to school.


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The mothers were beaming. They thought their children had been chosen,says Moore. But in fact, it was totally random who ended up in the preschoolbecause this whole project was set up as an experiment; an experiment tosee whether preschool could help children do better. So it needed a studygroup that went to preschool and a control group that didn't. Study directorDavid Weikart and his research team flipped a coin - literally - and half thechildren were in the preschool, the other half stayed home.

[Film sound]

It's hard to know exactly what the Perry Preschool was like. There are nophotographs, no films from the early days. This sound is from a film made inthe 1970s. It shows children sitting down for snack, chatting. But it wasnothing like this in the beginning. Evelyn Moore says the children barelyspoke at all, because in their families, children weren't supposed to talkmuch.

Moore: The children who were quiet and disciplined were considered smart

in some ways. You know, he's a good child, he's a quiet child.

This idea - that children should be seen and not heard - it's an old andpowerful belief. And it's a practical parenting tool if you're a poor singlemother living in a small apartment with a bunch of kids. That's how a lot ofthe Perry children grew up. The teachers wanted to change that, and theybelieved language was the key to opening up their minds, and their

possibilities.

Moore: Tell me what you did last night. Talk to me about what your mommydid yesterday.

These are the kinds of questions teachers would ask to get the childrentalking. Moore says it took her a while to learn how to do this.


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Moore: Having been trained as an elementary teacher, it's like, "This is rightand that's wrong," you know. "These are answers."

But what she realized is that when you talk to children this way, they don'tsay much.

Moore: If you give them just "Tell me what color this is?" "It's red." That's theend of that.

So the idea at Perry was to ask the children open-ended questions; what did

they think, what were they curious about? The teachers were trying to helpthe children understand ...

Moore: ...that it's OK to talk about what they know, and that they do knowthings.

[Music: Crayon - Manitoba & Koushik - Up In Flames - Leaf]

Derman-Sparks: We wanted to open up the world to the kids. We wantedthem to know that the world was there, and they had a right to be in it. Weused to take them to the library.

Louise Derman-Sparks says they went on a lot of field trips.

Derman-Sparks: These were kids who'd never left their neighborhood.

They took the kids to the fire station, a farm. Moore remembers a trip to anapple orchard.

Moore: We picked the apples, we brought them back ...


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And they made applesauce. It was a science lesson to show how appleschange when they're cooked.

Moore: Then the brilliant idea struck us: let's take the children back to theapple orchard in winter.

It was cold, the trees were bare.

Moore: And I can remember very vividly saying '"Well, where did the applesgo? Well what do you think happened to the apples?" And one of the kids

looked at me and said, "Teacher, I didn't take 'em.' " So, you know, therewent all the big concepts we were teaching because already kids thought,"I'm being accused of something."

[Music: Summertime - Booker T and the MGs - The Best Of ... - RhinoAtlantic]

And what the teachers really wanted the children to know is that therewasn't anything wrong with them; they weren't bad, they weren't stupid. Andthey could succeed. But it wasn't just about inspiring them. The teacherswere also thinking about those IQ tests. They did a lot of reading, writingstories, puzzles, games. The teachers were focusing on cognitivedevelopment - stimulating children's brains, getting them to think and figurethings out. And they did it all through hands-on activities and play. TeacherLouise Derman-Sparks says they played lots of records, and did a lot ofdancing too.

Derman-Sparks: That's how I learned how to dance a whole lot of things Ididn't know before!

[Music: The Loco-Motion - Little Eva - The Loco-Motion - Rhino]


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exactly welcomed. And frankly I could really sympathize with her. You know,she had been working all day on her feet and now she was trying to getdinner on the table and I'm coming in with my little sack of toys.

Derman-Sparks says she learned to put her sack of toys aside and just sit inthe kitchen with the grandmother. They'd have a cup of coffee or Kool-Aid,and talk. Looking back, Derman-Sparks says she thinks the real purpose ofthe home visits was to send a message to the families.

Derman-Sparks: We are your children's teachers; we were their first

teachers in school, and we think your kids are great. And we really wantyour kids to make it.

But making it was going to be all about those IQ tests. That was the bottomline. Would two years in preschool be enough to boost their scores, andprevent them from failing in school?

