Sara Mead's Policy Notebook

Last week, the Center for American Progress published a brief white paper calling for major new federal investments in Universal Pre-k and childcare.

As politicians and policymakers focus increasing attention on both current and long-term federal fiscal deficits, the intergenerational distribution of federal spending is coming in for heightened scrutiny. One stat--the federal government spends more than 6 times as much per elderly person in the U.S. as it does per child--is particularly striking.

Exciting news for District of Columbia residents: Enrollment in D.C. public schools (both public and charter) rose 5% for 2012-13, the fourth consecutive year of enrollment gains following a long period of declining enrollments. D.C. school enrollment is now at the highest level in 20 years. Both DCPS and charter schools experienced increased enrollment.

One tangential thought from yesterday's post about new research on gender gaps in the elementary grades. This is a good example of the federal role in education research working. It doesn't appear that this study was funded by the Department of Education, but the researchers used data made available by the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a massive, long-term study that collected information on over 17,000 children starting in kindergarten and tracked them (with some attrition) through 5th grade. The resulting data set, along with the data set from its companion Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, has been an incredible resource for researchers and has facilitated some important work. Even more exciting, the federal Institute of Education Sciences launched a new ECLS-K two years ago, with the kindergarten class of 2010-11. This is the kind of thing that really only the federal government can do, and something that's made a significant contribution to the field of early childhood and K-12 research. I know the federal role in education research comes in for a lot of criticism--much of it well-founded. But let's also give credit where credit's due--as it is here.

This recent Journal of Human Resources article on gender gaps in elementary school students test score performance and teacher-assigned grades contains a lot of fascinating stuff, so it's unfortunate that the media coverage it inevitably attracts has been reduced to "elementary school-aged boys are actually smarter than girls, but teachers screw them over by giving them lower grades based on their behavior." (Give Christina Hoff Sommers credit for not jumping on that stupid bandwagon in this NYT article over the weekend--although her piece is also much more about ideas she already had than what this study found.)

In my previous post, I explained why disagree with Russ Whitehurst's characterization of preschool as "oversold." Here, I'll explain why I think he's wrong about how to make Head Start better.

Russ Whitehurst says that the results of the recently released Head Start Impact study--whose results were disappointing, if not surprising to those who've been following the study--call for "hard-headed" thinking about the performance of early childhood programs generally, and Head Start in particular. There's a lot I disagree with in Russ's piece: I think the Head Start Impact study results--which found that children in Head Start learned more than a control group while in Head Start, but performed no better by 3rd grade--are really discouraging and suggest a need for major improvements. But I don't think the findings--which showed the kids did make gains while in Head Start--justify calling the program a total failure. I'd also dispute Russ's contention that preschool has been "oversold," is also off-base. Yes, early learning advocates sometime come across like Billy Mays, and our discourse and children would be better served by a much more honest discourse about the massive execution and delivery challenges to delivering quality pre-k at scale. But the reality is that the evidence base about the beneficial impacts of quality pre-k--particularly for low-income children--is one of the most robust anywhere in education. We now have not only the High/Scope Perry Preschool and Chicago Child Parent Center studies that used rigorous randomized-controlled methodologies and found long-term results for children. We also have studies that find positive results from an increasing number of state pre-k programs operating at scale with modest resources--including evidence from states as disparate as New Jersey and Texas of pre-k educational benefits that last into the elementary grades. And given that the U.S. still doesn't have anywhere near the widespread access to publicly funded early childhood we see in other developed countries, the evidence for pre-k seems more "unpurchased" than "oversold."

That's the provocative suggestion of this recent Slate article. Unfortunately, it's wrong.

Andrew Cohen's National Journal piece calling for a "Parent Lobby" to combat gun violence has been bouncing around the internets for the past few days. Call me skeptical. It's not that I discount the potential political force of the nation's more than 50 million parents, but that I really doubt this group agrees on any sort of common agenda.

The Foundation for Child Development just released their annual Child Well-Being Index, which culls a variety of indicators of children's well-being across multiple domains of economic, health, education, behavior, and social/emotional/religious well-being to try to track how our nation's kids have fared over time. It's not a perfect measure and plenty of folks can quibble over specific indicators, but FCD and professor Kenneth Land, who developed the Index, deserve credit for trying to look at children's well-being holistically, rather than at the disjointed measures we typically see in policy debates.

I've been avoiding commenting on the events in Connecticut last week because it feels like incredible hubris to think I have any words or thoughts adequate to this tragedy. But in the face of the tragic deaths of 20 children and 6 adults, I keep coming back to the words of another child who died in the face of even greater evil:

Forbes just published a list of 30 young education leaders under 30. Good group, but if've you've been paying attention here, you've already heard about several of the folks on this list, including the awesome Jennifer Medbery, Alexis Morin, and Catharine Bellinger. Kudos to Forbes on putting together an interesting list that cuts across a variety of facets of the education space, including K-12 and higher ed, technology, advocacy, and politics.

The Washington Post's Dylan Matthews lists "10 Ways to Reduce Inequality Without Raising Tax Rates," and guess what--early childhood education is one of them! Dylan cites the abundant and growing evidence that high-quality early childhood education can boost cognitive and social skills for youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds, help mitigate for disparities in early learning experiences at home and the effects of childhood trauma, and improve long-term economic and life indicators for low-income and otherwise at-risk kids. All critical benefits that can help break the cycle of poverty and reduce inequality over the long run. But it's also worth noting that we don't have to wait until today's kids grow up to reap the inequality-reducing benefits of early childhood investments. Investing in early childhood education can also help reduce inequality today by improving the jobs and earnings of early childhood workers--some of the lowest paid workers in our economy, despite the critical importance of the work they do. It can improve families' economic prospects by enabling low-income and working class mothers to work, making work economically viable for lower-skilled mothers, and enabling them to increase their skills and earnings potential. And it can reduce the economic burden on the working and middle class by reducing the costs of preschool and childcare--currently a major economic burden for moderate-income families that pay for childcare. The biggest reason to invest in early childhood education is because doing so will allow more children to reach their potential, improving their education, work, and life outcomes; reducing poverty; and ultimately boosting long-term economic growth. But we shouldn't forget that these programs can also help kids and their families in very real ways today.

Regular reader of this blog will be shocked (shocked!) to hear that all five states that applied for Early Learning Challenge RTT Round 2 grants received them. The five lucky winners are Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin. For all my quibbles with the process here, these states are doing some very worthy and promising work to improve early learning outcomes for their neediest kids, and deserve congratulation on their awards. Background here.