Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories on child care.
This week on the presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump took a big step out of traditional Republican territory to propose a federal solution to the high cost of child care. His plan suggests utilizing the tax code to give a break to working parents with young kids.
Introducing her father at a community center outside Philadelphia, Ivanka Trump characterized America’s current child care system as “too expensive, too outdated and too inaccessible.”
Later in the week, Ivanka Trump criticized Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for not taking action to address this problem during her decades of public service.
Sidelined with pneumonia for much of the week, Clinton said little to defend herself. However, her website offers detailed policy positions on early childhood education and includes a promise to fight for 12 weeks of paid family leave – which doubles Trump’s proposal and would apply to both fathers and mothers.
Struggling to make sense of the candidates’ proposals? Wondering why American child care looks the way it does? These articles from The Conversation’s archive will help bring you up to speed.
A patchy history
Corey Shdaimah of the University of Maryland and Elizabeth Palley of Adelphi University recently wrote this history of child care policy in the U.S. The first government funded child care was created during World War II, the scholars point out, with the country spending US$52 million to subsidize full-day child care to help support women working in the nation’s factories. But this program ended when the war did.
Reform efforts have made some progress in the decades since, but Shdaimah and Palley still see the American system as lacking:
“The U.S. is one of the few economically developed nations with a patchwork of care that fails to address the ongoing needs of families with children. Despite the fact that a majority of U.S. parents are in the paid labor force, there is a dearth of affordable quality child care.”
The authors also see reasons to feel hopeful this election cycle:
“The current interest in child care demonstrated by both major presidential candidates could provide a rare opportunity for bipartisan agreement.”
What about dads?
But what is driving the candidates’ interest in child care? Some pundits suggested that Trump’s focus is an attempt to bolster his sagging support among women – recently hovering at just 34 percent.
But Gayle Kaufman of Davidson College dismisses the idea that child care is important to women only. Writing about the findings in the first State of America’s Fathers report, Kaufman points out that “fathers are parents, too.”
Dads “are also having difficulties successfully combining work and family,” Kaufman writes, concluding with a call for “paid, non-transferable, job-protected leave.”
A young girl at a Clinton rally. Mike Blake/Reuters
Driving growth
Giving parents the ability to write off child care may have impacts beyond family finances.
In a piece for our business desk, Sarah Thebaud of University of California, Santa Barbara presents original research suggesting a surprising economic upside to providing better child care – it may provide a boost to the economy by encouraging female entrepreneurship. Thebaud writes:
“when women have access to policies like paid leave or subsidized childcare, their odds of starting a venture oriented toward economic growth and job creation are higher. When they don’t, their odds are lower.”
Paid leave may be good for the economy, but could help affording better child care make America’s parents happier?
Matthew Johnson of SUNY tells us research shows that kids kill romance – but that’s one problem that politicians are unlikely to be able to solve.
In what might be the most contentious election campaign season yet, the main presidential candidates seem to agree on at least one issue – that the policy around child care for American families needs improvement.
Donald Trump has said he would expand tax credits to enable families to better afford child care, and Hillary Clinton has expressed her commitment to expanding access to high-quality, affordable child care.
We are professors and researchers of social policy. We too struggled to find and afford high-quality care for our children. Our difficulties led us to examine U.S. child care policy in “In Our Hands: The Struggle for U.S. Child Care Policy.” Like us, most families in the U.S. struggle to find quality, affordable child care.
The U.S. has a long history of child care policy initiatives. What can we learn from history to improve the possibility of creating a national child care policy that works?
The early years
U.S. child care began as a charity enterprise in the late 19th century when settlement houses – which provided services and education in poor communities – opened nurseries to keep the children of factory workers in urban industrial centers safe while their mothers toiled.
The first government-sponsored child care was not created until the World War II era. During that time the iconic symbol of a working woman, Rosie the Riveter, was created as part of a propaganda campaign to encourage women to join the paid labor force to assist in the war effort.
Legislation known as the Lanham Act was passed to support the war industry. As part of this legislation, US$52 million was provided from 1943-1946 to subsidize high-quality, full-day, year-round child care for up to six days a week.
The child care supported by these funds enabled women to work when their country needed them. It was short-lived. This funding ended in 1946 and women were sent home to give up their jobs to returning veterans.
Federal policies post war
Until the mid 1960s – close to 20 years – child care did not receive much attention. In 1965, the early childhood program Head Start was created to support part-time preschool programs for low-income children between three and five years old.