[Song: "Lift Up Your Voice"]

When the Perry Preschool began, it was radical, and new. But preschoolwas in the air. Other programs were starting up all over the country. Thissound is from Mississippi. A new generation of educators and activists wasembracing preschool as a way to help poor children, and a way to fightpoverty itself. And in May of 1965, preschool went big.

President Lyndon Johnson: On this beautiful spring day, it's good to beoutside in the Rose Garden ...

President Lyndon Johnson announced a major new effort in his War onPoverty; a federal preschool program called Head Start.


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President Johnson: I believe that this is one of the most constructive andone of the most sensible and also one of the most exciting programs thatthis nation has ever undertaken ...

Johnson basically promised the nation that children who went to Head Startwould be lifted out of poverty - because Head Start would make them"smarter." It would raise their IQs. But Perry Preschool teacher LouiseDerman-Sparks worried there was too much riding on those IQ tests. Shesays they didn't seem to do a very good job measuring what her studentsknew.

Derman-Sparks: We had these puzzles that were called "go together"puzzles you know, where you had like a Bingo card with six pictures andthen you had separate picture cards and you were supposed to put whatgoes with each thing. And one of the children that I had kept putting atoothbrush on the refrigerator picture. Now on an IQ test, he would lose sixmonths intelligence.

But what she knew from visiting this child at home was that toothbrushes didgo with refrigerators; his mother put them there to keep them away fromcockroaches.

Derman-Sparks: So what was actually on her part an act of resilience, hurther son's IQ.

[Music: Can't Get Next to You - The Temptations - The Ultimate Collection -Motown]

IQ gains were the promise though, and people wanted to know: doespreschool work? The Perry teachers and researchers were anxious.Everything they'd done with their students: would it all add up to IQ gains?And it did. After just one year in preschool, the average IQ score went up 15

points. That's a big jump - enough to keep many children out of specialeducation - and that was the goal. The early results from Head Start showed


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IQ gains too. All over the country, there was a lot of excitement aboutpreschool. But then in 1969, something happened.

Archival news report tape: The Office of Economic Opportunity today madepublic a study showing that poor children who took part in the Head Startprogram did not get much out of it ...

The report was called the "Westinghouse Study of Head Start." It becamesynonymous with the term "fade out." The initial IQ gains from preschoolfaded out. By third grade, the IQ scores of children who had gone to Head

Start were no different from the scores of children who had not. RichardNixon was now president. He supported Head Start during his campaign.But after the Westinghouse study was released, he wrote across the top of amemo: "No increase in any anti-poverty program until more research is in."

[Music: Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed - ABKCO]]

Back in Ypsilanti, Mich., the Perry researchers were finding fade out too.The high hopes that preschool could really change things for poor, blackchildren seemed like a misguided dream from another era. But then studydirector David Weikart started to notice something interesting. The childrenwho'd gone to preschool were doing a little better in school. Their IQs wereno higher, they were no "smarter" than their peers, but they were havingfewer problems; not getting in trouble as much, not as likely to be in specialeducation. And then in the late 1970s the Perry team got a big surprise. This

is researcher Larry Schweinhart.

Larry Schweinhart: We were still phoning into the main frame at theUniversity of Michigan and you'd stick the phone in the little cradle andeverything. And we'd get these big long pages of printouts and ...

The computer was spitting out results from achievement tests the study

participants took when they were 14. And Schweinhart couldn't believe whathe was seeing: significant differences in the scores. These were not IQ tests


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that supposedly measure how smart you are. These were achievement teststhat evaluate more directly what a student has learned in school - and thestudents who'd gone to preschool did better on these tests.

Schweinhart: And we also at that time we did not find any differences in IQ.So you've got the IQ test, no difference and the achievement test, bigdifference. Bigger than ever difference.

This was puzzling. The assumption had always been that raising IQ was thekey to helping children achieve in school. The smarter you are, the better

you do. And here was evidence to the contrary. And get this: one reason thepreschool students did better on achievements tests? They were more likelyto finish their tests. The students who had not gone to preschool left morequestions blank. They didn't even try.

Schweinhart: In fact I remember writing a little line in the front of the firstreport that I wrote, "The most important thing you learn in a place is howhard to try." And it struck me as I was looking at the data, that the kids who

had had the preschool program experience were trying harder.

