Preschool program awarded $1.7m

At the John Silber Early Learning Center, where most students come from low-income homes with little or no English spoken, gaps in language and vocabulary pose the biggest instructional challenge.

But thanks to a recently awarded three-year $1,738,087 federal grant, the center's preschool reading and language-development programs are about to get a major upgrade, principal Jacqueline Bevere Maloney says.

"Studies show that low-income students come in with 3,000 to 5,000 fewer words in their vocabulary than their suburban counterparts," Bevere Maloney said, and the grant will help address such disparities.

The US Department of Education, in conjunction with President Bush's early learning initiative Good Start, Grow Smart, awarded 32 Early Reading First grants to preschool programs serving at-risk students across the country, including those in Chelsea and Worcester.

Chelsea's preschool program was one of the smallest recognized by the DOE, said Andrea Frickman, grants administrator for the Chelsea public schools. Early Learning Center administrators have been applying for the highly competitive Early Reading First grant for four years, and finally got it this year.

"It's about a 75-page application, and we got all the detail they wanted in the manner that they wanted it. We kept refining our applications," Frickman said. "It's going to be great because we have the Reading First grant in our kindergarten program, and now our prekindergarten curriculum will be aligned."

Out of the 14 prekindergarten classrooms, the grant will be used to enhance reading curriculum and professional development in the center's four extended-day and two full-day classrooms, Bevere Maloney said. Maloney said she has already used the money to hire two literacy coaches, a language development teacher, and consultants from the Hanson Initia tive for Language and Literacy, founded in 2000 by a communications disorders program in the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. The $1.7 million will be spread over three years, she said.

The two coaches, former prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers in Chelsea, will be dealing directly with Early Learning Center teachers, observing in the classrooms and suggesting new methods.

"Coaching takes teachers out of isolation," Bevere Maloney said. "Oftentimes teachers who teach in isolation think they're doing something right, but another set of eyes will now be available to give other suggestions, such as discussions about lessons. It's definitely a learning process for everyone involved."

The language development teacher, also a former Chelsea kindergarten teacher, will work directly with some students in small groups. Students selected to be in the group will be those who lack what Bevere Maloney described as alphabet awareness.

"Poverty is the number one indicator beyond second language because there's an illiteracy factor there," she said. "Hopefully the groups will be fluid, so if [children are] making progress, they'll be moved out."

Preschool instruction in Chelsea began in 1990, and in 1997 was given a central location, where more than 300 children ages 3 through 5 are enrolled. About 76 percent of Chelsea preschoolers come from low-income homes, and 85 percent from homes where English is not the first language, Frickman said.

Superintendent Thomas Kingston, who said he received notice about the award at the start of the school year from US Senator John F. Kerry and Representative Edward Markey, said it is important that Chelsea is "gaining resources to support urban education."

"In the last 20 years there's been a tremendous advance in cognitive science, in how we learn how to read. It's not natural, it has to be taught," Kingston said. "Coaches will also be able to help those children who are struggling for whatever reason break through to whatever is getting in the way of their particular struggle. Early Reading First incorporates all that new science, which isn't a fad by any means. It's a challenge in most urban districts where children don't come with the rich literacy background that some children in suburban districts have."

Although it is difficult to track the academic careers of students who attended preschool in Chelsea due to the high percentage of those who move out of the city, Kingston said that those who remain and graduate from the Chelsea school system score higher than the state average in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test.

"But the issue of a common, solid foundation and literacy is fundamental no matter where children are going to school," Kingston said, adding that the grant-funded coaches will also help teachers "reinforce their best habits and help them acquire new ones, and help them recognize barriers to instruction."

Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com.