President Obama To Use Decatur as Backdrop to Promote Education Initiative
Decatur Metro | February 12, 2013From this morning’s AJC…
Georgia’s pre-kindergarten program will get a turn in the national spotlight this week when President Barack Obama uses Decatur as a backdrop to promote an education initiative to give low-income preschoolers an earlier start on their schooling.
…Georgia is a fitting place for the announcement as the state was considered far ahead of its time two decades ago when it used lottery funds to launch a statewide pre-kindergarten program. In recent years, though, flattening lottery revenues and increasing enrollment have forced the state to reduce pre-kindergarten schedules and increase class sizes.
…Details of Obama’s Thursday visit haven’t been released, but he’s expected to visit pre-kindergarten students at College Heights and swing by the Decatur Recreation Center. Courtney Burnett, the Decatur school system’s legislative liaison, said employees are scurrying to prepare for Obama’s arrival.
Lots more in this feature article on the AJC’s website, so check it out!
A bit more here:
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2013/02/12/obama-comes-to-decatur-but-school-is-out-for-week-go-to-the-beach-or-go-to-school-to-meet-the-president/
Some of the idiots posting on AJC blogs never cease to amaze (and amuse) me.
They mostly just disgust me.
I was reading just yesterday about how the government has released several studies showing that pre-K programs, most notably Headstart, accomplish next to nothing, as cognitive gains attributable to pre-K participation dissipate by early grade school years:
http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/11/head-starts-failure-needs-no-more-fundin
So would it not be good to improve elementary schools, or do away with Headstart, as many Republicans argue?
I won’t argue against improving elementary schools, though I suppose you and I would disagree as to whether spending more money is really going to improve them. Either way, the issue appears to be that pre-K does not yield sustained benefits for its recipients, even when measured against peer groups who later attend the same elementary schools.
So yes (though I’m not a Republican) I would certainly argue for ending head start, based on the evidence, and also for ending state funding of pre-K in the absence of an adequate assurance of effective results, which does not appear to be available. And when POTUS is here extolling the virtues of pre-K, it might be a good idea for him to address and refute these serious criticisms of the federal government’s long-running pre-K program before asking for more of our hard-earned money to fund it and similar programs.
Out of skepticism I started reading the actual HHS head start impact study report. I did not find any of the conclusions that blog post makes about the lack of results head start programs have. Granted I did not have time to read the entire 420 page report but if you even make it to the key findings section you will see things like
Access to Head Start has positive impacts on several aspects of children’s school readiness during their time in the program.
Well, there’s also the fact that reason.com isn’t exactly an unbiased news site…a lynchpin of Libertarian political philosophy is to do away w/the Dept of Education & all its peripheral programs, so I suppose one should consider the source in reading that site’s reports about those studies.
Yes, but the source’s source is the Dept of HHS. You and I may not agree with reason.com’s conclusion, but they did correctly cite the HHS study which does state that there are few, if any, meaningful long-term benefits of Head Start. What we do with that information is where things get interesting. First, do the short term benefits alone justify the expense? Second, if we are only focused on long-term, do we eliminate Head Start? Do we put the money and resources into other efforts with the same stated goal? Do we just tweak Head Start? The possibilities are almost limitless.
FWIW, before AnotherRick and others start Republican bashing, IMHO, I don’t think that a proposal by a few Republicans to eliminate Head Start equates to Republicans not believing in dedicating resources to education or wanting to improve the level of education in this country. It means they believe that there may be a better way to accomplish the goal.
Have you read the Repub presidential platform, or the Ryan budget?
Neither one even mentions “Head Start.” Facts are a tricky thing indeed.
Don’t be disingenuous. The cuts hit early childhood education programs squarely in the ticker.
I never heard of Reason.com until now. I just looked and all I can say is wow. Reason (sic) articles often link to to another good site, the Daily Caller. That site is even more fun.
