Outcomes « Preschool Matters… Today!

Why I’m Going to Head Start

August 15, 2011

As many of you know, I recently transitioned to a new position as Senior Vice President for Early Learning, Research and Training at Acelero Learning and will no longer be co-director of NIEER. I’ve loved my job at NIEER – the research has been interesting and my colleagues here and elsewhere have been a pleasure and inspiration. I am especially grateful to the Pew Charitable Trusts for the funding that has formed the foundation for NIEER’s work. My reasons for moving on are numerous but I wanted to take this opportunity to explain why I decided to move to Head Start. Acelero Learning is a Head Start grantee that works with delegate agencies in three states to deliver services to children and families. At the Support Center in Harlem we provide the delegates with technical assistance and guidance across all areas of Head Start services.

Why Head Start?

I started my career in early education in Head Start teaching in the Ann Arbor public schools’ Head Start classroom, but even before I knew what career I wanted I worked as a Head Start summer volunteer in high school. I have since served on Head Start boards off and on and I have a firm belief that Head Start can make a significant difference in the lives of young children and their families. It has worked in the past, and it works in certain places now. As a nation, we have to figure out how to make it work everywhere, consistently, while protecting and even expanding the funding required for Head Start to be effective. I am coming home to Head Start because I want to figure out how to produce in every center the lasting impacts on achievement that I know are possible in Head Start. Of course, this means that we in Head Start must face facts and resist the temptation to reject criticism or make excuses.

Why Acelero Learning, Inc.?

Acelero is unique. We are the only for-profit Head Start provider, and outside of the municipal “super” grantees, we are one of the largest Head Start providers in the nation, serving more than 3,800 children ages zero to 5. Our mission helps explain my choice:

The mission of Acelero Learning is to bring a relentless focus on positive child and family outcomes to close the achievement gap and build a better future for children, families, and communities served by the Head Start program.

We are serious about closing the achievement gap and every decision is made in reference to this mission. We use data to drive our decisions as well and have instituted a rigorous continuous improvement system at every level of the program from child to family to classroom to center to delegate to grantee. We measure our objectives in multiple ways at each level. For example, for child progress we implement performance-based assessments and are initiating a system for ensuring reliability of scoring and we select a random sample of children for administration of pre-post assessments of standardized measures. At the classroom level, in addition to CLASS observations in every classroom, we also developed a Teacher Success Rubric for teacher self-evaluation and professional development as well as for annual performance appraisal. To increase our ability to close the achievement gap, we operate all classrooms on a year-round basis – this summer alone, we will provide more than 500,000 hours of summer learning time that children enrolled in our Head Start programs would otherwise not have been able to access. We also offer full-day Head Start and extended-day programs whenever possible.

I’m excited to be involved at Acelero with an entire network of dedicated and remarkably capable colleagues. Together we will show that Head Start is a program of which we can be proud. We are determined to close most of the gap at kindergarten entry and significantly reduce the longer-term achievement gap. I look forward to calling on many of you to help us reach our goal and best wishes to you all.

– Ellen Frede, Senior Vice President for Early Learning, Research and Training, Acelero Learning

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Early Childhood Education Featured in Principal Magazine

August 10, 2011

NIEER co-directors Ellen Frede and Steve Barnett discuss the critical role pre-K plays in closing the achievement gap in the May/June issue of NAESP’s Principal magazine. Drs. Frede and Barnett note that the availability of preschool is a strong predictor of differences in scores in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparison of educational achievement across 65 countries. They also point to research findings that show national achievement test scores rise with the level of public spending on and quality of preschool education. Frede and Barnett maintain that a commitment to an effective, quality preschool program could reduce the achievement gap in the United States by 20 percent. The article from NIEER co-directors also offers principals and other school leaders 10 research-based, practice-tested steps they can take to increase the availability of quality pre-K whether or not they currently offer pre-K in their school.

Also included in the May/June 2011 issue of Principal magazine: Jacqueline Jones, senior adviser for early learning at the U.S. Department of Education, writes about assessment in early childhood education. First Five Years Fund director Harriet Dichter writes about pre-K to grade 3 education in Pennsylvania. University of North Carolina assistant professors Rebecca Shore and Pamela Shue and former principal Marion Bish report on a professional development program in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, designed to prepare elementary principals for preschool.

