Title 1

Last week I had lunch with some colleagues, including a woman who was our parent coordinator a couple of years ago. She now works full time in our district's Title 1 office. We've been waiting with bated breath for our Title 1 budget in order to plan staffing for next year. We have several people whose salaries are paid through Title 1 in order to have more Reading Recovery support.

This woman mentioned that she was concerned that our budgets would be smaller this year. She expected that the district would get the same amount as last year (which already means less in buying power), but more of it would have to got to support outside tutoring programs for schools that did not make AYP last year.

So, rather than have funding for staff, professional development, training, etc. we will be funneling money to for profit business that offer tutoring. These programs are not affiliated with the schools and there is no communication. This means that the work they do with children is completely unrelated to the work that is happening in the classroom.

I find this to be incredibly sad and exceptionally maddening.

Good Nutrition, Good Economics

A study recently found that good nutrition for young children (infants and toddlers) affects their future earning potential. The study began in the 1970's looking at children in Guatemala. Researchers looked at these groups twenty and thirty years later as adults to determine the effects of a nutritional supplement program.

They found that the adult males in the group who had been given the supplement were earning 46% higher hourly wages than the others.

Surprisingly, however,

But surprisingly there was no similar divide in school performance or cognitive test scores.

Does this mean that good nutrition promotes physical strength which helped these men make more money and does nothing for intellectual ability? That seems highly unlikely, but why these results? Was there a reliable way of assessing school performance? What sort of cognitive testing was used?

On a final note, the researchers asserted that their study suggests that societies need to ensure that children are well fed for economic reasons.

"Improving nutrition in early childhood led to substantial increases in wage rates for men, which suggests that investments in early childhood nutrition can be long-term drivers of economic growth," they conclude.

It always comes down to money.