Funding Pre-School Education

When I was a very young child, my mother discovered that I could not speak properly. I had a major speech problem and a deficit of gross motor skills. I was enrolled in a special education preschool and received both speech therapy and counseling. Today, I hold a B.A. from an Ivy League University and have completed advanced doctoral work in Curriculum, Teaching and Educational Policy at Michigan State University. I'm lucky that my mother had the wherewithall to identify my challenges and seek out appropriate help. If it hadn't been for her, I would likely not be writing this post today. Indeed, I'd likely be working for somebody else as a skilled laborer.

My mother had the social and cultural background to get me the help that I needed. Unfortunately, many young children don't have the "luck of the womb," to borrow Warren Buffet's phrase, and are born to parents who lack social and cultural resources. Research demonstrates that a parent's socio-economic status significantly influences the level of their childrens' educational attainment and educational attainment has a significant correlation with one's own socio-economic level. To put it simply, parents who have attained a high quality education value knowledge and skills and work hard to ensure that their children develop these same values.

In recent years policymakers and social advocates have increasingly supported the importance of publicly provided pre-school education. Their arguments make sense. When young children have the opportunity to attend pre-school they are exposed to early education. Their teachers read to them, they learn to draw and manipulate objects, and they develop an early awareness of letters and sounds. In short, pre-school has the potential to provide disadvantaged children with similar resources that are available to their more advantaged peers. Perhaps pre-school has the potential to serve as a great equalizer of opportunity.

On June 28th, the Committee on Economic Development, a Washington, D.C. based business and policy forum released a report entitled "The Economic Promise of Investing in High Quality Preschool: Using Early Education to Improve Economic Growth and the Fiscal Sustainability of States and the Nation." According to the report, not only individuals will benefit from attending pre-school, but our entire society will benefit. Tax bases will increase, crime rates will decrease and culture will flourish.

Consider it: if we spend the money now on preschools we may not have to spend it later on social welfare programs and prison systems.