This program was part of President Lyndon Johnson’s effort to address some of the educational gaps experienced by economically disadvantaged children when they began school. Head Start continues today. Its programs have been expanded to include support for pregnant women and low-income children from birth to age three as well as children with disabilities.
Need for child care grew as more women entered the workforce. Donnie Ray Jones, CC BY
Feminists, unions and employers came together to support the legislation. These proponents used arguments that noted the unfairness of forcing parents to choose between work and family obligations.
veto, Nixon played on Cold War fears that public child care would “Sovietize” American families. He said it would,
“commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.”
The 1980s
For over 30 years following Nixon’s veto, little effort was made to create broad national policies to address the universal child care needs of U.S. families.
For example, in 1988 the Act for Better Childcare Services (ABC), a less comprehensive bill, was introduced by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd and Republican Senator John Chafee to address the child care needs of low-income families.
During the legislative hearings for ABC, advocates, including parents, state legislators and administrators, and representatives of both liberal and conservative interest groups pointed to the growing body of research that showed the importance of quality education on childhood development. They also argued that workers who had stable child care would be more productive and less likely to leave their jobs.
Initially, this bill passed both chambers of Congress. Due to technical difficulties, however, it needed to pass the House again. Instead of returning the bill to the House, a series of compromises led to the creation of the Child Care Development Block Care Grant, which provided funds to states for child care for low-income families. More recently, funds have also been provided to improve safety and quality of child care.
However, both had limitations. The funds that were provided through PRWORA supported only the child care needs of low-income families.
While the FMLA is not limited by income level, it provides only 12 weeks of unpaid leave for parents who adopt or give birth to a child, as well as for parents or guardians caring for sick relatives, including children (or themselves). These benefits are available only to employees who have worked 1,250 hours in the past 12 months for companies that employ at least 50 employees.
With the exception of some minimal tax credits that were created in the 1950s and have not kept pace with inflation, existing federal child care policies (as discussed above) only help parents in temporary and extreme circumstances: birth, ill health and temporary poverty. They do not meet the regular and ongoing needs of working families.
A window of opportunity?
Child care needs cut across gender, race, socioeconomic status, party lines, geography and ideologies. The current interest in child care demonstrated by both major presidential candidates could provide a rare opportunity for bipartisan agreement.
What can we learn from this history?
In this election, both Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump have issued public statements indicating that their parents understand that government has a role to play in helping parents access child care.
Advocates need to develop a broad-based support, which includes hearing all voices, such as those of child care workers. U.S. Army, CC BY
History also tells us that unless we can come together to create a universal policy that will serve all American families, we may be left with one more piece in a patchwork of policies that fails to address the overarching needs of most working families.
We believe there is a window of opportunity to develop broad-based support not only across party lines but across sectors – business, faith organizations, feminists, employers and unions.
Advocates could take advantage of this. A coalition, cutting across party lines, could work together to create a clear agenda around child care policy. Child care providers have been an undervalued low-wage workforce for far too long. They too need to be heard, as they are an important voice within this coalition.
The question is, this time around, could a divided Congress be persuaded to cooperate around this shared issue despite a history of gridlock?
Tens of thousands of American schools have some form of school garden. Many are located on school grounds and others are run by external community partners. Most are connected to the school’s curriculum. For instance, seeds are used in science class to explain plant biology, fruits are used in social studies to teach world geography and the harvest is used in math to explore weights and measures. Some even incorporate food from the garden into the school lunch.
As a researcher and an activist, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade working to promote a healthy, equitable and sustainable food system. Through this process, I have heard bold claims made about the power of garden-based learning to meet these challenges.
School gardens claim a variety of benefits.
Given the enthusiasm that surrounds garden-based learning today, it’s worth taking stock of their overall impacts: Do school gardens actually improve the education and health of young people?
Promoting school gardens
School gardens have become a favorite strategy of prominent advocates in the “Good Food Movement.” Both celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and First Lady Michelle Obama have been vocal supporters.
Nonprofit and grassroots groups, who see these gardens as a way to provide fresh produce for the food insecure, have forged partnerships with local schools. Then there are service-based groups, such as FoodCorps, whose members spend one year in a low-income community to help establish gardens and develop other school food initiatives.
Philanthropic organizations like the American Heart Association have also sponsored the construction of hundreds of new school garden plots.
