Finding a Good Preschool
Ohio Wesleyan Professor Katherine Glenn-Applegate, Ph.D., Discusses Issue in New York Times Essay
Katherine Glenn-Applegate, Ph.D.
DELAWARE, Ohio – “If an Expert in Preschool Can’t Find a Good One, Can Anyone?” asks the provocative headline of Katherine Glenn-Applegate’s new essay in The New York Times’ “Motherlode: Living the Family Dynamic” blog.
Glenn-Applegate, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of education and director of the Early Childhood Program at Ohio Wesleyan University.
She also is a former preschool teacher whose academic research interests now include preschool quality and access, and specifically, how parents and other caregivers learn about and select a preschool for their children.
Seriously, if she can’t find a good preschool, how can anyone?
But, Glenn-Applegate writes, she had to settle for less than she and her husband desired for their son’s first preschool program.
“My spouse and I went into the process of selecting a preschool over confident,” she writes in her April 1 “Motherlode” essay. “We started looking for preschools eight months before our son needed care, but the programs we contacted had wait lists of a year or more.”
Their son now is in a program that both he and his parents like, but the nation’s problematic preschool issues remain, Glenn-Applegate reports.
“All states regulate at least some preschool and child care programs, but licensing requirements are often bare bones,” she states. “Seventeen states do not require teachers to have so much as a high school degree. Twenty-one states do not require a check of the sex offender registry before hiring teachers.
“If you’re surprised, you’re not alone,” she continues. “Parents tend to overestimate government regulation of child care programs, which is to say, they assume it is reasonable.”
In the final analysis, Glenn-Applegate writes, preschool remains “a struggle bigger than we are.”
Read the OWU faculty member’s complete New York Times essay, “If an Expert in Preschool Can’t Find a Good One, Can Anyone?”
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private university offers 86 undergraduate majors and competes in 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Ohio Wesleyan combines a challenging, internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities to connect classroom theory with real-world experience. OWU’s 1,750 students represent 46 U.S. states and territories and 43 countries. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the latest President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included in the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review “best colleges” lists. Learn more at www.owu.edu.