Barbara Beatty, professor of education and historian of early education and childhood, has been an advocate of universal preschool education for more than 40 years. She recently called President Obama's call for universal preschool in his State of the Union Address "music to her ears."

 

Beatty, a former kindergarten teacher in the Boston Public Schools and former preschool director, has long been a participant in the national debate over preschool policy. She joined a conversation on WBUR's Radio Boston yesterday which posed the question, "Pre-K Education For All: The Right Investment?"

Among the topics discussed, Beatty examined the idea that the proposal might create division within the preschool community itself and critiqued President Obama's plan to coordinate the new early childhood programs with the Common Core Standards.

 

"A lot of people within the preschool community think [the common core standards] are developmentally inappropriate—that pushing academics on young children essentially is going to make kindergarten the new first grade," Beatty said. "Young children need time for play as well as for emergent literacy."

 

Listen to the conversation on WBUR.