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by Rima
Shore, The Pew Charitable Trusts, December 2002
Original URL:
http://www.pewtrusts.org
The feedback from focus groups surprised public opinion researchers in
Massachusetts. “We recently gathered groups of parents and grandparents of
young children who are voters in this state,” says Strategies for Children
President Margaret Blood. “We asked them at what age should a child’s
education begin.” The researchers expected that most would mention
kindergarten. But one hundred percent thought that education must begin
earlier.
The notion that learning is truly lifelong, beginning in the earliest
weeks and months of life, has begun to saturate public consciousness, says
Blood. More people are aware of the fact that, while learning continues
throughout the human lifespan, the early years hold special opportunities
and risks.
Like many of her colleagues in the early childhood field, Blood credits
scientists with drawing attention to early learning by illuminating the
extent and nature of young children’s brain development. Since the 1970s,
researchers have used computer-based neuro-imaging techniques to study how
and when young children’s brains develop. They have found that, at birth,
infants’ brains are unfinished. Newborns have nearly all of the neurons
they will need for a lifetime of learning, but most are unconnected. As
they grow, children begin to develop the complex neural networks needed to
reason, plan and master symbolic systems like language or math.
The connections that form these networks, however, do not happen
automatically. They depend on stimulation--the sensory experiences and
interpersonal contact that children have from their earliest days.
Anthropologists note that other primates are born with brains that are
further along in their development. Human babies have “ecological
brains”--brains that develop in contact with the world around them and
with the people who care for them. And that helps to explain why, as a
species, we have such an immense capacity to learn from our experiences
and adapt to many settings and circumstances.
In fact, a convergence of research from several disciplines has
demonstrated how and why the early years matter. The testimony comes not
only from neuroscience, but also from developmental psychology, cognitive
science, biochemistry, psycholinguistics and other fields.
All of this evidence has been exhaustively reviewed by an eminent panel of
scientists convened by the National Research Council and presented in From
Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development
(2000). This report also summarized research showing the positive effects
of high-quality early learning programs.
These findings have prompted a reconsideration of how we educate our
children. Given the importance of the first years of life, and given the
positive effects of good early education programs, does it make sense to
wait until children reach the age of five or six to begin making
significant public investments in their development and learning? As a
matter of public policy, should our nation expand access to good early
learning programs to all preschoolers, rather than limiting eligibility to
those with special economic or educational need?
These questions are not new. Chances are they were much on the minds of
the forebears of the focus group members gathered by Strategies for
Children. As early as the ’20s, middle-class parents in Massachusetts were
realizing that their own sons and daughters could benefit from the early
learning programs originally designed for disadvantaged children.
Education experts were expressing strong support for preschools in
national magazines. And by the ’30s, it is estimated that nearly 40
percent of three-year-olds in Massachusetts attended preschools, both
private and public. And I’m talking about the 1830’s!
At first, these “infant schools” received favorable press coverage. But a
backlash followed. Critics charged that, in their desire to produce
prodigies, parents were unconscionably pushing their children. In 1833,
the noted psychiatrist Amariah Brigham attacked early learning programs,
arguing “that very often in attempting to call forth and cultivate the
intellectual faculties of children before they are six or seven years of
age, serious and lasting injury has been done both to the body and the
mind. . . .”
Similar views were repeated in many childrearing manuals, influencing
generations of parents and, over time, the design of our nation’s
educational system. Science has refuted Brigham’s approach to early
childhood development and learning; and, importantly, today’s society
demands more than the 4th-grade reading level that was acceptable in his
day. But as we approach the year 2003, public policies continue to reflect
the assumptions he expressed in 1833. Children begin kindergarten at the
age of five or six, and most public schools offer kindergarten only part
of the day.
As a nation, we have adopted school readiness as our number one education
goal, but public investment in preschool education remains very limited.
In some states, for instance, the average educational expenditure for each
younger child is only pennies for every dollar spent on a child enrolled
in kindergarten through 12th grade, according to early education policy
expert Sharon Lynn Kagan. (Click here to read an interview with Kagan.)
Given our current insights into early learning, should we be moving away
from an education system that took shape during the era of Amariah Brigham
and toward a system of public education that promotes healthy development
and learning in the preschool years?
