Early childhood education is worth the cost

Editorial by Rocky Mount Telegram, December 10, 2015.

Stable home environments where parents are educated and engaged with their pre-school children tend to produce kids who enter kindergarten ready to learn. In many cases, they’re off to a good start in terms of vocabulary, colors, numbers and ABCs.

But in less stable homes, that isn’t always the case. It is not out of the ordinary for a child from a poor, single-parent household to catch his first glimpse of a book on his first day of kindergarten. That puts that child way behind many of his peers before his first day of school has even begun.

North Carolina has addressed that challenge in the past through programs such as Smart Start and More at Four. The programs offered financial help for young children from poor families to enroll in pre-kindergarten.

Smart Start, in particular, helped generate promising results, according to a 2010 study by Duke University.

Third-graders who had entered pre-kindergarten programs in counties where Smart Start funding was available scored higher on standardized reading and math tests than their counterparts had scored before the Smart Start program began.

The Smart Start kids as a group also had fewer special education needs, the Duke study said.

But in recent years, the N.C. General Assembly has cut funding for pre-kindergarten education.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported that fewer than half of North Carolina’s children age 4 and younger are enrolled in a regulated child care facility. Many parents have put their kids’ names on waiting lists for Head Start or N.C. Pre-K, but those education programs are full with little hope of expanding.

Education plays a critical role in practically every characteristic of a community we can think of – from economic development to adult literacy to good health habits to crime rates. Investing in early childhood development has a positive ripple effect for many years to come.

It’s time for legislators to renew their commitment to young children from impoverished homes. Making sure those kids start school on the right foot has long-lasting implications for all of us.

http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/opinion/our-views/early-childhood-education-worth-its-cost-3062297