Early Learning Initiatives Good News for Families and the Economy

by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst
National Women’s Law Center

These days, the front pages of newspapers are filled with depressing headlines about business failures, bankruptcies, bailouts, foreclosures, and layoffs. So it is a welcome change to see a headline that uses the word “hope”—and even more welcome that the word is being used in reference to early education. Today’s article in the New York Times, “Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Education” highlights the President-elect’s proposal to invest $10 billion in early childhood programs.

There is broad agreement about the goal of ensuring more families have access to high-quality child care and early education so that parents are able to work and children get the strong start they need to succeed in school and in life. There is also broad agreement among economists and educators that investments in high-quality early education have a tremendous payoff for our current and future economy.

It will be important to ensure that the new resources are used effectively and that they meet the needs of the broad range of working families with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children as well. Fortunately, we already have plenty of examples of programs that work, provided they receive sufficient resources. Head Start has long offered a template for comprehensive early care and education for at-risk children, and the program’s recent reauthorization offers a roadmap for further strengthening the program—now it just needs the funding to meet the new expectations of the reauthorization, such as higher teacher credentials. Child care assistance for low-income families provided through the Child Care and Development Block Grant helps many families gain access to stable, reliable care for infants, toddlers, and school-age children that they otherwise could not afford—but after years of neglect, the program leaves out far too many families and does not provide enough support for high-quality care. State-funded preschool programs can help children enter school ready to learn—but they are relatively limited in focus, as they primarily serve four-year-olds, and typically operate on part-day/part-year schedules that do not match the schedules of parents working full-time (much less parents working nights or weekends). Several individual local programs such as Educare, as described in the article, already offer a model for comprehensive, high-quality early care and education—but they need to be scaled up once they show they work and they too depend on Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, and Early Head Start funds to serve children and families.

With new resources, we can expand, improve, and coordinate these programs as well as consider new initiatives to ensure that young children have opportunities to learn and develop and the diverse needs of families are met—whether they have very young children or school-age children, whether they work part-time, full-time, or odd-hour schedules. Achieving this will not be easy, but with the growing recognition that early education is a good investment for the nation’s future—and a good investment is hard to find today—early education advocates certainly have reason to hope.

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With new resources, we can expand, improve, and coordinate these programs as well as consider new initiatives to ensure that young children have opportunities to learn and develop and the diverse needs of families are met—whether they have very young children or school-age children