Taken together, upwards of 25 percent of public elementary schools in the United States include some form of garden-based learning. School garden projects are located in every region of the country and serve students of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic classes.
Many proponents go even further, suggesting that garden-based learning can inspire a variety of healthy changes for the whole family, helping to reverse the so-called obesity epidemic.
Others, like Edible Schoolyard founder Alice Waters, argue that experience in the garden can have a transformative impact on a child’s worldview, making sustainability “the lens through which they see the world.”
Sure, gardens can help
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that garden-based learning does yield educational, nutritional, ecological and social benefits.
For example, several published studies have shown that garden-based learning can increase students’ science knowledge and healthy food behaviors. Other research has shown that garden-based learning can help students better identify different types of vegetables as well as lead to more favorable opinions on eating vegetables.
In general, qualitative case studies of garden-based learning have been encouraging, providing narratives of life-changing experiences for children and teachers alike.
Do gardens improve the intake of fresh foods and fruit? RubyDW, CC BY
However, when it comes to actually increasing the amount of fresh foods eaten by young people, improving their health outcomes or shaping their overall environmental attitudes, quantitative results have tended to show modest gains at best. Some of the most highly developed school garden programs have been able to increase student vegetable consumption by about a serving per day. But the research has not been able to show whether these gains are maintained over time.
A lack of definitive evidence has led some critics to argue that school gardens are simply not worth the time and investment, especially for lower-income students who could be concentrating on more traditional college prep studies.
The social critic Caitlin Flanagan has gone so far as to say that garden programs are a distraction that could create a “permanent, uneducated underclass.”
There are no magic carrots
There is no doubt that the power of garden-based learning is sometimes overstated.
Particularly when describing garden projects in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, popular narratives imply that a child’s time in the garden will rescue her from a life of poverty and chronic disease.
I call this the “magic carrot” approach to garden-based learning. But as we all know, there are no magic carrots growing in the school garden.
For gardens to effectively promote learning and health, they must be supported and reinforced by the community as a whole. Surveys of school garden practitioners show that garden programs have serious potential to enhance school and neighborhood life – but only if certain conditions are met.
Notably, school gardens are most successful when they are not held afloat by a single dedicated teacher. Instead, multiple involved stakeholders can ensure that a garden doesn’t dry up after only a season or two.
For example, participation from administrators, families and neighborhood partners can turn a school garden into a dynamic and sustainable community hub.
Many experienced practitioners have also shown that garden-based learning is more powerful when its curriculum reflects the cultural backgrounds of the young people it serves. When children of Mexican descent grow indigenous varieties of corn, or when African-American youth cultivate collard greens, the process of growing food can become a process of self-discovery and cultural celebration.
In other words, if kids grow kale, they might eat kale, but only if kale is available in their neighborhood, if their family can afford to buy kale and if they think eating kale is relevant to their culture and lifestyle.
Creating valuable green space
As my own research has highlighted, there are organizations and schools across the country that incorporate garden-based learning into broader movements for social, environmental and food justice.
These groups recognize that school gardens alone will not magically fix the problems our nation faces. But as part of a long-term movement to improve community health, school gardens can provide a platform for experiential education, create valuable green space and foster a sense of empowerment in the minds and bodies of young Americans.
Children across the U.S. have now returned to school. Many of these children are going to schools with sworn police officers patrolling the hallways. These officers, usually called school resource officers, are placed in schools across the country to help maintain school safety.
According to the most recent data reported by the Department of Education, police or security guards were present in 76.4 percent of U.S. public high schools in the 2009-2010 school year.
In many of these schools, police officers are being asked to deal with a range of issues that are very different from traditional policing duties, such as being a mental health counselor for a traumatized child. This is an unfair request.
Days after the recent tragedy in Dallas, for example, as he grieved for the five slain officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown referred to this problem when he said,
“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country… Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it. … Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops. … ”
For the past decade I have been studying how we police schools and punish students. My recent book, “The Real School Safety Problem,” and a growing bodyof other studies point to the fact that, indeed, schools ask police to do too much in schools.
Not only is it unfair to the police, it can be harmful for children.
Policing schools
Though there are no national data collected on exactly how many police officers are in schools, estimates suggest that the practice became popular in the early 1990s, as society began to rethink policing and punishment in the community outside of schools. That resulted in more rigorous policing practices and expansion of our prison system.