Yes, the reports acknowledge that HS shows benefits while in HS. But if the benefits don’t last, what good are they? The conclusion was they don’t last, and by 3rd grade or so, the HS group was really no different from the control group.
Head Start is only available to low-income children. Low-income children disproportionately attend poorly performing elementary schools. (There is a direct correlation between the local tax base and school quality, so no surprise there in our economically segregated public school systems.) Can you blame Head Start if the ongoing effects of poverty eventually cancel out the benefits? Head Start is not a comprehensive solution, just one piece to the puzzle.
I don’t understand your hangup with assigning blame. Regardless of the merits of the idea or theory or goal behind any govt funded program, if the program isn’t getting results, we should evaluate whether we continue to fund it in its current form. Maybe we tweak it. Maybe we elminate it and attack the problem from a different angle. To use your words, if the benefits are “cancelled out”, shouldn’t we at least take a closer look at whether this is a good use of our limited resources?
Sure, there are probably lots of ways to tweak it. But Head Start provides child care in a quality environment for families that would have trouble affording it on their own. It means those children are at least in a safe and caring environment while their parents are out of the house, and maybe that they’re actually learning something at a time of critical brain development. It does what it was intended to do. In that regard it actually does “work.” The proposal of just getting rid of it because of what happens later is a nonstarter.
The program wasn’t created as free day care, and of course they don’t call it freee day care. It was designed to give poor kids a literal head start on school so as to improve their academic performance. That is what HHS was trying to measure in testing its effectiveness, not merely whether the kids had a warm place to stay during the day. Now you seem to be saying that the program works if “maybe” the kids happen to be learning something while they’re being babysat. If we judge the program — heck, any program — by those lax standards, then of course it is a rousing success. Indeed, under your conception of the pogram, would anything constitute failure or ineffectiveness short of physically losing track of the children?
I think if we’re going to spend billions of dollars on pre-K, we should demand someting more than babysitting.
“The program wasn’t created as free day care…t was designed to give poor kids a literal head start on school so as to improve their academic performance.” — Agreed. But the fact that kids lose ground again later doesn’t mean HeadStart isn’t working, it means there are additional problems that need to be addressed. (shocking, I know) Robbing Peter to pay Paul never gains us any ground. We need to quit looking at education funding as a zero-sum game (or a zero-minus sum game). It’s like repairing one end of a bridge and discovering the middle still sags, then taking the pilings from the end to prop up the middle.
As somebody who goes to various Head Starts as part of my work I can attest that it is a lot more than free day care. (I am not paid by or affiliated with any Head Start program). The teachers I have met are wonderful and the programs seem well run. The children I work with have disabilities and I have seen a lot of language and social growth in them after starting at Head Start. Perhaps the reason that the short term gains of head start is not continued is that the quality of the later education is not as high. Or perhaps there are other variables that Head Start alone cannot overcome.
What DEM said. I am all for funding improvements in education to all students, regardless of their income level. However, if this particular program isn’t working, maybe we should allocate those resources elsewhere (for the record, I am not saying that HS isn’t working although, like anything else, it could be improved upon. I don’t think there is enough info yet). But, quality daycare is not the same thing as giving these children a head start on their education.
BTW, I am not sure if you are familiar with College Heights, but they employ many specialists and highly qualified teachers. They also employ many assistants to the specialists and teachers (all of whom from my experience are qualified and loving people who look out for my children while in their care) which I imagine earn less than the specialists and teachers. If the goal was simply daycare, we could get rid of the higher earners, hire more people and provide basis daycare for even more students. So, if you are guaging Head Start as a daycare, it is horribly inefficient and a failure as it is unnecessarily and literally leaving kids out in the cold.
10% of headstart kids are supposed to be disabled. It is not just for low-income kids. My daughter will move from her regular class to early headstart in the fall. We do not qualify through income by any means but through disability.
We’re in a similar situation: when our daughter moved from Babies Can’t Wait to the public school system at age to receive services, we were enrolled in Head Start.
