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February 8, 2007
Addressing economic inequality with preschool
David Leonhardt dishes up his Economix column for the NY Times and writes of preschool programs in Oklahoma. Here's a choice quote:
...Long before children turn 5, there are already enormous gaps in their abilities. One study found that 3-year-olds with professional parents know about 1,100 words on average, while 3-year-olds whose parents are on welfare know only 525. Much of the gap is caused by environment rather than genes, according to a wide body of research.
...
James J. Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, even argues that spending on preschool ultimately pays for itself. Early childhood education is so important that it makes workers more productive and reduces crime....
Click the link above to go to the study. Now, while I don't want to mandate enrollment in preschool, I do like the idea of providing incentives for low-income families to send their children to preschool if they choose. Compared to a lot of government spending, this would be money well-spent, and I would gladly have my taxes increased by a small amount in order to provide those incentives. I would structure it as a voucher system so that people could choose the preschool program that best fits their needs and/or beliefs. In any case, I would not want to set up a system of public preschools. This is a market in which competition is working, and could work on a larger scale as well. We have a lively market for preschools in Macomb--some church sponsored, one university sponsored, and some private-nonreligious. Pick the one that suits you. We are fortunate in that regard. Not all communities have as many affordable options.
But it would be nice if more communities did.
Posted by William Polley at February 8, 2007 12:07 AM
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Comments
Why don't you want to mandate preschool? I assume that you are in favor of mandatory elementary, middle, and high school. Sounds like preschool might be the most valuable of all of them.
Posted by: Andy at February 8, 2007 4:30 PM
Fair question. Suppose preschool was mandated. How, then, could you avoid having it become part of the Department of Education bureaucracy? [which is precisely what I would not want] Compared to the K-12 education complex, preschools are low cost with easy entry and exit. They are springing up all over the place. Why not let this growing market continue to develop rather than stifle it with competition from a sclerotic system that would see this as just an add-on to the K-12 complex? Spend the money on vouchers that can be used at the preschool of your choice and let preschools remain free to compete with each other outside the government run system. If something like that were implemented, I think you would get a lot more bang for the buck than by rolling it into the K-12 system.
According to the study cited in the article, preschool may even be too late. The environment in the home before age 3 makes a huge difference, perhaps more than preschool. That does not mean that I would ever support government sponsored and mandated education from birth. Why? I just don't think that is a function of government.
But preschool vouchers would be a way to impact a lot of people without a lot of government expense and maintain personal freedom in the process. Not to mention that it could be up and running in no time if we really wanted to do it. It scores highly on a lot of my criteria.
Posted by: William Polley at February 8, 2007 11:12 PM