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Early Education: The Power to Reduce Future Crime Victimization

July 29, 2011

While the goal of high-quality preschool programs is to ensure all young learners are ready to succeed in school, these programs are linked with a number of impressive long-term outcomes. Children who attend high-quality preschool are more likely to graduate from high school and go on to higher education than are their peers who did not attend. They are also less likely to require special education services or repeat a grade in school, both of which contribute to savings for taxpayers. Benefits extend well beyond reducing education costs. The societal and cultural improvement stemming from education reduces future crimes and future victimization. Students who attend these programs are less likely to become teenage parents, become dependent on welfare, and, notably, commit crimes as teenagers or adults. A recent study from the University of Minnesota found that, years later, participants in a high-quality preschool program had lower rates of incarceration and substance abuse than did their peers who were not enrolled. Deterring children from future crime benefits not only those individuals, but all those in society who may have become victims of crimes against person and property. Outcomes like this have triggered a wave of support for pre-K programs from groups ranging from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids to The Boys and Girls Club of America, among other organizations.

However, the long-term benefits of high-quality programs are being sacrificed for short-term savings during this economic downturn. As The State of Preschool 2010 found, states have reduced funding for pre-K programs while unemployment and falling wages have placed more children “at-risk” of involvement in delinquency and crime. In the 2009-2010 school year, state funding for these programs nationwide fell by nearly $30 million from the previous school year to about $5.4 billion, marking the first drop in total spending since NIEER began tracking. Spending per-child adjusted for inflation also has fallen by about $700 over the decade so that recent cuts add to a long-term unfavorable trend. Nationwide, at least 23 states fail to spend enough per child in their programs to meet the 10 quality benchmarks set by NIEER; another 10 state governments provide no funding at all for pre-K.

Trends have been better for availability of pre-K than for funding, but not what one might expect given the benefits. While access to state-funded preschool has increased over the last decade (see Figure 1 for details), we’ve seen slow growth in the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled as well as a complete stagnation in 3-year-old enrollment in recent years. And, there is a wide variation among states in terms of pre-K access – ranging from 1.1 percent of 4-year-olds in Rhode Island to nearly 71 percent of 4-year-olds in Oklahoma. Far too many children are missing out on early learning opportunities that will have positive outcomes throughout their lives, including reducing the likelihood of serious crime, arrest, and incarceration as teenagers or adults.

Figure 1: Access to State-funded Pre-K, 2002 to 2010

Indeed, research indicates that between 35 and 45 percent of American students enter kindergarten not “school ready” — these are the students who can most benefit from the long-term academic and social benefits of pre-K. Some quick number crunching tells us that for an additional $1.7 billion, the nation could enroll all at-risk 4-year-olds in high-quality pre-K; another $5.8 billion would extend that opportunity to all at-risk 3-year-olds nationwide.

While taxpayers may pause at the price tag for state-funded pre-K programs, it is a small fraction of the costs our society pays for failing to start vulnerable children on the right foot. A 2007 study by Robert Lynch finds that high-quality pre-K for just the poorest 25 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds would result in $77 billion in annual decreased crime and child abuse costs by 2050.

Other research has pointed to similarly staggering figures regarding child abuse and neglect. The direct cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States totals more than $33 billion annually. The indirect costs of child abuse, including special education, mental health care, juvenile delinquency, lost productivity, and adult criminality, increase this total to more than $103 billion annually. While taxpayers might feel burdened by a $1.7 billion investment in at-risk 4-year-olds, this number seems insignificant compared to the $103 billion they will eventually spend on the results of lower education standards and the continued cycle of crime and abuse.

Likewise, reducing the number of both perpetrators and victims of crime is an important goal in American society. The criminal justice system, including incarceration, costs billions of dollars each year, to say nothing of the loss of life, property, and security experienced by too many victims each year. A report by Mission: Readiness reveals that criminal convictions contribute to the fact that 75 percent of America’s young adults are ineligible for military service. And, as recently noted by the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC), children are more likely than adults to be exposed to violence and crime, placing them directly in a vicious cycle with often disastrous results. As Mai said in a recent blog at The Crime Report, “Without the proper support to cope with their experience, young people are more likely to face, and cause, additional crimes in their own community.”

