Page 6 The Skanner August 22, 2018 BACK TO SCHOOL The MindUp program will be introduced into 120 preschool classrooms in Oregon for a five- year study on developing social- emotional skills in early learners The Skanner News ortland State Uni- versity professor Andrew Mash- burn was recently awarded a $3.3 million federal grant to imple- ment a unique program P that readies underserved preschool children for kindergarten and be- yond. Called MindUp, the program was initially started by actress Goldie Hawn’s foundation and provides supplementary 2019 THE SKANNER FOUNDATION SCHOLARSHIPS APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN curriculum to K through 8 classrooms. It also of- fers a preschool version, which Mashburn will be testing for the first time in 120 classrooms over the next five years. MindUp’s curriculum is essentially designed to assist children in de- veloping social-emotion- al and self-regulation skills. It encompasses specific activities such as focusing their attention, following instructions, cooperating with fellow students, and managing their feelings and behav- iors. Application Deadline: October 31, 2018 For more information and to download The Skanner Foundation scholarship application, go to www.theskanner.com/ foundation/scholarship Scholarships will be awarded at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast on January 21, 2019. COURTESY OF PSU PSU Professor Awarded Federal Grant for Preschool Program Andrew Mashburn, associate professor in Applied Developmental Psychology at Portland State University. As a developmental psychologist, the pro- gram is a good fit for Mashburn’s research, which focuses primar- ily on four-year-old preschoolers who are transitioning into kin- dergarten. “We know that the mo- ment when kids enter kindergarten is a really important time in their lives, and that the skills they’ve acquired up to that point – and the op- portunities they’ve been provided to develop those skills – are predic- tive of their later skills and achievements in third grade, eighth grade, and even later grades,” Mashburn told The Skan- ner. He also added that the economic returns of in- vesting early on in the lives of children has a strong payoff in the long term, when compared to addressing problems once they’ve already emerged. “My work is really about promoting the skills of young children, so that when they enter kindergarten they’re ready to go and they’re on a pathway towards success,” he said. MindUp is currently in its pilot phase, during which time Mashburn and his team will be studying the implemen- tation of the program into 10 Portland pre- schools. This includes teacher training, pro- viding curriculum and materials, individual classroom check-ins with a program mentor, and hosting group meet- ings between the schools to workshop MindUp’s progress. Beginning in the 2019- 20 school year, Mind- Up will launch its first official phase in Mult- nomah County, followed by Washington County in 2020-21, and finally Clackamas County in 2021-22. Each cohort will also have a “waitlist” con- trol group to monitor the difference between students participating in MindUp and those students who are learn- ing from their regular curriculum. After one year, the waitlist class can then employ Mind- Up’s programming. “That’s the basis by which we tell if it works,” said Mashburn. “We make those comparisons between the MindUp classrooms and the wait- list control classrooms to look at any differenc- es among the kids’ out- comes.” The study’s partici- pating classrooms will be largely comprised of social and economical- ly-disadvantaged chil- dren from a patchwork of preschools, including state and federally-fund- ed programs, as well as both not-for-profit and small for-profit class- rooms. “This is where the meat is, these are the kids that need this program the most,” Mashburn said. “So for us, the biggest bang for our buck in terms of making a differ- ence in the lives of kids entering kindergarten, would be to focus on providing resources for underserved kids and underserved preschool classrooms, which typi- cally aren’t part of pro- fessional development networks, like what we’re offering.” Poll: Support for School Choice Growing Among Republicans More than half of Republicans support charter schools, where 36 percent of Democrats do By Maria Danilova Associated Press WASHINGTON — Support for charter schools and private school voucher programs has gone up over the past year, with Republi- cans accounting for much of the increase, ac- cording to a survey published Tuesday. The findings by Education Next, a journal published by Harvard’s Kennedy School and Stanford University, come as Education Sec- retary Betsy DeVos promotes alternatives to traditional public schools. Forty-four percent of respondents in the poll conducted in May said they support the expan- sion of charter schools, compared to 39 per- cent in 2017. The gain of 5 percentage points, however, did not fully offset the drop in sup- port from 51 percent in 2016. When broken down according to party affil- iation, 57 percent of Republicans and 36 per- cent of Democrats voiced support for charter schools, compared to 47 percent of Republi- cans and 34 percent of Democrats in 2017. “Support is up among Republicans for vari- ous strategies to expand school choice, and the Trump administration’s embrace of those poli- cies is a likely explanation,” said Martin West, See POLL on page 7