Kids need quality preschools
Political Washington, D.C., was understandably fixated on the outcome of the June 6 congressional race in San Diego as a harbinger for November’s elections. But the defeat of California’s Proposition 82 could end up being more important for the country’s future.
Proposition 82 would have committed America’s largest state to provide preschool education for all its 4-year-olds. It was rejected by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent.
That’s important because a mounting body of academic evidence shows that investment in quality early childhood education would be America’s surest way of closing a growing opportunity gap between its social classes — a gap likely to grow wider as the globalized economy places ever-greater emphasis on high skills.
After reviewing numerous studies for the book “Opportunity in America,” to be published in September with Princeton University, Brookings Institution scholar Isabel Sawhill told me this week that “the place where you’re likely to get the biggest bang for the buck is making investments in children from less-advantaged families.”
She explained, “They start out way behind even before they enter school and they stay there. These gaps persist through the school years. If you don’t deal with them before they enter school, you’re stuck with a very stratified society.”
Two long articles last week in The Wall Street Journal and The Economist showed the U.S. poverty rate, 10.5 percent, is the same as it was in 1979 (after dipping to 9 percent in 1999) and that the median wage of American workers has risen by less than 1 percent since 2001, despite roaring productivity gains.
And Census Bureau data shows that median household income for the top 20 percent of families was 14 times that for the bottom 20 percent in 2000. By 2004, it was 14.8 times higher, suggesting growing inequality.
Another approach to closing the opportunity gap is that of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is trying to end what’s been described as a “silent epidemic” of high drop-out rates from high school — about 30 percent of all students, and nearly 50 percent for blacks and Hispanics.
According to the current issue of Education Week, Gates-funded research shows that dropouts earn 34 percent less than graduates and 132 percent less than college graduates do and are four times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed, on welfare and to serve time in prison.
The Gates foundation has devoted $2 billion to improving U.S. education so far and has embarked on a program to infuse a new “three Rs” into high school — rigor, relevance and mentor relationships — to improve graduation rates and prepare graduates for college and skilled jobs.
Of course, those sums are dwarfed by the $530 billion that the United States spends per year on elementary and secondary education, including $13 billion in federal funds to help poor children.
But, according to Sawhill, “Education at every level tends to perpetuate rather than compensate for existing inequalities. Besides giving children their genes, well-off parents give them good preschool preparation, a bigger property tax base for their public schools and, on average, much better chances for admission to quality higher education.?
U.S. community colleges create opportunities, but Sawhill said the research shows that quality early childhood education — better than what’s now available in the federal Head Start program — would pay the biggest dividends.
Which is why the failure of Proposition 82 is so dispiriting. Nationally, 65 percent of parents with college degrees enroll their children in preschool, compared with 34 percent for those who didn’t graduate from high school, and 50 percent who did.
To make America really a land of opportunity, both parties should put it on their agenda to start educating kids at age 3.
Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.