Adding Young Children to the Federal Agenda

Abstract

At first, my reaction to the Obama Administration's focus on early childhood education was ho-hum. Do those upstarts in the White House know how long that's been on the agenda? Or, maybe this administration is serious about change and making government do right. The welfare of very young children was a federal concern through most of the last century in a fragmented way. The old Children's Bureau focused on child labor laws and health issues, but it wasn't until the Nixon Administration that specific proposals came forth to add early childhood education to the nation's priorities. Attention to early childhood education flared again when the first President Bush and the nation's governors convened the National Education Summit at the end of the 1980s and adopted national education goals with a commitment to ensuring that all children would be ready for school. This created a demand for research, specific attention to desired outcomes, and greater attention at the state level to early childhood education. Not long after, governors who led the Education Commission of the States and the National Governors Association adopted early education as a policy priority. Besides the moral imperative, economics was another factor that pushed political leaders to endorse early childhood education. Several leading economists on the right as well as the left, politically, concluded that investing in early childhood education would yield benefits far more significant than other education reforms. High-quality preschool programs, the economists argue, could bring from $4 to $10 in future benefits for every dollar invested, largely because children with strong supports early in life do better in school and are more likely to be gainfully employed later. Despite research evidence and strong advocacy, early childhood education has languished in recent years. Investments in young children at the federal level decreased during the last Bush Administration, and while more and more states have added three- and four-year-olds to their preschool agenda, funding programs at a level that can provide high quality, not just quantity, has proven to be a real struggle. The Obama Administration pledges to make quality a priority, while it also expands Head Start and other early childhood programs, for a total of $10 billion more in this area. At the time of this writing, early childhood education is part of the economic stimulus plan, but that could mean more of a jobs program than a high-quality addition to the education system. A quick infusion of money into early childhood education is welcome, but to be true to its pledges for real change, the Administration needs to seize the moment with an aha approach that would reverberate throughout the education reform community. Early childhood education could be the catalyst to take education reforms into new, more exciting areas--if the investments are based on sound practices and bold ideas. The Obama plan could insist on high quality. We know what young children need in institutional settings--small classes, qualified teachers, and attention to the array of needs of growing children, including social behavior as well as cognitive learning. The controversy of the last few years over using standardized accountability measures to judge the quality of early childhood education programs needs to be set aside. …