Early Childhood Is the Foundation of Opportunity
By Katharine B. Stevens
BLOG
October 17, 2016
Early childhood is the very foundation of opportunity. Science tells us that the first years—really the first months—of life lay the groundwork for everything that follows. The compelling promise of the early childhood focus is its real potential to close the opportunity gap and significantly improve outcomes for the nation’s most disadvantaged children.
At the same time, though, we live in a world of fads—and the current fad in early childhood is pre-K. But we shouldn’t be following fads, especially in something that matters so much. We should be following what we know about early childhood development.
So what do we know? We know that children are rapidly and continuously learning, beginning at birth. We know that every environment is a learning environment for young children. And we know that we need to focus on children’s earliest years.
But what we sometimes forget is that four isn’t early.
In fact, 80% of a prekindergartner’s life occurs before he turns four. Sixty percent occurs before he turns three. And what the best science is telling us is that to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children we need to invest in that first 60% of life, to ensure that children have a strong foundation for everything that follows.
What that means is that policy must focus on prenatal health, on better care for infants and toddlers and, maybe most important, on family stability and wellbeing. That’s how we can change the trajectory of the most vulnerable children’s lives. Not by sending them to school when they’re four. In fact, what pre-K actually provides is remediation for what’s failed to occur much earlier in a child’s life.
Another thing we know is that we live in a world of limited resources. And so we have to spend them in the most effective way possible. Science clearly tells us that the earlier the intervention, the greater the impact it has, and that’s where we need to start. We have an obligation to invest first in the very youngest, most disadvantaged children, who need our help the most.
The bottom line for policy is that pre-K is too little, too late to give the most vulnerable children the strong start they need. Pre-K proponents argue that disadvantaged children deserve pre-K. But what they actually deserve is something much more important. And the growing focus on sending four-year-olds—or even three-year-olds—to school is drawing critical attention and resources away from what science tells us really matters.
We’re all here today because we know we’re facing an extraordinary chance to help the children who need it the most. Even in our current world of partisanship and gridlock, politics and science are aligning around a new understanding of how crucial children’s earliest years really are. And we now have growing across-the-aisle agreement that in order to have a shot at the American Dream, the most disadvantaged kids really need our help.
So if we follow the science, and if we do what we know is right—rather than what’s easy or politically expedient—we have an extraordinary chance to give our most vulnerable young citizens the solid foundation for equal opportunity that they need and deserve.
Remarks presented at the Childhood Opportunity Forum, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 17, 2016.
See Also
Blog ~ February 4, 2019
Op-Ed ~ October 14, 2016
Op-Ed ~ May 11, 2016