It’s hard to blame a pre-k program for elementary schools not preserving the gains made. And studies seem to show that real gains are made.
As a parent, the boost College Heights has given our children is pretty obvious.
BTW, after visiting the AJC comments section, you really appreciate a forum as civil as this one!
“It’s hard to blame a pre-k program for elementary schools not preserving the gains made. ”
Just playing devil’s advocate, but even in you don’t assign blame, you still must consider all varaiables which would include the level of education, etc. at your average elementary school. If that is a constant (and unfortunately, it seems to be), it must be factored into the equation when deciding whether to keep funding the program.
Reason.com = Fox News-style “analysis” written by Ayn Rand’s ghost. You ain’t gonna get all sides of the story there, buster.
It links to the actual government reports. I thought that easier than linking all the HHS reports directly.
Nor will you get all sides on CNN or NBCNews.
Agree with you!
Also, here is arch-conservative Joel Klein saying HS is a waste of money:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2081778,00.html
For those of you that question the benefits of our city’s amazing preK program or the HS program in general, I implore you to take a moment and visit the school, speak with the teachers, the support staff, or families of the program. The amount of educational research, pedagogy, and professional development that takes place in that facility is without compare. If you have done local research and still find the funding of this program to be a waste, then I’ll listen.
Like Cali, I agree with the fact that most HS programs are in low-income communities- the research and findings I read don’t consider the fact that the HS students often lack support at home and attend elementary schools that are failing and simply don’t have the funds to continue to support their students for success. It’s not the HS program failing these students- it’s the system.
“It’s not the HS program failing these students- it’s the system.”
If your statement is correct, would it not make sense to devote the HS resources to the “system” in an effort to create a lasting, long-term effect?
As I said before, I am not advocating one way or another re: HS. But, your last paragraph and Cali’s posts translate into “we are throwing away money”. How can you acknowledge that all of the benefits are cancelled out, and then refuse to engage in any discussion on how to improve the long-term results, even if that requires ending HS and re-allocating those funds?
Re: local research, this is a federally funded program. You can’t justify the program based on the success of one or two HS schools. I think CH is a great school, and that includes HS. But, these studies, at a minimum, should make us look at either improvements or other approaches to the head start concept. Or maybe we should question the studies, their methodology, etc. and try to confirm or refute the results. But, IMHO, we can’t ignore the studies.
Also keep in mind that the HS kids are being measured against other students in these presumably under-performing elementary schools. So in that way, the quality of the elementary education is being controlled for in the analysis. In other words, they are measuring whether the HS kids are, in fact, ahead of their peers by virtue of having gone through HS. The answer is, they’re not. Yet the whole point of HS is to advance the recipients beyond their peer group, whatever the quality of their post-HS schooling.
There is a lot of speculation here that the elementary education is so obscenely awful that it is actually retarding the progress of HS kids who would otherwise be retaining whatever benefits HS once gave them. I don’t know of any evidence for that, and the schools really would need to be heinous for that to be true. More likely is that whatever benefit pre-k gives is fleeting by definition — i.e., something that the vast majority of kids pick up by the third grade anyway, and that’s why you see them all even out by that time.
I am not certain of the answer either way. But in terms of making a public policy decision about funding these programs, it’s not enough to merely guess or hope that they’re accomplishing their stated objectives. If after 30-some years of HS, the program still can’t demonstrate a clear benefit, maybe it’s time to admit that our best intentions don’t always work and end the pre-k experiment.
If the sole purpose of Head Start were to keep kids ahead in elementary school after they leave the program … if that is the only thing that justifies the existence of Head Start … then yes, this study (contingent as such studies are on further analysis, revisiting methodologies, etc.) seems to suggest we’re “throwing away money.” But that’s not all Head Start is good for. The importance of the development that takes place in the early years is so scientifically indisputable that to say we should scrap any funding for early interventions based on this study is absurd. What this study does NOT say is that what you do during early childhood “doesn’t matter” or that you should pull resources out of early childhood and put them somewhere else.
