Happy Monday! There have been a few great stories last week that we missed blogging about due to our move, as well as over the weekend, so let's dig in. 

In case you missed it, the Washington Post's Wonkbook blog on Friday featured an in-depth Q&A with our Executive Director HyeSook Chung on the tremendous feat of blended Pre-K in DC Public Schools. Sure, it's a wonky topic, but the blog is called Wonkbook, and as the title of the post points out, this is a great opportunity for the District to serve as a national model for early learning--and yet so far, very few people know about it. 

HyeSook's interview with Dylan Matthews was one of a series he did last week talking to national experts on child care and Pre-K policy. Check out his interview with Danielle Ewen, director of child care and early education policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), in which she argues that "Head Start works." Her argument is the same as ours--we need to do more to sustain the gains that children get from Head Start through the early years of school, but decades of research have shown that Head Start itself works. You can't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Ewen also discusses the flexibility of Title I funds to pay for comprehensive services for low-income children, and the promise of the Early Learning Challenge Fund, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan has likened to a Race to the Top for chiid care and pre-K. But so far this idea has not bubbled to the top in the debate over ESEA reauthorization.

If you have more time this morning, or perhaps during your lunch break, you can get engrossed in this fascinating look at preschool depression in the New York Times magazine. It is heartbreaking to read about children carrying such a heavy burden, in some cases, for seemingly no reason--they have attentive, caring parents, concerned teachers and an untroubled home life. It's incredible to me that it took so long for child psychiatrists and psychologists to accept the fact that very young children can be clinically depressed and need treatment. 

The article sheds new light on the potential effect of maternal depression on young children, underscoring the importance of further research focusing on childhood development from zero to three. 

As the author points out, preschool depression is complicated by the fact that young children do not have ways to communicate their emotions effectively: "Unfortunately there is little that young children can tell us directly about what they are going through. Preschoolers not only lack the linguistic sophistication to describe the experience, but they’re also still learning what emotions are."

But now that there is growing understanding and acceptance of what's being called preschool depression, what are the implications? Some experts fear that it could be over-diagnosed and treated with medication that may have dangerous side effects, just as we saw with ADHD.