Quartz – Jenny Anderson
“For parents with means, selecting a preschool can feel nearly as onerous as choosing a college. Elite and competitive preschools abound, especially in the US, with parents picking apart their pedagogies—Reggio Emilia or Montessori? Waldorf or YMCA?—to figure out which might later clinch their child’s academic success (and make them happy, well-rounded human beings). These parents don’t have much to go on, since most research about preschool learning has centered on disadvantaged children. There is a wide gap in knowledge—about a full school year—between low-income kids and their highest-income peers at the start of kindergarten, and we know that well-designed preschools with trained teachers help close that gap. But a new study from Bruce Fuller from the University of California-Berkeley looks specifically at how a focus on academic preschools—those where teachers use more language, pre-literacy activities and skills, and math concepts—can affect both low-income and middle-class children.”(more)