While even the highest quality preschool program cannot completely eradicate crime from our society, early interventions can significantly reduce the problem and better prepare the next generation for more productive, brighter futures. As a society, we have the resources to help young people avoid becoming victims and resist turning to crime. Protecting our children is an investment that cannot start too early.

- Steve Barnett, Co-Director, National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)

- Mai Fernandez, Executive Director, National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC)

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This Memorial Day: A Time to Reflect on the Past … and the Future of Armed Forces

May 20, 2011

How Early Education Can Support Our Military

Source: 2nd Infantry Division US Army

As Memorial Day approaches and Americans collectively prepare for the start of summer it is easy to lose track of the purpose of this day — to honor and remember those Americans in uniform who have died in the service of their country. Unfortunately, recent reports indicate that the American education system may be doing too little to honor their sacrifice by failing to adequately prepare the next generation of men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. The military relies on a well-trained force of capable individuals who must meet certain requirements to enter the service. However, a combination of low educational attainment, health concerns, and criminal convictions disqualifies a large number of young adults who wish to enter the service.

A recent study pegs the percentage of men and women between the ages of 18 and 24 who are unqualified for military service at 90 percent in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Statistics released by the Pentagon indicate this figure is 75 percent nationwide. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has responded to these startling figures by calling for changes in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that allow for increased local flexibility and federal incentives to invest in early childhood education. While early education is not the expected response to an armed forces problem, Secretary Duncan is not alone in making the connection between kindergarten preparedness and military preparedness.

The organization Mission: Readiness, working with a coalition of 200 retired military officers, has issued research on the military preparedness (or lack thereof) in each state and concluded that the best intervention is an early one — early childhood education programs that help prepare at-risk students for school so as to help avoid a number of disqualifying problems by the time children are 18. While military brass and preschool students may seem an unlikely partnership to some, it is one that is gaining steam as pre-K programs prove their worth during tough budget times. To find out more about Mission: Readiness, read the Preschool Matters interview with Lieutenant General Norman Seip of this organization.

Meanwhile, a report from the Pew Center on the States also shows that child care and pre-K programs are an important issue for current active duty and reserve military personnel and their families. While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allotted $240 million for additional child development centers on military bases, families often lack access to quality child care and preschool programs on bases or in their areas. As indicated in Figure 1 below, Pew found that child care was a critical daily need for military families, more pressing even than health care services. That need only increased further when a service member deployed.

Figure 1: Day-to-day needs of military families

Source: The Pew Center on the States. (2011). On the home front: Early care and education a top priority for military families.

States could do more to help. The State of Preschool 2010 found that only 12 state-funded programs out of the 54 included in the study require or allow program administrators to make eligibility decisions based on a child’s parent being on active military duty. Young children’s development may particularly be affected by the frequent moves common to military families. Yet the combined resources of military child care and state-funded pre-K fail to adequately provide early education services for these children to aid in their healthy development.

Increased funding for state-funded preschool education programs can expand access and improve quality for those children whose parents currently serve in the military while also improving life outcomes for those who may enlist in the future. In the 2009-2010 school year, both total state funding and per-child spending nationwide fell for these programs, representing a step back for young learners. Combining state, federal, and local sources, $6.2 billion was spent on pre-K programs for the 1,283,890 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled. NIEER estimates that an additional $7.5 billion could expand access to quality pre-K to fully cover the 40 percent of children estimated to start school unready to succeed. Representing only slightly more than 1 percent of the $670.9 billion budget requested by the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2012, this is a small price to pay for improving military readiness in years to come while supporting families of our active duty service members.

Indeed, an April report released by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argue that America is currently channeling too much funding to military operations at the expense of human capital investments that make for a strong military and civil workforce in the future. Investing in pre-K could help strike a balance. As General Seip told NIEER, “It just pains me to think that there are so many young people out there, for whom the job and the service would mean so much — for whom it’s a ticket to the middle class and the American dream — who do not have the skills or the training to qualify.”

So this Memorial Day when you honor the heroic deeds of service members past and present, also take a moment to consider the armed forces in years to come. Are our future heroes getting the education they deserve?