Many Americans believe that the answer is yes. Yet, unlike most of our
peer nations, the United States has no early education system. Rather, we
have a patchwork of programs and arrangements for the 12 million young
children who are in out-of-home care each day. Certainly, many children
are looked after by warm, responsible caregivers. But parents must make a
leap of faith each time they drop off their children, most of whom spend
all or part of the day in informal settings that are subject to no
regulation whatsoever. Perhaps predictably, researchers have found that
the quality of most of those day-care, center-based programs ranges from
mediocre to poor.
Many states are making efforts to improve both the quality and
accessibility of day-care centers. Some are beginning to move toward
universal pre-kindergarten programs, sometimes known as UPK. In Georgia,
for example, voters approved a state lottery that supports free
pre-kindergarten programs for all four-year-olds whose parents choose to
enroll them. In Maryland, the legislature expanded the state’s
pre-kindergarten program, making it mandatory for all four-year-olds at
risk of failure in school. Colorado lawmakers added 1,000 slots to the
state’s preschool program for children at risk of failure in school, an
increase of nearly 10 percent in a tight budget year. And in California, a
Los Angeles County commission voted to spend $100 million (garnered from a
cigarette tax) for free pre-schooling for every three- and four-year-old
in the county.
Upcoming, Floridians will vote this fall on a constitutional amendment
guaranteeing all four-year-olds in their state free pre-kindergarten by
2005. A Trusts grant to that state’s Early Childhood Initiative, Inc., for
operating support is being used to help educate the public on both the
benefits of early education and its importance in ensuring that children
enter school prepared to learn. And across the country, in Seattle, voters
will decide whether to tax each cup of espresso coffee a dime to support
pre-kindergarten (a measure expected to raise as much as $10 million a
year).
Concurrently, a growing number of influential organizations across the
nation have called for universal access to high-quality preschool for all
three- and four-year-olds. Business Week magazine, in its August 26 issue,
called pre-kindergarten education one of “25 ideas for a changing world”
and tied it to the American ideal of equal opportunity.
Others in support include not only eminent panels of researchers and
academics, such as those convened in the 1990s by the Carnegie Corporation
of New York and the National Research Council, but also groups from other
walks of life that believe such programs would advance their own goals.
Some examples:
The Council of Chief State School Officers--composed of the nation’s top
state education officials--has called for universal preschool for three-
and four-year-olds, asserting that “efforts to reform and strengthen K-12
education cannot succeed without a concerted effort to support the people
and improve the programs entrusted with the care and education of our
youngest children.”
The business community acknowledges the logic of investing in universal
early learning programs. In 2002, the Committee for Economic Development,
which consists of business and education leaders, released Preschool for
All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society, calling for universal,
voluntary access for children age three and up to center-based preschool
programs that meet recognized standards for promoting education and school
readiness. Impressed with this effort, the Trusts have given the
organization a grant to educate and support business leaders to serve as
spokespersons for early education.
The law enforcement officials represented by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
stress the connection between early learning and crime prevention, and
have lent support to initiatives working toward the goal of UPK. In
September, the Trusts gave a grant to this organization to help its
effort.
An Idea Whose Time Has Returned
Given the research and the support and interest early education has
generated, the Trusts, earlier this year, launched an initiative to
promote universal, voluntary access to high-quality early education for
children beginning at age three. “The time is ripe,” says Susan K. Urahn,
director of the Trusts’ Education program.
According to Urahn, the Trusts’ investment strategy places emphasis on
universal access for two reasons. First, “government programs for
disadvantaged children are always at risk for budget cuts and half-hearted
funding.” Head Start offers an instructive example. Although the program
is in its fourth decade, it has never been fully funded and includes only
half of eligible children. Furthermore, its budget growth in the past
three years has dropped from 17 to 6 and then to 2 percent, with no
increase at all proposed for next year.
The second reason is equally important: Programs offered to disadvantaged
children do not address the fact that, overall, the existing services in
early education do not, in fact, serve young children well. As Urahn goes
on to point out: “The brain research is only beginning to show what
children are capable of learning. Early education would provide an
educational safety net for young children regardless of their family
background only if it is of high quality.”
Focusing on Research
The initiative takes a two-pronged approach that includes investments in
research and advocacy. On the research side, the Trusts have provided
nearly $5.5 million to the Rutgers University Foundation for the National
Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). This new organization is
committed to providing a research base that supports policy aimed at
bringing quality preschool education to all of America’s three- and
four-year-olds. It is headed by W. Steven Barnett, one of the nation’s top
researchers in early education policy. Previously, Barnett directed
Rutgers’ Center for Early Education Research, which has now been merged
with NIEER.
