In America, education has been famously coined the “great equalizer.” This should mean that regardless of who you are or where you are from, if you have access to education you can succeed and advance in our economy. While it is true that quality education from a young age ensures long-term prosperity and leaves people better off, not all education is created equal. Access to education, especially at an early age, is not only difficult to find, but varies greatly in quality.
The lack of effective learning opportunities for young children is a fundamental flaw in our nation’s education system. High-quality preschool and other early education options provide children with social, emotional, and motivational skills that close school-readiness gaps. These socio-emotional skills also have positive effects on an individual’s educational success and lifetime earnings, increasing upward social mobility across demographics.
While quality prekindergarten learning environments are critical to the future well-being of individuals, these opportunities are inaccessible to the majority of American families. Private programs have high tuition rates, and the publicly funded programs do not reach as many people as they should. The public program Head Start, which is available to families from low-economic backgrounds, reaches only 41% of income-eligible households. Aside from cost, availability is a huge roadblock for families — with 51% of the U.S. population residing in a child care desert.
In addition to access, quality education is also more difficult to find for low-income Americans. Lower-quality education reduces the impact of pre-K on a child’s development and later success. The quality of programming is critical but greatly varies depending on where you live. In economically disadvantaged communities, even when programs are available they face higher rates of negative student-teacher interactions and worse structural quality.
The federal government currently addresses early education through a patchwork of different programs and funding streams aimed at solving different challenges of the early care conundrum. The last federal appropriations bill, which funded the federal government and associated programs for the 2022 fiscal year, included $11 billion for Head Start and $6 billion for The Child Care Development Block Grant, which provides families from low-income backgrounds financial aid for child care. Additionally, the Preschool Development Grant Birth Through 5 Grant (PDGB-5) received only $290 million. This grant is for state and local governments to improve their preschool’s infrastructure, provide states with comprehensive evaluations of their current programs, and other general funding to improve learning outcomes.
Despite these investments, it is clear our country does not have a cohesive early education policy, which disrupts the reach and efficacy of existing programs. Even without a strong national effort, however, some states and districts across the country have figured out ways to expand access and offer high-quality early education programs. For example, Washington, D.C., subsidizes two years of full-day preschool for district residents. Since 2017, 9 out of 10 of D.C.’s four-year-olds have been enrolled in publicly and privately funded programs. Students in these public programs are effectively mirroring the population demographics, as the percentage of applicants and the percentage of matched students are almost equal across all races and income levels. Elementary students in D.C. have shown academic improvement in reading since 2007, outpacing the national average for large cities. Another example is Oklahoma. The state also boasts a successful pre-K program, serving 70% of the state’s four-year-olds. Today, third-graders in Oklahoma who attended its pre-K program had stronger socio-emotional skills, and performed better in math.
These outcomes demonstrate D.C. and Oklahoma’s ability to provide high-quality and far-reaching education. The state of Oklahoma meets 9 out of 10 quality standards of the Nation Institute for Early Education Research, including extensive professional development, small class sizes, and a continuous quality improvement system. Washington, D.C., has developed a comprehensive system called CLASS to evaluate their program on an annual basis, ensuring quality and consistency for the district’s students. While politically D.C. and Oklahoma could not be more different, leaders in both regions understand that early education is fundamental to the future success of their constituents and that this public investment yields strong return on investments.
Bipartisan support amongst the states can make it all the more possible to develop a comprehensive, national approach to early education. The federal government should define standards and create a quality evaluation system that encourages effective learning environments, addresses teacher-student ratios, cultural diversity, and minimum training requirements for teachers. Policymakers would not have to start from scratch either. Leaders can look to D.C. and Oklahoma, or to other national leaders like The National Association for the Education of Young Children, to ensure federally funded efforts have strong outcomes for pre-kindergarten students.
To effectively implement a national early education policy, federal leaders should coordinate and expand their current programs and funding streams to create a more comprehensive early education system that meets the needs of all young students. The PDBG-5 should be expanded and improved upon to enable and incentivize state and local governments to build education programs that meet the national standards established by the federal government. State programs need the resources and guidelines to create effective and far-reaching programs that lead to strong learning outcomes. Expanding support of state programs does not mean that Head Start has to go away, either. Recent studies argue that Head Start is successful at improving cognitive skills and school-readiness for students who would otherwise be learning at home. The funding for federal and state pre-kindergarten programs should be attached to quality standards, including a comprehensive annual evaluation system, which would help programs ensure stronger socio-economic outcomes and mobility for our nation’s most disadvantaged students. Federal and state programs should be designed to work together to reach every student from low- and middle- income homes, turning the current patchwork of programs and funding for early education into a wide-reaching system that works for all Americans.
Expanding access and developing quality standards needs to be addressed nationally. These efforts can help states and regions offer high quality early education programs that foster equality, collaboration, and consistency. Oklahoma, D.C., and federal programs like Head Start demonstrate that publicly funded programs with the right quality guardrails are successful and have strong impacts on child well-being and their future success. If we want to close readiness gaps in education and ensure upward mobility for all, we need to start with early education and development, making “education as a great equalizer” ring true for the generations to come.