Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
With a steady stream of research pointing to the value of early education instruction and funding, the Department of Education announced the creation of a new office that will oversee the department’s early learning programs.
In a Friday press release, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “A dedicated early learning office will institutionalize, elevate and coordinate federal support for high-quality early learning, while enhancing support for state efforts to build high-performing early education systems.”
Heading the office will be Jacqueline Jones, an official within the department since 2009. As an early education commissioner for New Jersey she helped oversee the successful Abbot pre-k program that enrolls a mix of low-income three- and four-year olds in full day preschool classes. A 2009 longitudinal study conducted by researchers at the University of Rutgers shows that participating students outpaced their peers on math and literacy measures by the second grade.
Here’s a summary of the findings from Rutgers:
In language, literacy and mathematics, effects through second grade were all about 0.20 (enough to move a child from the 50th percentile to the 57th percentile, moving a child up past 7 percent of the population) for one year of Abbott preK. For language and math, the effects of two years of state-funded pre-K were about 0.40 (enough to move a child from the 50th to the 67th percentile).
The newly-created office will adopt a portfolio of recent and longstanding federal projects aimed at expanding early education programs. Those include the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, a competitive grant launched last year for which 35 states and Puerto Rico applied, and the i3 Fund — grants that reward communities for partnering up with local non-profits, schools, and business networks to student address performance gaps and dropout rates.
In October, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced the Early Learning Proficiency Act, which would better coordinate pre-k and kindergarten federal education spending.
In Iowa, however, the state’s universal and voluntary preschool remains controversial, and has been targeted by Gov. Terry Branstad for additional discussions during the 2012 General Assembly. Legislation that would have put the program under a voucher system and cut $20 million in state spending for the program cleared the GOP-controlled House in March, but was soundly rejected by Senate Democrats.
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