This got the researchers thinking - maybe what preschool did wasn't reallyabout IQ? Maybe the children who went to preschool were doing betterbecause they cared more about school? The researchers wanted moreevidence, so when the students were in high school, they interviewed them,they interviewed their parents, they collected teacher ratings and report

cards. And here's what they found: the students who went to preschool gothigher grades; they spent more time on their homework; they were morelikely to say school was important to them. Their parents had better attitudestoward their children's education. And when it came to graduating from highschool, preschool made a difference - for the girls in particular. Overall, 67percent of the preschool group graduated from high school, while only 45percent of the comparison group did. And IQ had nothing to do with it. Beingsmart in the way people had traditionally defined it wasn't what really

mattered for the Perry children. The researchers wanted to know more -


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what would happen to the kids after high school? So they hired VanLoggins.

Van Loggins: [Door knocking] Hey. What you want Van? Ah, we gotta gettogether and do this interview.

Van Loggins was a coach at Ypsilanti High School. He lived in the Perryneighborhood. When the researchers approached him about the job, hehesitated.

Loggins: Because any time white folks want to study black folks, I'mapprehensive.

But eventually he agreed because he thought maybe some good wouldcome from the study, change things for African American children. Logginsinterviewed all of the study participants: the ones who went to preschool,and the ones who didn't.

Loggins: Did interviews in cars, in airports, you know, just, dope houses ...

Loggins say the Perry neighborhood had changed. When he started doinginterviews in the '80s, the neighborhood was rough, desperate. He sayscrack cocaine hit the area hard.

Loggins: You know, gun stuck in my face - "Who's that, oh, that's thecoach? Hey man, put that down, what's the matter with you man? What's upcoach, I'm sorry about that man." "Hey man, you better check your boy man,quick draw McDraw!" Then they started laughing and stuff, and I'm in!

Loggins first interviewed the study participants when they were 19 - andagain when they were 27 and 40. This is one of the things that makes the

Perry Study significant; it followed people for such a long time. The other


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thing is the way it was set up, with children randomly assigned to a studygroup or control group. This is the gold standard in scientific research. Andby the time the study participants were 40 years old there were bigdifferences between the two groups. The people who'd gone to preschoolwere doing much better - in life. They were more likely to be employed; theymade more money. They were more likely to own homes, cars, to havesavings accounts. The men who'd gone to preschool were more involved inraising their children. And the biggest difference of all had to do with crime.The people who had not gone to preschool were twice as likely to havebeen arrested by the age of 40. Here's researcher Larry Schweinhart.

Schweinhart: It's just very difficult to find anything that will reduce crime. Andhere's a program that took place way before the crime and reduced it.

The Perry results got a lot of attention. And there were several other studiesnow too. They all show that preschool has significant, long-term benefits.But those benefits weren't necessarily showing up on tests. And the publicdebate about preschool in the '80s and '90s was all about test scores andfade out. There were huge fights about Head Start in Congress and manypoliticians asked: What's the point of spending taxpayer money onpreschool if IQ gains don't last? But Larry Schweinhart says, what's thepoint of education: To do better on a test, or do better in life?

Schweinhart: I've sometimes felt like a prospector coming down from thehills and saying, "Hey we found gold up there." And everybody is busy doingwhatever they're doing, they say, "We don't have any time to look for the

gold." "Yeah, but there's gold, why don't you go get the gold. All you've gotto do is go there and you can find the gold."

[Music: Can I Get A ... - Jay Z - Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life - Roc-A-Fella]

Now it's not like no one was buying the idea of preschool - quite theopposite. By the late 1990s a lot of American children were going. But a new

kind of opportunity gap was emerging. Many families couldn't afford to send


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their children to preschool. And a group of preschool advocates said, "Thisis a problem. Look at all the research; every child should be able to go topreschool. Preschool should be a new grade in school, just likekindergarten." But this was not going to be an easy sell. It would cost billionsof dollars. Governors and state lawmakers were going to have to buy intothe idea of preschool in a big way.

Arthur Rolnick: My name is Arthur J. Rolnick.

This is the guy who convinced a lot of them.

Rolnick: I am senior vice-president and director of research here at theFederal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Rolnick was an unlikely candidate to be the next big advocate for preschool.He's an economist, and his expertise is pre-Civil War banking. But as asenior VP at a regional fed he goes to a lot of community meetings and in

2002 he found himself at a lunch for an organization called "Ready forKindergarten."

