In How to even the educational playing field for Latino kids The Los Angeles Times discusses the work of UC Berkeley’s Professor Bruce Fuller, but draw several wrong conclusions. They get it half right when they say “The discrepancy starts much earlier, and even high-quality preschool makes up only about a third of the deficit.” It’s not that this isn’t true, it’s that most preschools don’t focus on language development. That’s a big part of the problem. Here I reproduce my commentary, that was also submitted as a letter to the editor.
I realize that none of the members of the Los Angeles Times editorial staff have backgrounds in pedagogy, or even read anything more complex than “executive summaries” of the papers they cite, but you would think that School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP) might have been appropriate to mention in this editorial? That, and the fact that Superintendent Cortines is threatening to gut SRLDP so that he continue to pay for Rupert Murdoch’s DIBBELS program? SRLDP is a research proven, award winning program that addresses all of the issues brought up here, let’s expand it.
One Los Angeles news source did write about the SRLDP issue. See KPCC’s Los Angeles Unified considers killing preschool program.
SRLDP supporters have a facebook page. The officia, Los Angeles Unified School District page is here.