From Head Start’s perspective, the program “works”: disadvantaged children enter kindergarten further ahead (or more accurately, less far behind) than they would have been … the metaphorical “head start.” And that’s just academically. Anyone at all familiar with Head Start knows its goals are not just academic but serve the whole child, including physical health, mental health, family outreach, etc. Kids and families are being served, and good is being done.
Can Head Start be done better? Absolutely. Most early childhood advocates (and the President for that matter: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/early-childhood) would agree. But let’s be clear: The question is not “Why does Head Start have no positive impact?” The question is, “Why do the measurable positive impacts of Head Start tend to fade over time?” I.e., after kids leave the program. The larger lesson seems to be that Head Start is simply not enough. It’s not a silver bullet that’s going to singlehandedly reverse a comprehensive problem.
The AJC article mentions POTUS will also “swing by” the Decatur Rec – does anyone out there have any more information on this? My wife, daughter, and I would like walk down and see the motorcade (and if we are lucky the President himself) and Rec Center would be much more convenient than the school.
I don’t but would like to know more details as well.
A lot of Sycamore will be closed to all traffic unless you live or work there. There is a tent set up on North Candler.
I’m by no means any sort of expert on childhood education, and, not having kids, I’m out of the loop on much of what goes on in schools now. But it seems to me, if resources are scarce and need to be carefully allocated, the pivotal point for children from low-income backgrounds (maybe all backgrounds) is middle school. That isn’t to say Head Start can’t play a role, but if the gains are being lost later then perhaps there should be a refocusing.
Just one (non-political) request to DecaturMetro.
Can you post whatever you have about the timing of all this as soon as you get it, so those of us who use these streets have enough notice to stay out of the way if we’re not involved with it?
Many Presidents have come through Atlanta in my time here, and they always bring traffic problems. Yes, even St. Ronald Reagan (may he rest in peace) brought traffic problems.
I asked yesterday and DPD said they aren’t giving any route/timing info at this point. Deputy Keith Lee did confirm that when routes are closed, they will be closed to all forms of traffic: car, bike, peds, etc. I’ll keep you updated.
“when routes are closed, they will be closed to all forms of traffic: car, bike, peds, etc” — That kind of throws a wrench my plan for lurking and gawking.
I am working out of our Decatur office Thursday – it is right across from the rec center!!!
Please do post the times. I am trying to help our office coordinate how we are getting clients in and people to court.
According to the AJC story the visit is due to happen “from mid-morning to mid-afternoon Thursday.” So, somewhere between 10 and 3. Plan accordingly. I can’t tell y’all the route of the motorcade, and I don’t know whether we’ll get one. But I hope we get a little notice.
I wondered why there were Apache helicopters flying over Oakhurst on Monday (yes, I looked it up, and I’m mostly sure that’s what they were. Either that or Ghidora has returned.).
Head Start and Pre-K have many benefits, not the least of which is providing a safe and intellectually nurturing environment for children with a wide range of needs to get used to an elementary school system (national) that has become not only increasingly standards-based, but based on multiple sets of standards.
If nothing else, it gives Kindergarten teachers a head start by giving them students who don’t require as much adjustment time.
I may be attending one of the events on Thursday, and I’m psyched. As a minority American, Obama’s presidency is to me nothing short of a miracle (though I sure would lie to see him slash the military budget, end corporate welfare, and give the NRA a harder time), and the chance to see him speak live is an exciting prospect.
Should we wear our “There’s a Festival For That” tee shirts?
Has Decatur ever had a sitting president visit before?
Not sure about a sitting president, but former President and Mrs. Carter have been to Decatur schools frequently. They had grandchildren in the system. Mrs. Carter also supported the Frazier Center at the high school. And Bill Clinton held a campaign rally in the DHS stadium.