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER
- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

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Are Hispanic Children Losing Out in Preschool?

May 16, 2011

As revealed in The State of Preschool 2010, enrollment in state-funded pre-K programs nationwide has been negatively impacted by these bad budget years. Enrollment of 4-year-olds nationwide grew by only 3.9 percent, and 3-year-old enrolled actually declined by about 4 percent from 2008-2009 to 2009-2010. Both per-child and overall funding were down as well. These changes appear to be affecting young Hispanic learners worse than other groups.

The 2010 Census may show dramatic growth among the Hispanic population of children nationwide, but state-funded pre-K programs are not showing the same growth. The Yearbook does not collect information on enrollment by ethnicity or race, but data on programs in major Hispanic states is not encouraging. Arizona, which has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the nation, has cut its pre-K program entirely for the 2010-2011 school year, and shows no signs of reviving it. Cuts to early education have been proposed in at least seven states with among the largest Hispanic populations: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

As it is, Hispanic students who are able to access state-funded preschools may not be fully benefiting in some of these states. For instance:
• Texas enrolls more than 200,000 children, including 87,863 English Language Learners, in its preschool program, but it ranks poorly in its program quality. It is the only state program with no limits on class size or number of children per teacher. Proposed budget cuts could mean lower quality for many students, and decreases in the number of children being served.
• Florida ranks second in the nation in the percentage of children served, but received low marks when it comes to spending per child and program quality standards. Florida used $38 million in federal stimulus funds in the 2009-2010 school year to help support its preschool program, but these funds will not be available in the future.

There has been at least some good news for Hispanic preschoolers. In the 2009-2010 school year, California consolidated several child care and preschool programs into a single large preschool education program. While this policy change only consolidated enrollment and spending rather than increasing either, it will enable children to be in more education-focused programs. Among states with large Hispanic populations, the preschool programs in Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington receive high marks for program quality standards.

The Yearbook contains other indicators, including eligibility policies, support services and ELL enrollment, of how well Hispanic children are being served in public pre-K programs. Of the 54 programs profiled in the Yearbook, only 17 identify having non-English-speaking family members as a factor that may make students eligible for pre-K. The Kansas At-Risk Program may also determine eligibility based on a family’s migrant status. Thirty-six pre-K initiatives require at least one support service for ELLs and their families, while 15 programs do not require these services. Support services range from administering a home language survey to providing translators to offering monolingual non-English classes in pre-K.

It is difficult to estimate the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) served in state-funded pre-K programs as many states do not track the specific enrollment of these students. Only half of programs profiled in the Yearbook could report the number of ELLs in their program for a total nationwide of 128,312 ELLs. This number severely underreports ELL enrollment, as a number of states with large Hispanic populations — including Arizona, California, Illinois, and New Jersey — were unable to report their ELL enrollment. There are large variations in the reported enrollment of ELLs from 87,863 in Texas (41 percent of the total pre-K enrollment) to only 35 in West Virginia (0.25 percent of the total pre-K enrollment).

While ELLs can come from any linguistic background and therefore include children of any race and ethnicity, Hispanic children merit particular attention as their population grows, but many continue to suffer from an achievement gap. Evidence from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that Hispanic students lag behind white students in both fourth and eighth-grade math and reading proficiency, in high school graduation rates, and in college enrollment.

Achievement and Attainment by Race	Whites	Hispanic
4th grade % proficient math	50%	21%
4th grade % proficient reading	41%	16%
8th grade % proficient math	43%	17%
8th grade % proficient reading	39%	16%
High School Graduation	81%	64%
College Enrollment	63%	12%

Source: Milagros Nores and Niufeng Zhu, NIEER

Children from minority and immigrant backgrounds can benefit significantly from high-quality early learning programs. Positive outcomes include being less likely to be held back in school, and more likely to graduate from high school. As adults, they are more likely to be employed and less likely to commit crimes. Nationally, the Obama administration has recently increased its emphasis on improving educational outcomes for Hispanic children, as well as promoting high-quality early childhood education — two strategies that go hand-in-hand. Advocates must work to keep these issues in the spotlight, not only at the national level, but also as states continue to face harrowing budget decisions.

