ELQIS and grade Pre-K

David Gordon is superintendent of schools in Sacramento. He is also chair of the ELQIS workforce subcommittee. He's been on this and that committee and board.

Mr. Gordon has a masters in educational administration from Harvard. He has received many honors and is esteemed by people I admire, as well as by the governor.

For all his deserved acclaim, Mr. Gordon has one fault, and it's a big one: He believes that anyone with an elementary credential is qualified to teach preschool, and therefore we have no need for community colleges in developing the child care workforce, because apparently you need a BA to teach preschoolers, but it doesn't have to be in ECE. Imagine: The guy in charge of the workforce committee thinks that if you know how to teach elementary school kids, you can effectively teach preschoolers, but if you have an AA in ECE, you can't.

This is silly, and it's dangerous, because of what I talked about a couple of weeks ago, that preschool will become grade Pre-K in the P-12 system, and they'll just push the elementary school curriculum down a year.

I don't have time this minute to look up the research, but I'm pretty sure I remember studies showing that, while a BA is better than nothing in affecting child outcomes, it is not better than an AA in ECE. I hope somebody reminds me to find it and post it (or grovel, if I'm misremembering), because if that's true, requiring a BA is a waste of time and public money and a waste of people with an AA in ECE.

The workforce committee's next meeting is November 12 at two sites:

Sacramento County Office of Education
10474 Mather Boulevard, Mather Room
Sacramento, CA 95655

and

San Diego County Office of Education
6401 Linda Vista Road, Learning Lab 4
San Diego, CA 92111

The website doesn't give a time, and the agenda isn't posted yet, but previous meetings were 10 to 2:30.