By Shengying Zhao
Murphy News Service
The University of Minnesota and Minneapolis Public Schools are developing a pre-school education center in North Minneapolis to reduce the achievement gap for the city’s children and promote their school readiness and life-long learning.
The program is intended to “improve the overall the quality and quantity of the high quality education services for Minneapolis children,” Maureen Seiwert, executive director of early childhood education at Minneapolis Public School (MPS), said.
Scott McConnell, professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, has been involved with the program from the beginning. He said its goal is to not only build a “world-class” program that will serve kids and families, but serve as a “strong example for other programs that are interested in providing education to young kids”.
“We have very few comprehensive programs of what that [education center] should look like at this point,” McConnell said. “We know what out goal is, but what it will take to do that, that’s what we need to figure out with our community leaders.”
The first center is planned for North Minneapolis because there is a pressing need to bolster early childhood service. McConnell and his colleagues found that in two zip codes in Minneapolis — 55411 and 55412 — there were more kids than there were incremental learning opportunities.
The program will build upon existing early childhood learning facilities and expand them. “We want to attract other organizations that are like-minded and equally interested to improving early childhood learning program,” Seiwert said.
“We want to really invite collaborations into the planning process, and to be really clear that we are not competing for resources,” Seiwert said. Working in partnership with other community organization is about “increasing access for children and doing it in a way that is transparent,” Seiwert said.
McConnell said researchers have proved that high-quality early childhood education can make a difference in whether a child is ready for kindergarten. If kids get the desired social, literacy and emotional readiness for early-stage education, he said, they are more likely to succeed in the long run.
The University will contribute its background research and technical assistance to the initiative. “We want to build this based on both research knowledge and local expertise that characterize the community, and to help in figuring out what a world-class program looks like,” McConnell said.
The University has a long tradition of engaging its surrounding urban communities that face striking social and economic problems, to assist those communities in reaching their potential. “We are a land-granted university, so we have this obligation because of this funding to do research that helps to improve the lives of people,” McConnell said.
MPS will bring to the partnership its “staff, curricula and facilities.” It has 14 early childhood education programs such as High Five and Mona Moede/Northstar, which serve Minneapolis children who turn 4 by Sept. 1 and who will start kindergarten in the following fall. Most MPS programs have a lengthy waitlist due to limited funding. Seiwert said MPS will add 124 more spots using state scholarships.
McConnell said the state has been moving toward a stronger commitment to early childhood education for years. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) estimates that 4,000 scholarships are awarded per year and up to $5,000 per scholarship will be awarded to children between the ages of 3 to 4 as of Sept. 1 of this year.
Scholarships are given based on family income and geographic region.
The design for the education center has not been finalized.
“It’s hard to put a specific timeline around things because we just don’t know what people are able to contribute, so we need to be open to the project as it is unfolding,” McConnell said.
Shengying Zhao is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.