– Celia C. Ayala, Ph.D.,
Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Universal Preschool

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An Early Start to Financial Education

April 15, 2011

This week the PNC Grow Up Great program marked its seventh anniversary. The program was launched by the PNC Financial Services Group in 2004 as a 10-year, $100 million school readiness program to help prepare at-risk children for school and life.

Since the program’s inception, more than 1 million children have been served by the more than $30 million in grants and programs that have assisted numerous early childhood education centers and other non-profit organizations. PNC employees have volunteered more than 176,000 hours at early education programs and donated more than 260,000 items to enhance early childhood classrooms. With expert early education partners like the Fred Rogers Company and Sesame Workshop, the program has created and distributed new resources to support parents and educators in their efforts to prepare children for kindergarten.

As we continue to look for ways to expand the programming offered through Grow Up Great, our attention was caught by research that shows that very young children are capable of understanding basic financial concepts. At the same time parents and caregivers report that they want to address financial matters with their children, but feel they lack the tools and resources to do so. The subject seemed relevant given a heightened awareness of the need for financial education before adulthood and the decrease in public funding for such programs. Working with our partners at Sesame Workshop, we felt that we were uniquely positioned to address this topic as part of the Grow Up Great program.

On Wednesday, PNC announced a new financial education initiative. The $12 million initiative features a new multimedia education kit created by Sesame Workshop. Entitled For Me, for You, for Later: First Steps to Spending, Sharing and Saving, the bilingual kits feature an original Sesame DVD, a parent/caregiver guide, and activity book. PNC produced 1 million kits that will be distributed for free. The kits are available at PNC branches and online at pncgrowupgreat.com or sesamestreet.org/save. An educator’s guide and additional materials are also available on-line. The initiative also includes $5 million in grants for non-profits to provide financial education based on the materials Sesame Workshop created. PNC will also conduct a public awareness campaign throughout the spring and summer to highlight financial basics and the availability of the new materials.

We feel this new initiative is an important addition to the Grow Up Great program. As we look over the last seven years at all of the meaningful work that has been done to help prepare children for school, we are confident that this new initiative will not only prepare them for school, but also for life.

Sally McCrady

Program Manager, Grow Up Great

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More Great Work from John Merrow

April 8, 2011

This week we saw on PBS Newshour an important installment in John Merrow’s continuing and exemplary pursuit of answers to what ails education in this country. Learning Matters, the nonprofit production company he founded traveled to Chicago where they visited homes with preschool-age children and visited an outstanding Educare program that serves kids from infancy to 5 years old. Along the way, Merrow interviewed Barbara Bowman who runs Chicago’s public pre-K program, once headed up the Erikson Institute, and is a NIEER Scientific Advisory Board. He also interviewed Diana Rauner, president of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, and Maria Whelan, president of Illinois Action for Children.

Bowman discusses the enormous costs of school failure and Merrow illustrates by cutting to a scene of young men entering a prison cell block. The cost of keeping them there? — $30,000 per year. Rauner says Educare spends about $19,000 per year per child, pointing out the potential return on that investment. She pointed to research showing that at-risk kids who attended the program for five years (at $95,000 per child) entered kindergarten as ready to learn as their middle-income peers.

There are 90,000 children in Chicago who need high-quality early education but the Educare Program Merrow visited serves only 149. Bowman describes to Merrow the dire budgetary straits in which Chicago’s much larger pre-K program finds itself. It serves 24,000 kids two and a half hours per day. When you add in all the kids in Chicago who attend Head Start and other public pre-K programs, the total comes to 37,000 kids served. In other words, says Merrow, Chicago spends about $5,000 per child on preschool for 40 percent of its neediest kids and nothing on the rest.

This picture could grow worse next year, says Bowman. Chicago used federal stimulus funds for pre-K and if that money isn’t replaced she’ll have to cut the number of children served by public pre-K even more. Merrow asks Whelan about making difficult choices in this economic environment, about spreading less funding over more kids or ignoring the needs of the many in order to serve the few. You will find her answer, and the analogy she uses, interesting. You can view the segment here: http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-pbs-newshour/closing-the-vocabulary-gap-in-chicago-preschoools/5782/. American’s should not allow themselves to be forced into a “Sophie’s choice” because of all the other things that are given priority–corporate welfare, foreign wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy among them.