What distinguishes NIEER, says Barnett, is a commitment to working
directly with policymakers and advocates, helping them understand the
implications (and limitations) of research: “Our purpose is to generate
new knowledge and take existing information and then apply it to the
development of public policy around preschool education.”
The field needs this kind of go-between, Barnett says : “A researcher who
conducts a study to test a theory about how kids learn may not be
interested in drawing out policy implications. Yet the study might contain
information that could be used by policymakers to inform decisions about
minimum educational qualifications for teachers, state curriculum
guidelines, or whether to run state pre-kindergarten programs year-round
or just during the school year. An important role for NIEER is to gather
this kind of information and to explain the policy implications in ways
that policymakers will find useful.”
For example, NIEER is compiling a state-by-state report card that will
evaluate the 50 policies in early childhood education by assessing state
standards, including that of content, for preschool programs. “Just
putting out this information,” Barnett predicts, “will make people do
something about it.”
This function of gathering and translating research is especially crucial
at a time when policymakers at every level are determined to invest public
funds only in programs or strategies that present strong evidence of
success. Barnett is eager to broaden understanding of how researchers
work, and, to clarify their methods, he prefers the words science-based or
research-based. “The term evidence-based closes off all theory, yet you
cannot do science without theory,” he points out.
He illustrates the difference by citing the mathematician Jules Henri
Poincaré, who, a century ago, said: “Science is built up with facts, as a
house is with stones, but a collection of facts is no more a science than
a collection of stones is a house.”
“Today, theoretical physics is not something physicists think they can do
without,” Barnett notes, applying the idea to his field: “ It is not
enough to know that a preschool program works. There needs to be healthy
debate about why it works--and that involves theory as well as facts.”
Public Education and Advocacy
In 1998 the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative asked Anne Mitchell and
me to survey leaders in the field of early care and education and ask them
about the next steps in expanding access to high-quality settings. We
expected that we would hear a great deal about workforce training and
compensation, finance and replication of effective programs. We
anticipated that our final report might include a close-up look at one or
two exemplary models, analyzing their merits and the challenge of
scale-up.
We found, very quickly, that the experts we consulted had other ideas.
With surprising unanimity, they told us that no existing model is
sufficiently comprehensive, or rests on sufficiently secure financial or
political ground, to warrant intensive scale-up efforts. Instead, they
wanted to talk about resources: how to build the public and political will
needed to increase public investment in early care and education. Over and
over again, we heard about the need for a more strategic, more forceful,
better-informed education and advocacy effort.
The Trusts have evidently reached a similar conclusion. To complement the
research, they have granted more than $4 million to the Education Trust to
start an organization, the Trust for Early Education (TEE). Its director
is a veteran children’s advocate, Amy Wilkins, whose media and
communications experience includes the White House Office of Media
Affairs. She describes NIERR and TEE as mutually supportive aspects of the
same effort. “They are the brains,” she says, “and we are the muscle.”
TEE has three aims. Integral to its mission is a media communications
strategy, aimed at educating the public about the opportunities of the
early years and the importance of early education.
On the federal level, Wilkins and her colleagues, using funds from
multiple sources, will focus on staffing issues, pressing for better
preparation and compensation for early educators. In particular, they are
looking down the line to the reauthorization of Head Start in the next
session of Congress and the focus on the role of Head Start in the
universal preschool movement. “The last thing we want to do,” she says,
“is move a universal system ahead that doesn’t meet the needs of
low-income kids.”
On the state level, TEE began by offering support and technical guidance
to experienced advocacy groups in some states involved in gubernatorial
campaigns, where they could promote candidate and voter support for
universal pre-kindergarten. The states were chosen for the potential for
progress toward the idea. The groups were selected on the basis of their
track record and intimate knowledge of how policy initiatives and
processes play in their respective states. Importantly, could they work
together and make a real difference? A few snapshots:
Illinois. According to Jerry Stermer, President of Voices for Illinois
Children, teamwork is crucial. His group works closely with the Day Care
Action Council of Illinois and the Chicago-based Ounce of Prevention Fund
to develop a campaign called “Early Learning Illinois: Access, Options and
Opportunities.” He foresees a number of obstacles to universal early
learning programs, including his state’s budget shortfall and a history of
“separate [child care] programming for separate purposes.”
