Who would possibly disagree with the statement that “it
seems to be a form of insanity for a society to allow the 'gap' to
grow between advantaged and disadvantaged students to increase during the 0–5
years and then demand that the schools are responsible for closing the gap"
(GCU, 2012, para 7)? Research by Christina and Goodman (2005) indicates that high-quality early education programs can
produce substantial long-term benefits for children, families, and
society. Armed with this knowledge, many
states began mounting ambitious efforts to implement high-qualitypre-kindergarten programs at universal scale.
Their Rand Research Brief described some of the progress states have made and
identifies significant policy and practice issues.
The first few years of life are
critical for a child's cognitive development and learning. Barnett's (1998) evaluations of well-run
prekindergarten programs found that children exposed to high-quality early
education were less likely to drop out of school, repeat grades, or need
special education, compared with similar children who did not have such
exposure. Despite good research linking
effective pre-K programs with later academic success, Shore (2002) still found
early care and education in the United States was essentially a non-system
consisting of a "patchwork of programs." After publication of the Rand Education
Report (2005) most states began to embrace the value of high-quality early
education programs. By 2007, as a
candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Barack Obama was expressing
his plans to make universal Pre-K programs a national priority. Then came a national and international recession and this plan has not seen the limelight.
Too often our elected officials make
short-term decisions that don't result in long-term solutions. As educators, we need to be advocates for the
currently unheard voices of our youngest students. Absence of action to advocate on behalf of
your future students may easily result in millions of these students twenty
years from now hopelessly asking, "why didn't you do something to
help?" I encourage all educators to
be proactive and advocate for universal pre-K so that day may not ever be
realized.
References:
Christina, R., Goodman J.V. (2005) Going to Scale
with High-Quality Early Education. The
Grand Canyon University (producer). (2012, January). EDA810 Module 8 Lecture
Slaby, R., Loucks, S., & Stelwagon, P. (2005). Why is preschool
essential in closing the
achievement gap? Educational
Leadership & Administration, 17, 47-57.