Rolnick: Their executive director was making a pitch for more money forearly childhood development, basically making it on a moral argument, thatit's the right thing to do. And, um I naively raised my hand and said I thoughtthat that argument wasn't going to take you very far.

Because there are all kinds of good things to spend money on. But Rolnicksays to survive, every good idea needs an economic argument. And hethought maybe there was an economic argument to be made for preschool.He'd heard of the Perry Study. Economists had analyzed it already andshowed that Perry ended up saving society a lot of money, because ofreduced crime costs in particular.


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Rolnick: But nobody had asked a very basic question that business peoplewould ask or economists would ask. In today's dollars, Perry Preschoolinvested $10,000 a year for two years so that's a $20,000 investment. Andwe asked a very basic question: What was the return on the investment?

He was looking for the kind of number you see on a 401k statement. Whatare you making every year off your investment? He and a colleague decidedto calculate what that would be for the Perry Preschool. They comparedwhat Perry cost to what the school system saved on special education, whatthe government earned from tax revenue due to higher earnings, and all thatmoney saved on crime. Then they translated that to a bottom line: how

much did the taxpayers make every year off that initial investment? Thenumber they came up with? Sixteen percent.

Rolnick: That's well above what you can get in the stock market. That's wellabove most venture capitalists would view as a very high rate of return. Andwe would argue it's a very safe rate of return. That invested this way it'salmost a guaranteed return.

Rolnick and his colleague published their finding in a regional fednewsletter. It immediately caught the attention of economists, businesspeople - and politicians. And the preschool movement was transformed. Tenyears ago, a conference about the benefits of preschool would haveattracted educators, liberals, a lot of women. Now, it's a lot of men in suits.

Dudley Goodlette: I think this is totally not a partisan issue and shouldn't be.It's about educating our children. It's about raising our children. It's aboutgiving them a hand up early rather than a hand out later.

Dudley Goodlette is at a preschool conference for business leaders beingheld at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Goodlette is a Republican and aformer member of the Florida House of Representatives where he wasprimary sponsor of the legislation that changed the state constitution to give

every child the right to preschool. Goodlette says the economic argument is


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key to convincing people like him. At this conference, the conversation is notabout test scores and fade out; it's about the bottom line.

[Music]

Stephen Smith: You're listening to an American RadioWorks documentary"Early Lessons." I'm Stephen Smith.

So the push is on to expand preschool, to make it a whole new grade in achild's educational career. States have nearly doubled their spending on

preschool in the past five years. The hope is that today's children will getwhat the Perry children got. But will they? Are today's preschools reallyliving up to the promise? Coming up ...

Wright: We just had a curriculum and we went about doing it. Now we paymore attention to what we teach and why we teach it I would say. When youknow why you doing something you will do it better.

For more on this story, including all the results of the Perry Study and a lookat the debate over IQ, visit our web site, americanradioworks.org.

Support for this program comes from the Spencer Foundation. AmericanRadioWorks is supported by the Batten Institute, the research center forglobal entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Virginia's Darden

School of Business. Batteninstitute.org.

Early Lessons will continue in a moment, from American Public Media.

SEGMENT 2


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Smith: From American Public Media, this is an American RadioWorksdocumentary, "Early Lessons." I'm Stephen Smith and this hour we are

talking about what may be the biggest, the fastest expansion of publiceducation in American history: Preschool. We're in a preschool, a pre-kindergarten classroom at River Breeze Elementary in Palatka, Fla. Kids arebroken up into their small groups here and there's a bunch of kids over herewriting on erasable white boards.

Boy: "S." This spells shark.

Smith: Alright. Are you ready for me to draw a shark here? Alright. Let's see,what do sharks have?

Boy and girl: Teeth!

Smith: Teeth, yeah there you go. So there's a shark with teeth. Does that

look kind of like a shark?

Girl: Shark airplane.

Smith: It looks like a shark airplane.

Boy: Fish! Can you help me write a fish?

Smith: Do you want me to help you write a fish or draw a fish?

Boy: Picture.

Girl: Draw!


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Smith: What does a fish look like? Kind of like a round heart, and then atriangle for a tail, and then there's an eye, and here I'm going to make some

bubbles coming out of his mouth. Yeah, you kids are learning stuff inpreschool I didn't learn until I was in sixth grade.