Stermer firmly believes that “very significant programmatic barriers can
be overcome with adequate funding, hard work and the collaboration of a
variety of players at both the community and state policy level.” He
points out a media campaign that has led to a significant increase in the
number of Illinois residents who believe it is important to invest public
education funds in the years leading to kindergarten.
Massachusetts. Strategies for Children combines polling and focus-group
data to refine messages and build support for universal pre-kindergarten.
According to Margaret Blood, the group has also brought together at least
1,000 Massachusetts residents in forums on early learning and has
discussed UPK with at least 3,000 members of other groups and
associations.
The goal is to provide a coherent set of recommendations. “Policymakers
say that we advocates don’t work together enough, that there are too many
voices and too many agendas,” says Blood. “ Our goal is to build consensus
around an agenda that policymakers can act on.” Convinced that “powerless
children need powerful friends,” Strategies for Children has also sought
to reach out to key leaders, including all of the gubernatorial hopefuls.
New Jersey. Much of the advocacy work here revolves on a 1998 landmark New
Jersey Supreme Court decision known as Abbott vs. Burke, which required 30
school districts to serve all three- and four-year-olds in (at least)
half-day programs beginning in the 1999-2000 school year. The so-called
Abbott districts serve roughly one-quarter of the state's children, of
whom 85 percent are minorities. The vast majority of the state's
low-income children live in these districts.
In his 2001 report Fragile Lives, Shattered Dreams, NIEER’s Barnett showed
New Jersey had made little progress toward meeting the high-quality
standards set by the Supreme Court. With TEE support, the Association for
Children of New Jersey is working to have the court’s mandate carried out.
According to Cecelia Zalkind, the association’s executive director, her
organization and other advocacy groups in the state are committed to
building on the Abbott decision, so that, over time, an excellent
preschool program will be available to every three- and four-year-old
child in the state.
New York. Child Care, Inc., and the Schuyler Center for Advocacy and
Analysis have joined forces to promote UPK. The state has already passed
legislation calling for universal access to early learning programs for
four-year-olds, but lacks the infrastructure and funding to fully
implement it. According to Nancy Kolben of Child Care, Inc., the challenge
is “to create a strong mobilization effort to protect and realize the law
that is already on the books.”
Support from TEE, s he says, has allowed advocates in her state to benefit
from the expertise of communications and media experts, and to develop and
disseminate messages systematically. Karen Schimke, president of the
Schuyler Center, adds that, with TEE support, advocates in New York have
been able to reach beyond the usual suspects to such “unexpected
messengers” as business leaders and law enforcement officials, who have
immense credibility with policymakers.
The Pew Trusts’ early education initiative is still in its infancy, yet
NIEER is already making a mark in the national discussion. For instance,
it released a study showing that Florida’s constitutional proposal to
provide UPK for four-year-olds would save the state as much as $3 billion
for each cohort--because, later on, the state would spend less on remedial
education and juvenile delinquency; and the children, when they become
adults, would earn better incomes.
As Barnett told Business Week, the bonuses of UPK add up to “an array of
long-term benefits that are an order of magnitude greater than the costs.”
Of course, it will be some time before its impact is known. Indeed, new
yardsticks may be needed to gauge results. “With severe budget shortfalls
in many states,” says Child Care, Inc.’s Nancy Kolben, “you can’t measure
success going forward only in terms of how much money you secure. You have
to look at how effective you’ve been in anchoring the program, how
successfully you’ve built systemic support for it, so that it is clear
that any plans around education and education funding need to embrace the
concept of universal pre-kindergarten. You may not see the results in next
year’s budget, but you will see a broader base of support, new partners
and greater understanding in communities about their stake in creating
systems of early education and quality care for kids.”
Most advocates agree progress toward UPK may take the form of baby steps.
But they don’t doubt that a major conceptual shift is under way: from a
system of public education that begins at an arbitrary age to one based on
knowledge of children’s development and learning; from a model based on
entitlement, to one that embraces, on a voluntary basis, early learning
opportunities for all.
The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), a project of
Rutgers University, is located at 120 Albany Street, Suite 500, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901. Its phone is 732.932.4350, and its Web site--replete
with a state-by-state databank, current news nationwide and online
discussions--is at nieer.org. The Education Trust’s Trust for Early
Education (TEE) is located at 1725 K Street, Washington DC 20006, and the
telephone number is 202.293.1217 ext. 329.
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