Pre-K Isn’t Enough
By Katharine B. Stevens
OP-ED
September 1, 2015
Save the Children Action Network – the new political arm of Save the Children, a century-old child welfare organization – recently launched a campaign to make early childhood education a central issue in the 2016 presidential election, "call[ing] on elected leaders to prioritize a child's early years and give all kids a bright future." It is now running ads in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, promoting "access to high-quality early learning opportunities" for disadvantaged children in the critical years of birth through age four.
The group is in step with the American public, which is widely supportive of increased attention to early childhood as key to giving all kids a fair opportunity to succeed in school and life. Last month, a voter poll conducted for Save the Children in five battleground states found that 87 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of independents, and 94 percent of Democrats believe the years from birth through age four are "extremely" or "very" important to the learning, growth and development of young children. In a July 2014 national poll conducted for the First Five Years Fund, 85 percent of voters said that ensuring that children get a strong start in life is important, ranked second in importance only to increasing jobs and economic growth. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents, and 93 percent of Democrats said they favor building better and more accessible preschool services.
But it's important to remember that "preschool" means the entire five years before children enter kindergarten at age five. And while a year of pre-K can be helpful for many children, too often focus gets diverted from improving early learning for disadvantaged young children to promoting universal pre-K for all four-year-olds. (For one recent example, see Minnesota's story here.) Helping poor kids get a fair start in life is a very different goal than providing an additional year of free school for everyone. Here are three reasons that allowing politicians to exploit the "equal opportunity" narrative to promote universal pre-K is a big mistake.
First, the four years before pre-K are absolutely essential for children's healthy development. Gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged children begin emerging before children's first birthday, and for the most disadvantaged children nine months of pre-K at age four is simply too little too late. From birth, children are rapidly and continuously learning, wherever they are and from whomever they're with, and the early experiences of infants and toddlers lay critically important groundwork for the rest of their lives. Young children's healthy development depends on the quality of the environments they spend the most time in, which are largely home and child care. Improving those environments is what's most important, not increasing the number of four-year-olds attending the public schools.
Second, as I've written elsewhere, the K-12 public schools have a very poor track record with disadvantaged children. Only 29 percent of low-income fourth graders are proficient in reading and 25 percent in math. Among African-American fourth graders, just 18 percent are proficient in reading and 18 percent in math. Despite their dismal performance with America's neediest children, however, K-12 school stakeholders appear pretty eager to add an additional grade onto the 13 they're already struggling to manage. In fact, the pre-K push often seems to be as much about boosting the K-12 schools as it is about improving the life chances of poor children.
In 2011, for example, a collaboration of the two national teachers unions along with five leading national organizations of local and state K-12 school administrators issued a report arguing that more federal funding for public pre-K is critical in part because the "increasing involvement of schools in early childhood … lays the foundation for broader [school] reform … [and] is a powerful tool for improving our education system." It's understandable that K-12 stakeholders are focused on shoring up their enterprise. But relying on the public schools to provide high quality early education to the very population they've long been unsuccessful in serving just doesn't make sense. If our real goal is to change the life trajectory of America's most vulnerable children, it seems unlikely that starting them in failing schools a year earlier is the best approach.
Finally, universal pre-K advocacy is not strategically harmless. While most Americans are increasingly enthusiastic about improving the well-being of the country's most disadvantaged children, many are decisively opposed to adding yet another grade to the public schools. So pushing universal pre-K actually undermines growing public and political receptivity to what matters most: focusing more attention, and resources, on helping at-risk young children get a strong start in life.
Save the Children Action Network is making an important contribution by highlighting the importance of early learning as one of the most promising ways to advance opportunity for all children no matter the circumstances of their birth. But permitting self-interested political actors to hijack the early learning agenda for the purpose of expanding the K-12 schools would damage valuable bipartisan support for increasing access to high-quality early learning for poor kids and ultimately fail to help the children who need it the most.
See Also
Blog ~ August 3, 2015
Op-Ed ~ June 10, 2016
Op-Ed ~ April 26, 2016