Boy: It doesn't have any fin.

Girl: This is pre-K.

Smith: This is pre-K. You're right. You guys are in pre-K

Girl: There's a lot of bubbles in his mouth.

Ms. Monica: Good job for recognizing that Lamontiaz, the word changed upon you guys. Let's read it again, Shae. Let's do that again.

Students: The bear jumped out.

Ms. Monica: Alright.

Smith: Now we've talked about the famous study at the Perry school in

Michigan and about the impact that program had on the kids who wentthere. Well, here in Palatka, Fla., and in communities across the country,everyone - from educators to parents, policy-makers, business people -everyone wants the kind of results that were achieved at the PerryPreschool. The question is - are we setting up preschool programs that willget those results? Here's Emily Hanford with the rest of that story.

Hanford: Voters here in Florida made a bold a few years ago when they

changed their state constitution to give every child the right to come to


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preschools like this. But as the state races to set up more preschools,experts say Florida is setting up a lot of preschools that aren't very good.And they're not at all like the Perry Preschool.

Jo Hudson: We've worked with teachers who were in front of the room allthe time, kids were sitting in tables all the time, she was doing all the talkingall the time.

That's Jo Hudson. She says preschool students in Florida are doing lots ofworksheets, tracing their names over and over again. Preschool's starting to

look more and more like school. And Hudson says research from the PerryPreschool and other early childhood programs shows that preschool shouldbe different. So she's heading up a project in northeastern Florida to changepreschool. She got a $4 million grant from the federal government to do it.And she and her colleagues are using the money to help preschool teachersbetter understand why preschool is important, and what the research saysabout what works.

Sandy Lewis: So what we're going to do first is I want you to think about thelesson itself. So this is on page 53, so if you'll turn to page 53 ...

Here in Palatka four preschool teachers are in a classroom. But they're notteaching, they're learning.

Lewis: What are we wanting the children to take away from this lesson?

Most preschool teachers don't get this kind of training - they're handed acurriculum guide, and they're pretty much on their own.

Faye Wright: We just had a curriculum and we just went about doing it.

This is Faye Wright - the teacher whose class we've been visiting.


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Wright: Now we pay more attention to what we teach and why we teach it Iwould say. When you know why you doing something you will do it better.

Lewis: Let's think about what is it that they're going to do. What's the funpart, the hands-on, the activity of this lesson?

Sandy Lewis is the teacher's teacher. She says hands-on learning is a bigfocus here. Research shows that young children learn more from activeexperiences than from worksheets and formal lessons. And so she's

encouraging the teachers to shake things up. Put children in small groups,let them do more on their own. It begins with rearranging their classrooms.Teacher Faye Wright.

Wright: Well now we have seven centers, seven identified areas that teachchildren different things. We didn't have that before. We didn't have ascience center.

They didn't really think about teaching science. It was 'write your name,know your numbers and your ABCs. Then take a break, go play.' And whenthe children went off to play, the teachers went to their desks to planlessons. But what the teachers say they're learning is that children learnbest through play, and through the interactions they have with each other,and their teachers.

Wright: So now when they go to centers we are in the centers with them.We have been taught we need to be everywhere that they are, in order tohold that conversation with them. So now when they go to centers we are inthe centers with them. It is their time to play but it's also time for us to talk tothem about what they're doing.

A goal of this program is to remind teachers that preschool should be fun,

get children excited about coming to school. Teacher Kutina Smith says she


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used to be kind of a drill sergeant. She laughs at herself now, and saysshe's amazed at how much her students seem to learn when they do thingson their own - and how proud they are of their work.

Kutina Smith: Even if it's just a line and they never put a line on a paper, justa line, they are proud of that line, and they want to stick it on the wall. Andthat makes them want to go back over there and try to write something alittle bit more. Which is what we want. And by drilling them, they get awayfrom it. It makes them not want to do it. And I figure if you just let them go,

just to see what they can do.

Tape: Can you say triceratops?

Students: Triceratops!

One reason Smith's so impressed with her students' progress is becausethe children in her class are considered developmentally delayed. They're

headed for special education, just like the Perry children. And just like thePerry children, they're all from poor families. They come into school withmany of the same challenges. The biggest thing ? They don't talk much.Here's Smith and another teacher Myrtle Hill.

Myrtle Hill: No one reads them stories. No one really talks to them.