Where would Merrow find the money for pre-K? He presents a bold answer in his blog Taking Note. He proposes to eliminate 12^th grade, and then suggests the even more unthinkable—eliminate subsidies for corn production. I take it his point is that people will have to come up with new ideas and fight tough political battles to wrest money for early childhood investments from powerful entrenched interests. Stay tuned for NIEER’s 2010 Preschool Yearbook to be released later this month where we will reveal which states have chosen to support new investments in children despite tough times and which have chosen to disinvest in young children.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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Will New Jersey Gut Its Abbott Preschool Program? Or, How to Ruin Absolutely Everything

February 4, 2011

New Jersey Republicans are floating a proposal to cut the state’s highly effective Abbott Preschool Program from a full day of services to half a day. This, they say, would free up about $300 million in school funding that could be “more equitably” disbursed statewide. As is so often the case with such figures, the math is wrong—the plan might free up $150 million, but that is the least of the proposal’s problems.

They justify their proposal on the basis that the Abbott v. Burke V court decision did not specifically require the state to provide a full day of pre-K in order to provide a thorough and efficient education. Indeed, the justices wrote in 1998 that half a day of pre-K for kids in the state’s disadvantaged districts could represent an “initial reform.” (Emphasis added on the latter.)

It should go without saying that in the intervening years we have learned critical lessons about what it takes to provide disadvantaged kids with the kinds of experiences that enable them to acquire the skills necessary to narrow the achievement gap and enter school ready to learn. Chief among them is that more is better. NIEER conducted a randomized trial in the Abbott districts comparing extended-day, extended-year pre-K to the old half-day, school-year model. The longer day and year had larger effects on test scores than a half-day and these gains persisted. By first grade, effects of duration were apparent on more complex measures such as reading comprehension and calculation and not just on simple tasks like letter and number recognition. Other studies show that full-day Abbott preschool delivers high-quality education that significantly raises test scores and reduces school failure.

The Republican proposal would take money from disadvantaged children in the Abbott districts to address problems in New Jersey’s school funding scheme that are not without merit. Districts with a high percentage of senior citizens would get some of the money. So would those that transport children over longer distances or have demonstrated cost efficiencies. However, the state should address these issues without gutting the Abbott Preschool Program to do it. One suggestion: forgo the $1 billion dollar voucher bill that would bail out private schools hurt by the recession, but do little to raise test scores.

Backers of the pre-K cut proclaim its virtues based on three principles — equity, efficiency and accountability. It passes none of those tests. The Abbott program was developed to remedy the gap in equity between disadvantaged kids and their more affluent peers. Gutting one of its major components is hardly equitable. Neither does it pass the efficiency test. When kids receive high-quality pre-K such as the Abbott program, the subsequent costs of educating them go down, and the longer term benefits include lower crime rates and a more productive workforce. Sprinkling the funds freed-up around the rest of the state can’t be shown to produce any comparable returns for the taxpayer — who knows how the funds will be used? And that brings us to accountability. One must simply ask, “What accountability?”

I subtitled this essay “How to Ruin Absolutely Everything” because it illustrates the kind of state policy making that ruins public education. Hard evidence on what works and what doesn’t is ignored in favor of wishful thinking, ideology, and special interests. No studies are conducted to test out new proposals before they are widely implemented. Financial estimates are put forward that have no basis in reality.

It is a cruel irony that at the same time the proposal to gut the Abbott program surfaced the legislature is rushing to pass a voucher bill that research shows has no hope of significantly improving academic achievement and Governor Christie’s administration has announced a plan for the state to spend as much as $200 million to jump start a stalled Atlantic City casino project from which Morgan Stanley, in its wisdom, bailed out. The governor should insist that his advisors conduct cost/benefit analyses of both the voucher bill and the boardwalk empire plan. While they are at it they should also run the numbers on the costs and benefits of the state’s investment in the Abbott Preschool Program. If he does, he’ll find the current pre-K program provides a rich return to the public while the other proposals are, as they say, under water.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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Early Childhood Education and the U.S. Labor Market Crisis

January 21, 2011

Guest post by Tim Bartik, Senior Economist, Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

As Steve Barnett’s recent post indicated, the U.S. faces a prolonged labor market recovery. As of today, the U.S. would need more than 10 million additional jobs to return to the employment to population ratio at the beginning of this recession (December 2007). Based on typical job growth rates, the U.S. will take five to 10 years before returning to “normal” employment conditions.