However, for over 20 years, school crime has been plummeting. Between 1993 and 2010 the number of students who reportedly became victims of a violent crime at school decreased by 82 percent. Since most schools are now safe places, officers in them aren’t needed to respond to many crimes.
So they are being asked to do many other tasks.
Most schools are safe places, so officers are asked to do other tasks. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
There are no national data on what officers do while at schools. But studies in specific schools find that officers are being asked to deal with mental health problems, family crises, self-injurious behavior and manifestation of childhood trauma. They also mentor students and teach law-related courses.
Every jurisdiction makes its own decision about what officers should do in schools, and the training that they should receive to work in schools. The National Association of School Resource Officers does offer a week-long basic training course. That training does include a component on counseling and mentoring youth, but it is not clear how comprehensive the sessions are. Moreover, not all officers are required to take the course.
But students’ mental health and other problems are, not surprisingly, often beyond the skills gained from a week-long course. Even if they are trained, police officers are not mental health professionals whose years of training and practice teach them how to calm youth down, assess mental health needs and address the underlying causes of student misbehavior.
What are the consequences?
I have found in my prior research that the presence of officers can change the school environment in subtle ways – from one that focuses on children’s social, emotional and academic needs to one focusing on policing potentialcriminals.
For example, in one school I observed what happened when a student overdosed on multiple bottles of cough syrup. Rather than the school seeing this as a mental health issue or suicide attempt, the school turned to its “go to” person for handling difficult student issues: the officer.
After dealing with the initial emergency and ensuring the child went to the hospital, the officer’s (and thus the school’s) only response was to investigate what crime the child could be charged with, not what help he needed.
Other research, too, shows that the presence of police in schools can result in increased arrests of students for minor behaviors. For example, a 2013 study by criminologists Chongmin Na and Denise C. Gottfredson found that schools that added police officers subsequently saw more weapons and drug crimes, and a larger number of minor offenses reported to the police.
A 2016 study by University of Florida law professor Jason P. Nance found that the presence of a police officer predicted greater likelihood that student misbehaviors would result in an arrest.
Who gets hurt?
Childhood trauma is often a cause of serious childhood misconduct. Black and Latino students are at a greater risk than white students of having experienced childhood trauma. Youth of color are also more likely than white youth to attend schools with police officers. This means that students of color, who may have greater need for mental health care than white youth, are instead dealt with by police officers who are untrained or insufficiently trained in responding to trauma.
African-American boys are arrested at school more often than other students. North Charleston, CC BY-SA
It is therefore not surprising that recent research from the University of Chicago Consortium found that the arrest rate in Chicago for African-American boys was twice as high as that for students in the school district, overall.
Policing can be counterproductive
Police officers in schools often serve as mentors and role models. For example, the officer I described above – who looked to charge a potentially suicidal student with a crime – had volunteered to work in a school because of his desire to help kids. He took time to advise youth and be a positive influence in the lives of many. Often students would come to his office to ask for advice, and just “check in.” He would respond with care and compassion.
Though there is no sound evidence that police officers in schools prevent crime, it would be reasonable in my view to place officers in those few schools where there is violence. Despite steep declines in school violence, nationally, there are some schools where teachers and students face frequent threats of violence.
Having said that, the cost of the daily presence of police outweighs the benefit in the majority of schools. For example, the officer I describe above as a caring counselor and role model switched roles dramatically when he thought a crime might have been committed.
Then he would act like any traditional officer focused only on law and order. In those moments, he failed to address the underlying cause of the problem. By relying on him as the primary responder to student problems, the school replaced a focus on social issues and mental health with a focus on law enforcement.
The result is that children do not receive the help they need, and officers are placed in a no-win position by being asked to respond to students’ needs as if they had the same training as a mental health professional.
The fact is, policing alone cannot solve all societal problems.
Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs studied 1,000 3-and 4-year-olds enrolled in 11 Chicago schools. Students who attended preschool seven hours a day were compared to those who attended three hour programs, then tested at the commencement of preschool to see if they were socially and academically prepared to begin kindergarten.
The study found 59 percent of the students enrolled in the half-day program to be ready compared to 81 percent of the all-day preschool attendees.
In the fall of 2012, 78 percent of white students were prepared to enter kindergarten compared to 74 percent of black children and 62 percent of Native American and Hispanic students.
Early childhood education advocates say the results how Minnesota should invest in more preschool programs, and believe this move could help minimize the achievement gap between white students and minority students.