Smith: No books in the house.

Hill: They hear the radio, they hear the TV.

Smith: They're in a household where there's nothing but a lot of young kidshaving kids. Language, well, all they can think of is coming home, makingsure the kids are bathed, clothed. And that's it. Take care of this at the


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house. And as far as going out? Some of them haven't been across thebridge.

Smith is referring to a big bridge that spans the St. John's River and dividesPalataka in two. Some of her students have never seen the wealthier side ofthe city. She says this program has helped her understand what a differenceeducation can make for them. School is their opportunity to have access toa different world. Smith says it's incredible the way some of her studentshave changed.

Smith: Now, talking maybe more than I really want them to talk. But that'sokay. And I have one baby just walking around just singing the ABC songcause she came to me doing nothing at all. Now she go home, her mommasaid, what did you do to her? She's walking around my house singing theABC song, which she never did, she never heard her baby speak before.

Hanford: So how did that happen?

Smith: There's a part where feeling safe and comfortable to speak. Where inthis environment, yes, you can talk. This is your area, this is your place, thisis your room.

Six students in this program have made so much progress that instead ofgoing to special education next year they'll be in regular classes. Testscores have gone up. But if history's any indication, those test score gainsmight not last.

Linda Hayes: We cant' put all of our eggs in one basket. We can't assumethat investment in preschool inoculates children for what continues tohappen as they move through school.

This is Lynda Hayes. She's an early education expert at the University ofFlorida and an advisor to the teacher-training program in Palatka. She thinks


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the debate about fade-out has put all the blame on preschool. But if you puta child in a good preschool and send her on to bad schools ...

Hayes: ...then the door that had opened for me begins to close. So I needsupport, yes, in getting ready for school if I am a child at risk, but I also needsupport as I move through school.

She thinks this is why those initial IQ gains faded out for the Perry children.They had a really good preschool experience. They had great teachers, theylearned a lot. Then they went on to poor, segregated elementary schools.

They didn't get the same kind of attention. Teachers were not focused ongetting them to talk, opening up their minds, building their confidence. It was'sit down, be quiet, do what the teacher tells you,' according to PerryPreschool teacher Louise Derman-Sparks. She says some of the childrenwould come down to visit the preschool class after they'd gone tokindergarten, and they would complain. They didn't like kindergarten. Sheremembers one boy in particular.

Derman-Sparks: He came down everyday because he was so bored. Hesaid it was much more interesting to be in the preschool.

Derman-Sparks says she finally had to tell him he couldn't keep comingdown to the preschool. He had to get used to kindergarten.

[Music: Alphabet Scat - Lisa Yves - Jazz for Kids: Everybody's Boppin' - DccCompact Classics]

So preschool's not an inoculation. You can't send children to preschool andexpect that to be enough. This is what advocates have been saying foryears to defend against the charge of fade out. Preschool isn't aboutchanging children they say. It's a first step in the long process of helpingthem get a better education. And that's the key to a better life. Education is

the way out of poverty. The more education you have, the better you do.But, here's something interesting about the people who went to the Perry


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Preschool. Even the ones who did not graduate from high school ended updoing better in life. They did not get more education - but they were stillbetter off. Why was that?

[Garage door opening]

This is where a garage in Ypsilanti, Mich., comes in.

Schweinhart: Let's see, this is a good one ...

Larry Schweinhart is now the president of the research organization that'sbeen continuing the Perry Study all these years. He's giving me a tour ofwhat's in this garage.

Schweinhart: There's tests. The Stanford-Binet tests that were given fromage three through age nine here, there's a parent interview for age 15,another test ....

These are the original documents from the Perry Preschool Study. Most ofthis stuff is on hard drives now, but Schweinhart says researchers are pack-rats. They keep everything. And good thing they do because anotherresearcher has come along with some new questions about the Perry Study.And he's looking for answers in all this original data.

James Heckman: My name is James Heckman. I'm a professor ofeconomics here at the University of Chicago.

Jim Heckman is probably one of the world's most influential economists. Hewon a Nobel Prize. And he's really interested in the Perry Study because ofwhat he sees as the fundamental paradox at its core. The people who wentto the preschool were not smarter than their peers, but they did better in

school. And they did not necessarily get more education, but they did better


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in life. And the assumption at the heart of a lot of economic theory is thatintelligence and education level are the keys to everything.