Given our labor market crisis, every area of public policy must consider how it might improve the labor market. This includes early childhood education. Advocates of early childhood programs need to answer how early childhood programs might deal with the U.S.’s labor market problems.

First, the labor market crisis means that early childhood programs are more needed than ever to make up for negative effects of parents’ labor market problems on young children. Research by Greg Duncan and others shows that parental income when a child is ages zero to five has large effects on the child’s later earnings as an adult. Once we control for parental income when a child is five or less, parental income at later ages does not much affect the child’s later earnings as an adult. This fits in with the assumption of early childhood education that children are more malleable to various influences (parental income, quality of preschool, etc.) when they are young.

Therefore, more children are at risk than before the economic crisis. The economic returns to early childhood education occur for all children, but are greater for at-risk children. The labor market crisis implies that investments now in early childhood education will have particularly high rates of return.

Second, early childhood programs provide economic stimulus by spending more money. Preschool teachers spend their salaries, which stimulates the economy. There is a net stimulus even once we adjust for the taxes needed to finance early childhood education. In my new book, Investing in Kids, I estimate that the spending associated with preschool (with some effects from the child care provided) will immediately boost earnings by about 22 percent of the preschool spending.

Third, we should explore packaging early childhood programs with programs that can help parents find jobs, such as well-designed adult job training programs. There could be some positive synergies between early childhood programs and job training programs for parents. The early childhood program provides time for parents to engage in job training programs. Parents may be more forward-looking with respect to their over lives if they believe that their child’s needs are being addressed. Read the rest of this entry »

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Suffer the Children: An Alarming Confluence of Events

January 14, 2011

While investors are celebrating brighter prospects, the news from the hinterlands continues in a much darker vein. The Wall Street Journal reports that wages for a broad swath of the labor force have taken a “sharp and swift” fall to an extent rarely seen since the Great Depression. Between 2007 and 2009 more than half of workers who lost jobs and then found new ones reported wage declines, with more than a third of them reporting declines of 20 percent or more. Experts say it will be years, if ever, before their wages return to pre-recession levels.

This — and the fact that real unemployment in the U.S. continues well above 10 percent — should be setting of alarm bells for anyone worried about the nation’s future. Research shows that children whose parents lose jobs and eventually find new ones at lower wages suffer from lower wages themselves. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) tracked the progress of people who, as children, lived through the post-war recessions that began in 1973 and 1980. Kids whose parents suffered layoffs end up with lower earnings when they became adults. The impact was concentrated in kids from lower-income families, presumably because parental unemployment posed a larger threat to things that were critical to family sustenance. It was especially pronounce for children who were the youngest during the recessions. The researchers conclude that:

“… children who fall into poverty during a recession will fare far worse along a range of variables than will their peers who did not fall into poverty. They will live in households with lower incomes, they will earn less themselves and they have a greater chance at living in or near poverty as adults. They will achieve lower levels of education, and they will be less likely to be gainfully employed. Children who experience recession-induced poverty will even have poorer health than their peers who stayed out of poverty during the childhood recession.”

We already know that poverty has been rising in the U.S. for decades. The latest Census Bureau data show the gap between rich and poor to be the widest on record. The ratio of earnings between the top and bottom is about double what it was when the Census Bureau began tracking it in 1967.

Confronting this threat to the nation’s future well-being with investments in high-quality early childhood education would help secure their future. Yet early education is not a high priority among the policy solutions we see being put forth to address our long-term rise in poverty. It’s encouraging to hear some suggest federal aid to the states. A portion of this should be dedicated to competitive federal grants to the states for high-quality early education.

Children are not able to vote and households with children are a declining percentage of American households. Yet they represent 100 percent of the nation’s future well-being. As we view our policy solutions, we should apply the cold calculus any successful business uses in making economic decisions. If we do that — and take even a rudimentary look at the returns to be had by investing in early childhood education — it should rise to the top of the policy priority list.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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