The study’s lead author Arthur Reynolds feels that the state should consider funding all-day preschool programs so all students are ready to learn when they enter school.
Last year, $40 million in funding for pre-K scholarships was approved for low- income families. Thanks to those dollars 5,800 students were able to attend preschool, but as many as 15,000 more students still need access to pre-K scholarships.
The importance of early childhood education cannot be stressed enough. This study goes to prove how important classroom hours are to best prepare students for kindergarten and the school years to follow. I am glad to see Minnesota contributed $40 million to pre-K last year, and hope the state can find ways to add even more dollars to help additional low-income families send their children to preschool.
President Obama has been vocal about his belief that a publicly-funded universal preschool initiative is necessary to give American children an academic advantage before ever setting foot in a Kindergarten classroom. A poll conducted by the bipartisan team of Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies found that 70 percent of respondents were in full support of a universal preschool plan as long as it did not contribute to the national deficit. Sixty percent of the Republicans polled supported the plan, despite its close ties with the Democratic Chief. It is clear that average Americans, despite party affiliation, are supportive of essentially extending the public school system to include preschool-aged students – but should K-12 educators be on board?
On paper, universal preschool seems like it would provide a definite boost to the K-12 academic initiatives that follow. Children with an earlier start in school settings should hypothetically have a stronger knowledge base before Kindergarten and be further developed in the social aspects that accompany the school years, and life beyond them. Common sense would dictate that adding a one-year option for preschool would lead to higher achievement throughout the K-12 journey, but the facts actually contradict this stance.
Studies of federal early education programs, like Head Start, have found that kids entrenched in academics early on show little to no academic advantages compared to kids that started school later. The positive academic impact of early education programs is non-existent by fifth grade. Further, state-based preschool campaigns in states like Oklahoma reveal no real long-term critical thinking or social advantages for the students.
The idea that setting kids in a school environment earlier than Kindergarten leads to better, smarter students is flawed – if just the results of these studies are to be trusted.
So then what is with the push for this universal preschool? Critics of the plan say it is just a way to add more education jobs, particularly since proponents want to insist that states accepting federal preschool dollars pay preschool teachers at the same rate as elementary ones.
The plan has also been accused of being a federally-funded childcare angle meant to help alleviate the cost woes of working parents along with giving kids a jump on academics. Predictably, this ruffles the feathers of constituents who are already leery of Obama’s so-called “socialist agenda” and the government having too much control over family affairs. Both claims are a stretch, in my opinion, and not the real issues that need to be discussed when it comes to the worthiness of universal preschool.
The real question that needs to be answered is whether or not starting kids earlier, across the board, will have a measurable impact on the success of American students throughout their careers. This answer comes with a host of complications though. What specific gains will constitute “success” in a universal preschool initiative? Higher standardized test scores? Better graduation rates? More graduates who go on to earn math and science degrees? Laying out a preschool plan that does not spell out any goals, or steps for achievement, is like sowing seeds haphazardly in a field and hoping something comes to fruition.
The second question should be: If implemented, how long will it take to see potential improvements? At what grade level will universal preschool benefits materialize – or at what age do educators stop hoping to see any positive impact?
Education is a right for all children but the how and when of that learning is muddy. Universal preschool may be the boost American children need to regain some academic ground on the world stage – or it may prove to be a better idea in theory than practice.What are your thoughts on publicly funded universal preschool?
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama brought up the topic of universal Pre-K learning and praised the programs already in place in states like Florida, South Carolina and New Jersey. He connected Pre-K initiatives to his Race to the Top program that has the lofty goal of making the U.S. the worldwide leader in college attendees and graduates. His administration contends that the academic skill sets needed to reach that goal must have their foundation before Kindergarten and that the responsibility for that lies in public funding.
From an educator’s point of view, I’d say the President and his education advisors are right on. It’s no secret that the U.S. lags behind other developed nations when it comes to academics, particularly in areas like science and math. To compete as a nation on a global scale, this generation of K-12 (or P-12) students simply need to know more than their parents did as children. This fact has led to some passionate discourse both for and against more stringent academic standards that start in early childhood and extend into the college years.