Heckman: So that's the miracle, but that's also the black box.

Why did the Perry Preschool children do better? That's what Heckmanwants to figure out. So he's working with psychologists - something he neverimagined - and together they're developing new ideas about what it isbeyond smarts and diplomas that helps people become capable andsuccessful. And here's what Heckman's learning.

Heckman: There are traits that seem to be somewhat different from just theraw ability to solve a problem.

Personality traits like...

Heckman: Perseverance, self-control, things like openness, agreeableness,extroversion ...

Heckman calls these non-cognitive skills. They're less a set of skills than acollection of traits and abilities that are not about how much you know orhow fast you think. Heckman says we used to think of these traits as part ofa person's character - sort of an old-fashioned notion that didn't get a lot ofattention in economic theory. But a growing body of evidence from

psychology suggests the development of cognitive ability itself is associatedwith personality traits, defined by psychologists as "patterns of thought,feelings and behavior."

Heckman: What we're coming to learn is that traits of young children likeopenness to experience, lack of shyness, some agreeableness even, willmake the child much more ready to explore the environment. The act of

exploration builds skills; it creates mental capacities, it gives you facts.


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It's a dynamic process; the desire to learn, the drive, can't really beseparated from learning itself, the process of becoming capable andintelligent. So if a child is discouraged from learning early in life, that canactually shut down the learning process. On the other hand, success inlearning early on makes people want to learn more. The more they want tolearn, the more they end up learning. Motivation is key.

Heckman: Now you're getting into something really deep. How is it thatmotivation is affected? What causes motivation? And that's something that Ithink we still don't really understand but I think what I do think we've foundfrom these early interventions is they have affected the motivations of the

children.

And here's the kicker. Motivation really matters when it comes to testing.The very tests that purport to measure how smart you are, or how much youknow - these tests are time consuming, and hard. You need a reason to dowell. Incentives make a difference.

Heckman: If I give a disadvantaged kid some M and M's for each correctanswer on an IQ test, I can close big gaps between advantaged anddisadvantaged kids by just incentive-izing that.

IQ remains a deeply divisive issue partly because people with high IQscores typically do better in all kinds of ways. They get more education, theymake more money. But what do IQ tests really measure? Heckman says

one of the things they measure is motivation. How much effort are youwilling to give? And so it raises the question: do people do well in lifebecause they have high IQs? Or is the thing that helps you do well on an IQtest the same thing that helps you do well in life? Heckman thinks whatmatters more is motivation, perseverance, attitude; the "soft" stuff that hesays schools tend to ignore these days because they're so focused onraising test scores.


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Heckman: No Child Left Behind, the whole emphasis on cognitive skilltesting is insane. I mean, it's really misdirected.

It's not that cognitive skills don't matter. They do. But Heckman says schoolsaren't paying enough attention to how students become skilled.

Heckman: Everyday we're creating people. And we can enrich that processor we can retard it. And so if we only focus on an aspect of it - it's true wemay bring a long the non-cognitive component as an accident, but there arebetter ways to do it, to motivate. But the best way right now? I don't think we

know. I don't think we know.

[Music: My Sweet Potato - Booker T and the MGs - The Best Of ... - RhinoAtlantic

But he does think preschool has something to do with it. He thinks thechildren who went to the Perry Preschool were changed by that experience.

They didn't become smarter in the way everyone had hoped. But he thinksthe preschool may have affected the development of their personalities.Going to Perry opened them up, gave them a kind of confidence, awillingness to try that their peers did not have. They all went on to the samepoor schools - but the Perry Preschool kids got a little more out of it. Andmaybe it's that little more that made the difference. Or maybe they just kepttrying harder, squeezing what they could from whatever opportunities cametheir way in life.

So, is this what happened? Did the people who went to preschool do betterin life because they tried harder? I really wanted to ask them that question.But I couldn't. The researchers promised them anonymity, which is typicalfor a study like this. There's only one person who's talked to all of the studyparticipants: Van Loggins.

Loggins: The race is to the first hurdle! Nine times out of ten the guy whogets to the first hurdle and is doing it right is gonna win that race ....


32/35

Loggins is still a coach, and he teaches African American history at a middleschool in Ann Arbor, Mich. Today he's sitting on two stacked milk crates at

the edge of a practice field, teaching the boys' track team how to hurdle.