How much is this costing our city for this privilege?
Cities have to pay for visits.
How much is this costing our city for this privilege?
What does it cost in real expenditures, or the embarrassment that we have pay to fake a school day to populate the school with teacher and student props as a backdrop to one party’s political agenda?
Ease up on the tea.
I have two kids at College Heights, and they and their teachers would be there this week whether the President was coming or not. Only Pre-K (4 y.o.) is off this week. The rest of the classes, servicing infants through 3 y.o. — the majority of the school — would be in session, regardless.
Check your facts, please, and feel free to save your embarrassment for something worth being embarrassed about.
The ridiculousness of this comment leaves it beneath contempt
Beneath contempt? Nonsense. Surely there’s plenty of collected contempt left over from the Bush years….We can do better than to run short on contempt.
And by the way, school is not being called back in session. As lump says, 0-3 and early headstart are still there. Memos went to parents of headstart and preK parents asking them if they would like the opportunity to come in for the day.
I wonder if you be saying the same thing if the previous President were coming?
And I wonder if the people that responded would be as outraged if it was said about a Bush visit…
People would be marching down the street with torches and pitchforks if Bush was coming…
Dawg – I totally disagree with you. While we may typically vote 75%+ for a Dem president, we aren’t the type to treat outsiders with disrespect. I could imagine some peaceful protesters showing up voicing disdain for one of the multitude of idiotic things that happened under President Bush II, but he would generally have gotten a warm welcome had he come here, I believe. I don’t read the excitement around here as partisan so much as that we are getting a presidential visit, which is cool and unusual. Anyone back me up/agree with me?
Couldn’t agree more.
As someone who has been called virtually every name in the book on this blog because I dare to have a different outlook than most here, I would have to totally disagree with you.
But, of course, I’m not the President either so….
I was kidding!
But, I do think it is worth pointing out that only liberals have used this visit as an opportunity to insult Republicans. The openly convervatives who post on DM haven’t uttered a single bad word about the President (at least in this conversation), and all seem to share your sentiment about the presidential visit being cool and unusual. I know I do.
I agree with you about the conservatives on this thread, although (**shudder**) look to comments on the AJC news items and posts in the “get schooled” blog for plenty of hateful spewage towards Obama and his Kool-Aid drinking sheeple followers.
There are truly bitter and/or classless sewage spewers everywhere on the political spectrum. I still remember some of the celebratroy remarks about Reagan’s death on a blog I was reading at the time. People were truly happy that he died, were bragging about how they intend to spit on his grave, etc.
I think it’s thrilling. Proud for our little town!
Couldn’t agree less. I still remember the left’s angry fanaticism against Bush. How short our collective memories are.
I was fanatically angry about Bush, but if he came to Decatur, I would treat him nice.
Can you blame them? He did not close Gitmo and authorized US citizens to be killed by drone strikes without a trial. Oh wait, that applies to Obama, too . . .
Couldn’t help myself.
Perhaps to read “My Pet Goat”…
How is that embarrassing? The President wants to come highlight the school’s success, and parents are voluntarily taking their kids to school that day. Whether it is voluntarily or not for the teachers and staff may be another question, but I imagine that most are excited about the chance to potentially meet Obama. It is no secret that I didn’t vote for him and disagree with most of his policies, but even I was a little disappointed (but not surprised) when the school told everyone that parents weren’t allowed. What would be embarrassing would be to do nothing and have Obama tour an empty school (or empty Pre-K classrooms). Plus, let the teachers and staff at CH deserve their well earned moment. They are the reason CH is a success.
Honestly, I don’t begrudge people’s opportunity to meet their idols. Cool for them.
But imagine the outrage if Decatur paid one dingle dime to host GWB during the heyday of the crazed antiwar protests. It’s embarrasing that we put on a facade for any politican to advance a specific political agenda.
