Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School
Gene Maeroff takes a close look at primary education in America, examining it in a way that will interest anyone who cares about this nation’s future. A student’s entire journey along the educational continuum is affected by what occurs—and, crucially, by what does not occur—by the age of eight or nine. Yet, early learning does not receive the attention it deserves and needs. The future of the United States is at stake.
Building Blocks offers a concrete and groundbreaking approach for early education. It looks at the period from pre-kindergarten through third grade, PK-3, as a unified period of schooling. Maeroff argues that unprecedented attention to these years offers greater promise for improving outcomes than almost any other step that educators might take.
PK-3 education, as he writes, should be a time to synchronize standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment so that each part of schooling fits together to promote the success of students.
Replete with classroom descriptions, anecdotes, and interviews, this book paints a rich portrait of American education. It is the product of two years of work during which Maeroff visited schools in more than a dozen states—from Massachusetts to California, from Indiana to Texas. It is a book for parents, educators, policymakers, and readers of public affairs topics.
Maeroff goes behind the chalkboard to look at what parents can do to help their children, policies that support pre-kindergarten, what makes an exemplary kindergarten, how students ought to learn to read and do math, the role of social studies and science, the impact of immigration on the schools, the habits and dispositions that children need to acquire, the testing controversy, what can happen to help teachers support early learning, and the role of before- and after-school programs.