MISSION | CONSTITUTION | EXECUTIVE BOARD & STAFF | REGIONS | ADVOCACY
- High-quality prekindergarten programs make a difference for young children. We need increased funding so the best programs can serve all children.
- Every dollar spent on early childhood education can produce as much as $17 in economic benefits. Investing $15,166 on one child can create more than $195,000 in savings and benefits.
- High-quality early childhood education produces savings on future education, reduces crime, lowers welfare costs, and increases tax benefits from future earnings.
Current Status
The U.S. Congress is currently working to reauthorize the school readiness initiative Head Start. Head Start provides comprehensive educational, social, health, nutritional, and psychological services to poor children and their families. Funding in fiscal year 2006 is $6.8 billion in grants to 1,700 local organizations serving nearly 1 million children.
The House of Representatives passed its version of the Head Start reauthorization, the School Readiness Act (H.R. 2123), on September 22, 2005. The Senate Education Committee passed its version, the Head Start Improvements for School Readiness (S. 1107), on May 25, 2005. The next step is full Senate consideration, but it appears unlikely the Senate will consider the bill this year. As a result, the process will begin again when the next Congress reconvenes in January 2007. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in March 2005 that found incidences of mismanagement, waste, and inappropriate oversight of Head Start grantees. In response to the GAO report, both versions of the legislation include new accountability requirements.
ASCD Supports School Readiness
ASCD supports programs that provide high-quality learning environments for young children. These environments incorporate smaller class sizes, a cognitively stimulating and developmentally appropriate curriculum, and highly qualified teachers who are trained in early education. For these programs to succeed, we recognize the importance of parental involvement, parental training, and high-quality professional development for early childhood educators. Additionally, ASCD supports aligning the curriculum in early childhood programs with that of the local school district to ensure a seamless transition into kindergarten and the early elementary school grades.
ASCD calls for resources, training, and opportunities to create and nurture high-quality learning environments. These resources must be available at both the federal and state levels, and must include both financial resources and support for ongoing research. In addition, ASCD embraces accountability for early childhood programs; however, the assessments must be valid, reliable, developmentally appropriate, and based on multiple measures. ASCD opposes the use of single-measure assessment in determining the effectiveness of local school readiness programs. Single-measure assessment cannot provide an accurate representation of a program's success and is not adequate as the sole determinant for a program's accountability.
ASCD supports local schools working with local early childhood agencies to provide both health care and school readiness programs. Early childhood programs must recognize the inextricable link between children's health and learning. Numerous research studies have demonstrated the correlations between healthy children and school readiness. Children struggling with basic health issues in the early years face greater incidence of arrested development and health complications that make learning more challenging. In the case of nutrition, improper or unbalanced diets may result in greater physical and mental problems and challenges. Other prominent health issues include vision problems (detected or undetected), dental and oral health problems, and other maladies that affect a child's ability to concentrate and learn.
Absenteeism is also a problem that may be easily rectified for many children. For example, children with severe, untreated asthma have greater absentee rates than those children with asthma who receive medical attention and support. For problems such as these, scarce education resources are spent to provide compensatory and basic services to children who, with simple health care, would be ready to succeed in school with less need for special attention.
ASCD calls upon the U.S. Congress to support high-quality prekindergarten education programs for all children and to increase funding for school readiness programs, including Head Start. Investing in early childhood is not only morally sound, but also financially beneficial. For example, the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project incorporated a cost-benefit analysis to study the effects of an early childhood program on high-risk 3- and 4-year-old children. That study found that spending $15,166 per child on a high-quality two-year preschool program in the early 1960s resulted in $195,621 in savings and benefits per child by the time those children reached age 40 in 2004. In 2005, RAND researchers examined rigorous evaluations of 20 early childhood programs serving disadvantaged children in the United States. They found net benefits ranging from $1,400 per child to nearly $240,000 per child. The benefits include savings on education, taxes paid on future earnings, savings on welfare, and savings on crime.
The major conclusion of these studies is that high-quality preschool programs for young children living in poverty contribute to the children's intellectual and social development in childhood, school success, economic performance, and reduced commission of crime. Given the importance of this investment, we cannot afford to fail to provide more resources and support to programs that improve children's health and school readiness.
ASCD calls for flexibility in alignment of federal programs with state and local school readiness programs. There are approximately 14,383 school districts in the United States, educating approximately 43 million children. These districts are diverse, which makes a one-size-fits-all approach to school readiness impossible. Early childhood programs must have the flexibility to prioritize and address specific health and school-readiness issues on a district-by-district basis. To ensure that these programs are aligned with and best prepare children for the local schools they will attend, it is critical that the health and educational services the programs provide satisfy the unique needs of the local community they serve.
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