Admittedly, universal Pre-K programs tend to benefit disadvantaged and at-risk students the most. Children from middle-to-high class socioeconomic backgrounds do not feel the positive effects of preschool as strongly as their low-income and minority peers. In families where at least one parent can be home with children in the early years, and able to do basic learning activities with them, the impact of Pre-K programs are virtually non-existent by the time the child is in mid-elementary school. Children that participate in play-oriented preschool programs but have attentive parents that expose them to minimal learning fare just as well, or better than, peers who attend regimented Pre-K programs.
Of course academics are not the only benefit to Pre-K programs.
Socialization and an idea of what to expect when the school years come along are also an integral part of the Pre-K process. Kindergarten used to be an adjustment year for children, but now kids who arrive in these classrooms are expected to know much more. Common Core standards exist at the Kindergarten level, with the expectation that these students will know how to read simple sentences competently, do basic addition and subtraction problems and understand basic time concepts. States that already have tax-funded Pre-K programs test Kindergartners and report back to the preschool provider the results. In some cases, future funding rests on whether or not the Pre-K program adequately prepared enough students for the academic rigors of Kindergarten.
So then the question becomes one of impact. Will universal learning at a younger age make a big enough difference long-term to justify the added cost and resources? How much time do children really need to learn what they will need to know to compete globally?
Parents seem to be split on the issue, with one side affirming the need for stronger academic standards and the other side bemoaning the difficulty of material their young children bring home from school. Districts throughout the country have listened to parents’ complaints when it comes to implementation of all-day Kindergarten (versus the traditional half-days) and some parents have even decided to homeschool their children because they so strongly disagree with the academic rigor. Given this cultural climate, I wonder what is to be expected when more states roll out Pre-K programs? Right now it is voluntary for families – but will that always be the case?
Is universal Pre-K a necessity – and if so, are American educators, parents and young students really ready for it?
President Obama has been vocal about his belief that a publicly-funded universal preschool initiative is necessary to give American children an academic advantage before ever setting foot in a Kindergarten classroom. A poll conducted by the bipartisan team of Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies found that 70 percent of respondents were in full support of a universal preschool plan as long as it did not contribute to the national deficit. Sixty percent of the Republicans polled supported the plan, despite its close ties with the Democratic Chief. It is clear that average Americans, despite party affiliation, are supportive of essentially extending the public school system to include preschool-aged students – but should K-12 educators be on
On paper, universal preschool seems like it would provide a definite boost to the K-12 academic initiatives that follow. Children with an earlier start in school settings should hypothetically have a stronger knowledge base before Kindergarten and be further developed in the social aspects that accompany the school years, and life beyond them. Common sense would dictate that adding a one-year option for preschool would lead to higher achievement throughout the K-12 journey, but the facts actually contradict this stance.
Studies of federal early education programs, like Head Start, have found that kids entrenched in academics early on show little to no academic advantages compared to kids that started school later. The positive academic impact of early education programs is non-existent by fifth grade. Further, state-based preschool campaigns in states like Oklahoma reveal no real long-term critical thinking or social advantages for the students.
The idea that setting kids in a school environment earlier than Kindergarten leads to better, smarter students is flawed – if just the results of these studies are to be trusted.
So then what is with the push for this universal preschool? Critics of the plan say it is just a way to add more education jobs, particularly since proponents want to insist that states accepting federal preschool dollars pay preschool teachers at the same rate as elementary ones.
The plan has also been accused of being a federally-funded childcare angle meant to help alleviate the cost woes of working parents along with giving kids a jump on academics. Predictably, this ruffles the feathers of constituents who are already leery of Obama’s so-called “socialist agenda” and the government having too much control over family affairs. Both claims are a stretch, in my opinion, and not the real issues that need to be discussed when it comes to the worthiness of universal preschool.
The real question that needs to be answered is whether or not starting kids earlier, across the board, will have a measurable impact on the success of American students throughout their careers. This answer comes with a host of complications though. What specific gains will constitute “success” in a universal preschool initiative? Higher standardized test scores? Better graduation rates? More graduates who go on to earn math and science degrees? Laying out a preschool plan that does not spell out any goals, or steps for achievement, is like sowing seeds haphazardly in a field and hoping something comes to fruition.
The second question should be: If implemented, how long will it take to see potential improvements? At what grade level will universal preschool benefits materialize – or at what age do educators stop hoping to see any positive impact?
Education is a right for all children but the how and when of that learning is muddy. Universal preschool may be the boost American children need to regain some academic ground on the world stage – or it may prove to be a better idea in theory than practice.
What are your thoughts on publicly funded universal preschool?
