GULFP0RT -- A classroom of 4-year-olds at Central Elementary School is demonstrating the value of early education, and even the potential to lower high-school dropout rates in Mississippi.
Through private donations, community and business leaders have started the pre-kindergarten classroom in Gulfport, with plans to expand Coastwide.
?Education is going to drive us forward or hold us back,? said Cynthia Minton Walker, project director for the South Mississippi preschool initiative, operated by the nonprofit Nourishing Place?s Education Support Organization.
The need for early education in Mississippi is well-documented. The state has the nation?s highest dropout rate -- between 20 percent and 50 percent, depending on the source -- and the highest illiteracy rate -- 27 percent in 2010.
After he took office in July 2009, Mayor George Schloegel convened a small group in hopes of improving the community and state?s economic outlook through its children.
The result was the pre-kindergarten classroom, started at the Lynne Meadows Discovery Center in January 2010. The Gulf Coast Business Council has joined the Education Support Organization to spread the preschool program. An anonymous gift of $100,000 allowed the groups to move the program this year to Central Elementary School and expand it, beginning in November, to Waveland Elementary School in Hancock County.
Jackson County is next on the list, with classrooms added in the three Coast counties as funding allows. Ideally, the Mississippi Department of Education would eventually step in to fund the program.
Mississippi did not include kindergarten in its curriculum until 1988. It is the only state where kindergarten is optional. Also, the state spends only $3 million a year on pre-kindergarten children -- mostly for vouchers to provide child care. (Alabama is the next lowest at $19 million and Georgia the biggest spender at $349 million.)
?Education is going to drive us forward or hold us back,? Walker said.
Intervening early is the best way to improve a child?s chances of excelling in school and avoiding teen pregnancy, truancy and crime. It also becomes more crucial as local school districts adopt national standards, which will be tougher for children to achieve without an early start.
The children in the Central Elementary classroom did not start school until after Labor Day. Yet community leaders treated to a classroom visit Monday saw they had already learned the alphabet, shapes, colors and days of the week -- information typically taught in kindergarten.
In fact, Walker said, one of their graduates from the program at Lynne Meadows, which ran for only a semester, was placed in the first grade when he moved to Atlanta.
?You pay early,? Walker said, ?you get more for your money.
?We?re going to see our work force come out better prepared. It just continues to give back to us. These children are more likely to become viable members of our community. All of that is proven.?
Source: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/10/24/3529144/investing-early-reaps-rewards.html
girl fight wake forest wake forest jacoby brissett danielle staub last of the mohicans last of the mohicans
No comments:
Post a Comment