Hey We Agree!
As an early childhood educator it comes naturally to me to be hopeful because I see potential in the eyes of students every day. When I started getting into researching and writing about early childhood policy I started to get a little more tarnished if not actually jaded. I ran into people who didn’t think pre-K was a good idea. I felt the same way my friend Marsha Ratzel, an economist turned teacher did:
“No duh is what I always want to say. I’m no EC whiz kid, but it only makes sense. After listening to a report a few years back on the long term impact of Project Head Start on people 20+ afterwards, I’m sold. What else do people need besides common sense and a little data to nudge them over the edge?”
It was a no brainer to me too but then I ran into Jo Lynne DeMary who challenged my thinking in an educational policy issues class to convince her that funding pre-K is important without only using the economic argument. She had been the State Superintendent of Virginia and even though she supported the beginning of state funded pre-K during her tenure, when it came down to money, pre-K was always the first place to look at for a cut. To her it made sense, in a pragmatic way, to invest in kids in middle school who might drop out or might not depending on what we do instead of kids who had most of their educational career ahead of them. Since then I have tried to take a different track. I have tried to tell stories about why pre-K is important and use a more palpable logic in my arguments to support pre-K. Still, it does make me happy and thankful when a respected conservative finally gets the head-slapper and agrees with most early childhood people when he says invest in pre-K. Some day I hope to personally thank Mr. Kristoff for saying this publically,
“the question isn’t whether we can afford early childhood education, but whether we can afford not to provide it. We can pay for prisons or we can pay, less, for early childhood education to help build a fairer and more equitable nation.”
I also want to take a second to thank Arne Duncan. I have had many misgivings with Mr. Duncan’s tenure as the Secretary of Education, but thankfully not as many as I had with the last Secretary of Education. Just recently Duncan’s office announced it was creating an office of Early Childhood Education and appointed Jacqueline Jones to lead it. The office will focus on supporting education Birth to age 8. I am thankful for Arne Duncan because he is the first Secretary of Education to acknowledge the critical important of early childhood by speaking at a NAEYC conference and now he has created an office in the department of education. For years public pre-K has been grant grant funded and always the first on the chopping block. This move makes it even more likely that funding for pre-K will become more systemic and embedded in state funding structures.
john i’m so excited to know that someone at the national level has recognized that early childhood is the ticket! having been an active proponent of early intervention from 1988 to 2000 in my school district, i support what you promote. things need to change……..i am hopeful that we who work with the wee ones will be able to influence policy.
jon
Dear John,
I want to come back to your challenge about how to make this argument without using economics. I’m hoping what this lady was trying to help push was putting “a real person face” on the issue.
As a receiver of elementary school students into the middle school, I can tell you it’s critical that students have a rich background of experience.
I guess it comes down to some crazy thing I read years ago when my own children were just coming into the world….they needed 10,000 experiences some article told me in order to do well in learning to read, write and ‘rithametic. So I set about trying to provide those as a mom….dragging them to museums, to tide pools, to farms, to plays, drawing with them, helping them build stuff out of boxes, finding dress up clothes so they could put on plays for me, teaching them to cook, do chores and make decisions. Jokingly I would tell their dad “OK that’s another one of the 10,000 that we can check off the list” but it probably just made me more aware that I needed to talk about the stuff we saw everyday and help them find words to describe that.
So I was a nut-so parent with the financial resources so I didn’t have to work 18 hours a day to just make it. Not everyone is in that position. And for all those kiddos, I would as a taxpayer, much rather have rich experiences in daycare (gasp) and PreK programs, than in remediation programs in middle school. It’s so hard to close a gap when you’re 11 or 12…why not do it earlier when the gap is smaller. Beyond the economics are just the humane and moral thing.
How could we (being a taxpayer) not want the best for every little kid? A few less missile programs would fund ginormous amounts of learning for 2,3 and 4 year olds.
With regard to this topic, how is it and why are people still discussing it in this day and age? As mentioned above, enriching, nourishing childcare and education seems the difference between failure to thrive, abuse by neglect and social responsibility.
Why do the people that argue the loudest about providing adequate nutrition the same people that ensure their own have access to all resources, and want others to fend for themselves ‘if they care enough’?
There’s a giant heave-ho in my State of Indiana supporting home schooling agenda and vouchers for charter schools, more waste of precious resources.
I didn’t read entirely nor thoroughly this post but I saw somewhat of a subject line on the pre-k “Headstart” program…I think…anyway, I put both of my children through this program. I felt intensely that it was a valuable resource for a young mother (at the time) to take advantage of. It offered things that were valuable as to my children’s acclimation into the school environment. They learned simple things like tying a shoe, sharing their toys, knowing their colors, addressing adults with respect. All of these things were valuable and set the tone for my children’s future success beginning with Kindergarten. I recommended it to all the new mothers I knew. I’m glad it existed. If I’m off track with this comment and I didn’t actually read anything like that, I apologize. I probably should have taken more time to read before commenting anyway, hehe.