Loggins: Clear the first hurdle and then it goes to the beat. Pom-pom, shhh.Pom-pom, shhh.

Loggins has done all of the interviews with the Perry Preschool participantssince they were 19. He doesn't think they remember much about what the

preschool was like, but he does say some of them mention the teachers.

Loggins: You would hear certain names come up, of a teacher that theyreally liked, and they took that with them.

Did they ever say that preschool changed their lives?

Loggins: Was it a one to one correlation of - you think you ended up havinga doctorate cause you went to preschool? Ah, nobody's going to tell youthat. But they'll tell you it didn't hurt. They will definitely tell you that.

One of the people who went to the Perry Preschool apparently did get aPh.D. But he was the exception, not the rule. And this is something to keepin mind about the Perry Preschool. A lot of the excitement now is because ofthe money it saved society; children were not as likely to end up in specialeducation, they were not as likely to go to prison. Their lives were improved.But is an improved life the same as a good one? The reality is: the Perrychildren started out in very poor families, in a segregated world where justabout everything was stacked against them. And they did better. They weremore likely to be employed. But at the age of 40, a quarter of them did nothave jobs. And yes they made more money, but their median income wasonly $21,000 a year. And they were more likely to go to college, but only 9%

of them got a degree. So one thing that seems pretty clear is that preschool


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- even when it's really good - is not enough to level the playing field for poorchildren.

Loggins: [Singing] Ooh, can turn a gray sky blue, I can make it rainwhenever I want it to ....

The shadows are getting long on the track field. Van Loggins sings tohimself while the boys finish up their drills. Loggins still lives in the Perryneighborhood and says he sometimes runs into the study participants on thestreet. They say, 'When you gonna come back and interview me man?'

Loggins says, 'Whenever they call me.'

Loggins: It's like reading a good book and you got, like, almost to the endand you want to know: what happened? What happened to these people?

He may get a chance to find out. The Perry researchers thought their studywas done, but now a health researcher wants to know if the people who

went to preschool are healthier than the people who did not. And so itappears the Perry Preschool Study is not over. The researchers are makingplans to collect more data and do another set of interviews.

Loggins: Oh, oh, like butter baby! Here we go, here we go, here we go. Ahh,ooh! You all must have had a great coach last year. That's must be wherethat came from. Uh-oh, uh-oh .Come on, come on, come on. Next man.Next man.

[Music: Can't Get Next to You - The Temptations - The Ultimate Collection -Motown]

Smith: The vast majority of American children go to preschool now. Someare in Head Start, others go to private preschools - and more and more

attend neighborhood public schools, like the children in Palatka, Fla. That's


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a radical change from 50 years ago when David Weikart came up with theidea of the Perry Preschool.

But most of today's preschools don't come close to the quality of the Perryprogram. One expert we talked to estimates that only 30 percent ofAmerican children are in high quality preschools. He says teachers don't getenough training. And there's not enough money. Average state spending onpreschool now is about 4,000 dollars a year per child. The Perry Preschoolcost more than two-and-a-half times that. Experts say we'll have to make amuch bigger investment in preschool if we expect the 16 percent return oninvestment that Perry achieved.

And something else is happening that troubles many advocates. Thechildren who need preschool the most - poor, minority children thatpreschool was originally designed to help - there's evidence these childrenare the least likely to attend high quality preschools. So now that everyoneknows how valuable preschool is, it appears that wealthy, white children aregetting the most out of it. And poor, black children are being left behind onceagain.

You've been listening to an American RadioWorks documentary, "EarlyLessons." It was produced by Emily Hanford and edited by CatherineWinter. The American RadioWorks team includes Ellen Guettler, OchenKaylan, Frankie Barnhill, Craig Thorson and Judy McAlpine. Special thanksto Nancy Rosenbaum, Suzanne Pekow, and Marc Sanchez. I'm StephenSmith.

To download a podcast of this program or a special e-book that EmilyHanford has written about the Perry Preschool visit our Web site:americanradioworks.org. There, you can also find our entire archive of morethan 100 documentaries. americanradioworks.org.

Support for this program comes from the Spencer Foundation. American

RadioWorks is supported by the Batten Institute, the research center for


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global entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Virginia's DardenSchool of Business. Batteninstitute.org.

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