The Wall Street Journal published an outstanding article on the benefits of pre-school on Thursday. The article focused on the political movement towards pre-school, and the benefits that pre-school has. Both Florida and Oklahoma have started providing free pre-school, with Illinois and New York poised to do the same. What is the political argument being made?
Their winning pitch: Making pre-K as prevalent as kindergarten is a prudent investment. Early schooling, they say, makes kids more likely to stay in school and turn into productive taxpayers.
This political movement has some unlikely supporters. Art Rolnick is the research director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota. He has compiled some interesting stats and made some interesting comments.
“Politicians have a choice to make. They can do things like build sports stadiums that offer virtually no economic return, or they can invest in early education programs with a 16% rate of return,” says Art Rolnick, the Minneapolis Fed official, who came up wih that number after reviewing a three decade study of youngsters growing up in Ypsilanti, Mich.
Rolnick is not alone. In Oklahoma free pre-school is available to all four year olds and has been since 1998. George Kaiser, owner of Kaiser-Francis Oil Co. of Tulsa, has committed about $20 million of his family foundation’s money to early education. Why the commitment?
He says he got interested in the issues about eight years ago as he became “more and more frustrated that all of the billions of dollars we were throwing at the problem of endemic poverty was having little demonstrable impact.”
And what about Republican opposition?
“The most effective argument among conservative Republicans is that the folks we are helping are already in day care so that we are not taking them from a loving home,” he says. “The kids… will end up as productive citizens rather than in the correctional system.”
Pew Charitable Trusts has also gotten involved. Susan Urahn, the new director of Education for Pew, pointed out to her board (to prompt involvement) that
Three long term studies suggested that children who went to pre-school were less likely to be held back in higher grades and more likely to graduate.
The earlier quote from Rolnick talked about a specific “rate of return”. How did he arrive at that number? Rolnick turned to a 1962 study conducted in Ypsilanti, Miss.
Mr Rolnick and a colleague crunched the data, calculating that for every $1 invested in pre-school. there was a $16 return from lower crime. fewer welfare payments, and higher earnings.
Some pretty staggering stats. A 2004 policy paper cited in the Journal article estimated that
extending preschool to the four million children under 5 then living under the poverty line would produce a net benefit to the economy of more than $511 billion.
The Journal article was well done and a must read for early education advocates. Republican opposition was mute, and Deval Patrick was cited for his committment in this area. Will Massachusetts follow Oklahoma and Florida? Should we? I believe that the time is now for a renewed political effort in Massachusetts on this issue.
Bill Manzi.com 
Your Honor,
I have reservations about the removing very young children from our home and submitting them to the same system that is functioning so poorly as it is.
How are you going to improve the education system to serve the students and not the teachers union and host of other problems?
As you and I have discussed many times, how do you handle the revenue stream when it’s maxed out. MORE TAXES. Can you justify raising real estate taxes considering the budget strain you now have. Can we afford more school rooms, more busing expenses, etc?
The Governor is spending like a drunken sailor and is now going to borrow near 20 billion dollars to fix our infrastructure and to finance his “bold” initiatives. We are marching to a “cradle to the grave” society. Can the state expand its revenue even further to implement this new scheme.
You fellows are going to be competing those who want to raise the gas tax by 50 cents for global warming, 5 cents to fix bridges, and god knows what else.
I think it’s about time the TAX AND SPEND moniker is hung on you fellows again.
Show me the money.
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Jules,
No question there are challenges here. Even the pro- early school folks are divided as to program size. (Should it be offered to all, or just those below an income line). It appears to have great benefit for the kids, but also great societal benefits. Those societal benefits could come back to us financially if the program works as advertised. There is room here for a snide comment about the billions (trillion?)we are spending in Iraq, but I shall omit it on the basis of bi-partisanship. I am back from an attempted vacation, so lets get this blog slugging again.
Bill
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Your Honor,
Welcome back. Sounds like you were distracted while away. I assume it was concerning town issues.
Now to blog business.
Before we can even consider anything like this, and I think this is at least wasteful, we must consider two major problems we face in this state; (1) funding and (2) education competency.
Do you have any ideas in these matters? I remind you of the 12 billion dollar hole we are going to sinking into.
Do you see any signs of my property tax reduction in the winds?
I await your reply.
Again, welcome home.
Jules
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Jules,
Thanks for the welcome back to the blogosphere. I have mailed the full WSJ article to you. Again the potential exists for some real educational progress for a class of students that really need it. I agree that funding is a major challenge, and I do not have any funding ideas as I write this response. It depends on what the Massachusetts number is, and what class of students would be covered. As far as educational competency I believe that we have the teaching talent to do this in the Commonwealth. I don’t see the potential for such a program as “wasteful” but I agree that it is expensive. Again I am tempted to cite the ten billion a month tab in Iraq, but will refrain from doing so. (Slipped it in while pretending to be nice!)
Bill
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Your Honor,
We both agree the means of financing this enterprise is quite murky. I don’t know where it would come from myself.
Wait, I have an idea. Let the courageous and superbely led Democratic congress simply vote to defund the war. Now we can distribute ten billion a month to the cities and towns of the US. Maybe there is enough for my property tax cut promised by our Governor.
I’m sorry,your honor, was I being contritie? It slipped out while you were being nice.
As far as competency is concered, having the talent is not the issue. We can’t MANAGE our educational system. The parents have largely given up participation, performance is so poor that the state has now interposed itself and has created a MCAS mess which, in my view will lead to the dumming down of our kids. Finally, the federal government has now become the 800 pound gorilla and has enacted the Ted Kennedy/Goerge Bush (there’s a pair for you) “no child left behind” law. The higher up the managing of our children’s education moves the worse it gets. Politicians solve nothing.
If we cannot disconnect from the state and federal governments and take effective responsibility for the education of our children, we should not involve the 3 year olds.
If you want to discuss my solution to the management of education sometime let me know.
Boy, it feels good to be back at it again.
Jules
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Jules, I, for one, would love to hear your solution!
Mayor Manzi, I’m with Jules on this one (does that surprise you?). First we extend the school day, then we offer free preschool, before you know it the government is raising our children instead of the parents… at an enormous cost to taxpayers, I might add.
I do see the benefit of helping a child who is living below the poverty line… the odds are that child is not being educated well at home… the question is, where does the “help” end? How many programs already exist to help these children? Can we instead improve upon what is already in place?
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I must give some ground to both of you here, even if it is reluctantly. Since I could not identify a funding source in response to Jules question I recognize that there is a significant amount of thinking that needs to be done beyond the conceptual. I do understand the phobia over “new government programs” and the cost to taxpayers, and I know we spend plenty already. Despite some of the good natured needling here I do believe in being fiscally responsible. Having said all of that I was intrigued by the Journal story, and especially by the potential for saving tax money “downstream” (through reduced crime, welfare, etc.). If the idea works for an income level then we have an obligation to look at the “concept”. and see if the good outweighs the bad. I think that just saying that “we have always done it this way” is not the correct answer in any area of government. A good entry for blog discussion, in any case.
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