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| Finally getting smart about investing in learning The Boston Globe, Op-Ed by Kathleen McCartney, March 13, 2009 EARLY-CHILDHOOD advocates are pinching themselves. Plans to invest in early childhood are now part of the Democratic and Republican platforms. More important, needed funding is coming through the stimulus package. In his recent address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama explained that "we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life." He's right. Numerous evaluation studies show that early education works. Children who attend quality early-childhood programs score higher on achievement tests, and quality is all about teaching. Young children thrive when they have sensitive and responsive teachers who offer a curriculum that is cognitively stimulating, developmentally appropriate, and engaging. There is mounting evidence that the effect of early education matters more for children with less. Eric Dearing from Boston College and I have demonstrated that poor children who attend quality early-education programs outperform other poor children on achievement tests. Some of these effects last through fifth grade. This is important from a policy perspective - given scarce resources, programs that target low-income children make the most sense. The so-called achievement gap is really a schooling gap. Everyone knows that children from poorer families and poorer communities do not receive the same education as other children. That is why property values are so highly correlated with school performance. With serious investments in early education, we could begin to level the playing field. Citizens deserve to know that investments in early education pay off. Some economists argue that programs pay for themselves and then some. For every dollar invested in early education, states would save about $4 because children would be less likely to require expensive services, including special education. Funding the status quo would be a mistake. Currently, early-education programs are supported through myriad funding streams, some administered from the Department of Education, such as Title I, and others from the Department of Health and Human Services, such as Head Start. California relies on 22 different programs to support early education. No wonder experts call the current state of early education "fantastically fragmented" or "a patchwork quilt" of programs. We need to create an early-childhood system that makes sense. Doing so will require an expansion of programs and facilities, incentives for accreditation, professional development for a mostly untrained workforce, the creation of curriculum standards and assessment tools, and hard decisions, such as: Should districts offer universal pre-kindergarten? Should Head Start and Early Head Start offer full-day programs to meet the needs of working parents? What is the role of the for-profit sector? Massachusetts is off to a good start through the creation of the Department of Early Education and Care. Its new commissioner, Sherri Killin, can't let funding streams determine policy. She will have her work cut out for her, as she prods agencies to collaborate. Obama has pledged to establish a Presidential Early Learning Council, modeled on the Illinois Early Learning Council, which he helped to create. This Council should include all stakeholders - educators, parents, researchers, advocates, and policymakers. Their task will be to design a system that is in the best interests of young children and not the best interests of the industry. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will need to provide incentives to states. When he led the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan increased access to pre-kindergarten programs to children from low-income families. It wasn't easy. As a practitioner, he understands the benefits of early education as well as the challenges. It is common for advocates to use economic arguments to justify investments of public resources in education; in today's parlance, we now hear that education increases our economic productivity and our global competitiveness. In the context of a $5 billion stimulus for early-childhood education, some will no doubt argue that investing in early education will stimulate our economy through the construction of new facilities and the creation of new jobs. All true, but there is another reason to invest in education: It is the civil rights issue of our time. Education affords each citizen access to the American dream - to pursue one's life goals through hard work and free choice. Kathleen McCartney is dean and professor of early-childhood development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. |
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