Nap Czar
Children exhibit great learning potential in their earliest years, which is why parents harbor high expectations of day care and preschool - and why the state has tapped a new early education commissioner to meet those demands.
You've probably never heard of Ann Reale, but if you have young children, one day you'll feel the effect of her decisions. As commissioner of the new Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, which came into being on July 1, Reale oversees all the public and private preschool and day-care programs in the state. Her charge is to improve and expand care for children while trying to find a way, eventually, to provide universal access to preschool across the state. Right now, there are about 14,000 children on the state's waiting list for subsidized child care. But her first task is to figure out how to bring together various programs that were previously housed in two other state agencies. Reale, 38, earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with the intention of becoming a teacher. But the Hanover native switched gears, getting her master's in public administration from Syracuse University and joining the state budget office as an analyst in 1996. Three years later, she was the state's budget director. Before taking her newest post, she had been Governor Mitt Romney's education adviser.
Lots of advocates are pushing for universal pre-school, meaning any child in the state would be able to attend preschool regardless of family income. How feasible is that?
There will never be enough money to do all the things we would love to do for kids and families. So that makes it all the more important for us to figure out how to make the money we have stretch as far as it can.
A recent Yale study found that preschoolers were three times more likely to be expelled as children in grades K through 12. Do you think part of the reason has to do with how parental pressure has transformed the preschool experience? That instead of being content to see their 4-year-old learn to tie his shoes and get along, parents expect him to be taught how to read?
I think it's all about balance. I'm making this up, but if you want to teach a kid to speak French by the time they're 3, that's one thing. But if they don't know how to share with their friends and play well together, it's not shaping that child into the best person he or she can be. And the expulsion rate, I think, goes a lot to not having what we need to be able to teach kids how to act appropriately and making sure that we've got the right supports in place to give providers the guidance they need.
Should we consider truly revolutionary ideas? For instance, you mentioned foreign language - instead of spending money on instruction in high school, should we move that to the early levels, when children's brains are more capable of learning new languages?
I've heard some arguments that you should lop off the senior year in high school and start kids in preschool instead. But we have the system that we have. And our ability to change it is not as expansive as we would probably like it to be. Making any kind of change, especially in the public school system, is incredibly hard.
Why was this new department created?
If we want to expand our system, the first thing we have to do is get our own house in order. There are a lot of agencies that are providing care in their own piece of the puzzle. So DSS is doing that for abused and neglected kids. And DTA is doing that for kids whose parents are getting transitional assistance or welfare. And DMH is doing that for families who have mental health issues, and DMR is doing that for - you know, on and on and on.
Lots of acronyms there. What's your favorite?
I can tell you my least favorite. When the new agency was coming into being, people were seeing the acronym as DEEC, Department of Early Education and Care, and they were pronouncing it "deek," which for some reason just rubbed me the wrong way. It sounded like mosquito repellent. So I made an effort almost immediately to say we will be known as EEC, but not "eek."
A few years from now, how will your work have changed life for the average parent?
I would love it if parents knew that we have lots of good information: how many child-care providers are within half a mile of their house, whether or not those childcare providers are licensed and accredited, what the level of expertise their staff has, whether they have openings and financial assistance. Just being able to get all that information together in one place would be tremendous. And then on the family support side, to know that we have great programs.
But shouldn't your ultimate goal include grading providers with report cards? After all, we rely on Consumer Reports to rank all the TV models, not just list their features.
I think we should be thinking about it. I don't want to say it's a goal, because I don't want to freak people out, frankly. And I think people will react negatively if they hear that out of context. But I think, ultimately, the more information we can get to parents with the providers seeing it as truly objective and fair to them in how it's presented would be terrific.
Could we someday see MCAS tests for pre-schoolers?
No! That's exactly what people just go crazy about. But I do think there are ways to give parents good feedback. You can't know if you're being effective unless you have some way of measuring it. It doesn't have to be judgmental, pinning a report card to their chests and sending them home with an F in sharing. I mean, that's not going to help anybody.
For now, what's your advice for parents looking for a day-care program or pre-school?
Most parents want to make sure that it's clean and inviting and want to see that the provider is speaking nicely to the kids and that they're being treated well. But that's just the surface. So there's a lot to be said for knowing the right questions to ask, such as, "How long has your staff been here?" or "How can I find out what my child did during the day?
"You've found that most parents choose a program simply by word of mouth.
There's nothing wrong with word of mouth. It just shouldn't be the only source. There's a wealth of information, probably more than you'd ever want. [See the department's website at www.mass.gov/eec.]And, yet, decisions you make about people who are the most important in your life boil down to a conversation you might have with a friend or a relative or a neighbor.
Do you have children?
No, I don't. But I have 11 brothers and sisters. And I have 21 nieces and nephews, who range in age from 8 months to 33 years old. I always say it's no accident that my mother's name is Theresa.
Neil Swidey, a Globe Magazine staff writer, last wrote about sexual orientation. E-mail him at swidey@globe.com. 