Obama isn’t coming here to celebrate Decatur, to celebrate our teachers, or one of our treasured Hometown Heroes, he’s coming here to justify additional taxing and spending on social programs. If we were flush with money, sure, that’s fine. But as a nation we’re deeper in debt that most people can even fathom, and he’s using our community, our children, to double down on spending even more money that we don’t have.
Come to Dectur to celebrate our community, our leaders, our shared values? Great!
Come here to advance a partisan political agenda, at our expense? Shame on you.
It’s only “partisan” because you don’t agree with it.
What could be less partisan than proposing that we, as a nation, guarantee decent care and education for young children?
The approaches towards that goal can be wildly different (i.e. not making the “rich” pay for everyone who isn’t). I am not trying to stir the pot, and this isn’t necessarily directed at you, but sometimes liberals need to look past their ideals and focus on reality and practical solutions. We don’t have unlimited resources to do everything single thing that we want to do or should do. Yes, education is at the top of the list, but I am already paying a small fortune for daycare just for my children. Instead of forcing me to pay for daycare for others, maybe we should just license parents. Or, maybe do something less drasic. But, yes, what you propose is akin to socialism and highly partisan.
Put in those terms, what could any president ever do that would not be “highly partisan”? Maybe they should just stay in the White House their whole term. This country made a commitment to public education a long time ago, a commitment that made us prosperous, and continuing that commitment has wide support across a broad spectrum. And education is paid for not just by the “rich” but by pretty much everyone.
You and I are in agreement on investing in education. I only take issue with your advocacy of federally funded daycare for children from low income households and support of potentially failing government programs because they provide an unintended benefit of “free” daycare.
But, not to bog down in the details, while everyone supports education in general, there are partisan plans on how to best accomplish the goal. Obama isn’t here to abstractly champion the necessity of benefits of educating our children. He is here to further his agenda.
It’s the price we pay for being a blue dot in a big red state.
Actually, it has more to do with the fact that CHECLC is a model approach to early childhood education and intervention. There is not another public school in country doing it like this and as well.
If school had been in session, then the complaint would have been about disruption. Whatever. I doubt the people who matter will be embarrassed.
Hmm. Asheville today. Oakhurst tomorrow. Perhaps POTUS just really digs U-Joint burgers. Is Clayton on his schedule anytime soon?
Folks in Clayton would not be nearly as excited as they are in Asheville and Decatur, believe me.
Speaking of Asheville, it sounds like he stoked the retirement rumors there a bit more today…
“Could Asheville be a retirement destination for the Obamas?
Local boosters were buzzing about that as the president made his fourth trip, and he gave them more to buzz about.
“I love Asheville,” he said when he began speaking about jobs and manufacturing at Linamar Corp. “Michelle and I always say, after this presidential thing, find a little place, come on down, play some golf …”
Obama said he loves two things about this mountain city: The people and 12 Bones Smokehouse, where he has raved about the barbecue.”
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/02/13/3851659/obama-heads-for-asheville-factory.html#storylink=cpy
For folks (like Obama) who will have no 9-5 job and money is no object, hard to pick a better place to spend the golden years. Maybe he will buy Biltmore!
I’d buy the Grove Park Inn, but that’s only because I’m and Arts & Crafts whore.
He’s coming north of the tracks, too. It could be that POTUS has an affinity for Indian street food.
I do wonder if he plans to have lunch somewhere between his 10 a.m. remarks at CHECLC and his 1 p.m. remarks at the rec center. If so, I guess some restaurant in Decatur already knows about it!
I don’t think the College Heights remarks will be at 10. Our letter states that kids need to be in class by 10, which means they want all parents off campus by 10. The liaison at the rec center said the schedule will not be know precisely until tomorrow. People with tickets have been told to be at the rec center at 10:30 prepared for a long wait.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/obama-highlight-georgias-pre-k-program-decatur-sch/nWPGM/
The media is at it again. They called us a Dekalb County School. I know someone on here knows who to contact to have them change that to a City of Decatur School.