By The Greater Houston Partnership hosted a forum titled “Early Childhood Education Forum Support, Resources, and Access” on Aug. 6 to discuss the importance of early childhood education as part of the education and future job market in the Houston area.
Melanie Johnson, president & CEO, Collaborative for Children, served as monitor, and the speakers included the following:
- Claudia Aguirre, president & CEO, BakerRipley
- Amanda McMillian, president & CEO, United Way of Greater Houston
- Cary Wright, CEO, Good Reason Houston
“In Texas, early childhood education has been shaped by multiple agencies with little coordination between them in forming state policies, funding mechanisms, workforce development initiatives, and efforts to promote equity and access,” Johnson said.
Johnson and the panel agreed that if the focus is not placed on early childhood learning environments, it is typically too late to ensure that students have the skills to make it to graduation.
“So it’s a very, very critical time for us to make sure that children are ready so that when we talk about educational equity and the great equalizer, it’s very difficult to ensure that that happens when you have less than half of the children who are prepared at the start of the journey,” Johnson said.
Wright expressed his thoughts that perhaps the Texas education system is geared too much toward 3rd-grade test results. He said that the current focus places far too much pressure on teachers and students, including budget and talent considerations, especially given the fact that the state does not provide adequate funding for public schools as a whole.
“The reality is, a lot of our districts struggle because…if I have a teacher that only has this [particular] certification range, then I’ve got a staffing challenge to think about my larger elementary staffing strategy and so forth. And they’re also held to such a high standard at 3rd grade that often we see a lot of systems thinking, ‘I got to put a lot of my top educators, or my most effective teachers, depending on how you want to think about it, into that third-grade moment,” Wright said.
Wright added that, in his opinion, the educational system is not sufficiently focused on student learning environments prior to the 3rd-grade testing phase.
“I think we are starting too late, and we should think about a system that goes all the way beginning and through third grade so that third grade isn’t so high stakes in some way,” he added.
MacMillan said that even if the Legislature increases funding for public school programs, that programming alone is not enough.
“If it doesn’t come with…what I would call infrastructure-type support for the teachers and directors that are a part of that, I think it’s still going to be a challenge. So if I were allocating dollars, I would allocate them toward…coaching and support for the teachers and the directors who are making this work happen every day,” MacMillan said.
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