PennLive: Editorial: From a voice of hard-won experience, a simple argument for early childhood education
October 16, 2017
Some things seem so obvious that it’s a wonder that they’re even a matter of debate.
We know, instinctively, for instance, that if a child is given the tools to succeed early on in life that they are more likely to stay in school, stay out of trouble and go on to become an active and contributing member of society.
And that investment begins before a child even sets foot in the classroom through access to quality and widely accessible early childhood education programs.
Yet, as a recent report by the advocacy group Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children reminds, Pennsylvania lags behind many of its neighboring states when it comes to taxpayer support for these critical programs.
The $32 billion, 2017-18 spending plan that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf allowed to lapse into law in early July without his signature increases state spending on two key programs – “Pre-K Counts” and Head Start – by $30 million from the year before.
That’s a significant amount, but it’s still less than the $75 million increase Wolf proposed in his February budget address to a joint session of the state House and Senate.
Increasing state funding to that level would provide seats for an additional 8,400 children statewide.
These state programs serve families who earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level, according to published reports. That’s about $72,000 for a family of four, which means about two-thirds of pre-schoolers statewide are missing out on those programs, the report indicated.
This is not new territory. We’ve advocated for similar spending before, recognizing the solid data showing that children with access to such programs exhibit higher levels of proficiency in math and reading; are less likely to be held back in the primary grades and more likely to graduate from high school; need less remediation, and show a reduced need for those “individual education plans,” often formulated for struggling students.
Yet we were reminded again of the urgency for this increased spending during a recent conversation with state Corrections Secretary John E. Wetzel, a Corbett-era appointee, who has emerged as one of the more forceful advocates for these programs.
Recognizing that it’s easy for readers to be skeptical for a call for the state to spend more resources at a time when an agreement on paying for the state budget remains frustratingly elusive, we’re reproducing Wetzel’s remarks to the editorial board in full below.
We urge you to give them serious consideration:
“If you want to look at criminal justice reform, it actually has very little to do with criminal justice. We know that early childhood [education] works. But we don’t fund it because it’s cost avoidance 16 years down the road. And we’re focused on the next election.
“We know, for instance, that a black kid who drops out of school has a 73 percent chance of being incarcerated down the road. If we don’t do this, it’s a lack of courage on our part.
“It’s frustrating – and I don’t want to single out Philadelphia here – but it’s frustrating, at the back end of the system, talking to inmates, and there’s the kid who graduated from the Philadelphia schools can’t read Education is the answer. And we know that kids who grow up in poverty and gang-ridden areas experience trauma. And that has an impact on brain development. But we know we can undo it [that trauma].
“If we ever have the guts to fund this stuff – the implications for the next generation are huge. People would say they couldn’t believe we had that many people locked up … It’s just common sense to me.”
If you don’t want to listen to a newspaper editorial board. If you don’t want to listen to policy-makers or advocates, then listen to John E. Wetzel.
He’s the guy responsible for cleaning up society’s mess; for dealing with the worst of our worst and then finding a way to rehabilitate some of them.
Imagine, for a moment, how much better our society would be if there were less of that. Then imagine, for a moment, that there was a simple way to do that.
And that you could prevent it, years beforehand, from ever happening in the first place.
Wouldn’t that be worthwhile?
Read the editorial here.
Lancaster Online: Editorial: We need more support and funding for pre-kindergarten programs in Lancaster County
October 12, 2017
Four-fifths of eligible Lancaster County children don’t attend high-quality, publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs, according to a new report produced by the Pennsylvania Principals Association in partnership with the Pre-K for PA Campaign. As LNP staff writer Alex Geli reported last week, the study reveals that most at-risk students — those from low-income households — are missing out on critical pre-K opportunities. That’s despite near-unanimous support of pre-K services among elementary school principals, Geli noted.
Perhaps, like preschool learning itself, this requires repetition: Children from low-income families who aren’t afforded the same advantages as other kids need high-quality pre-K.
We’ve said it repeatedly. Local educators have said it repeatedly. Local military leaders, Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman, United Way of Lancaster County officials, the Mayor’s Commission to Combat Poverty … all have said it repeatedly.
And still, we’re doing an abysmal job of providing high-quality pre-K to the children in Lancaster County who need it the most.
Eighty percent of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds in Lancaster County are not enrolled in a high-quality pre-K program.
That means just 20 percent — or 1 in 5 children — are getting the early education they need.
Statewide, 36 percent of eligible children are enrolled, but even that number is quite low.
Ninety-nine percent of the 1,300 principals surveyed said high-quality pre-K was an important tool for preparing children for kindergarten, especially children who are at-risk of falling behind. (We’re not sure which principals were among the 1 percent, but we’d advise them to do some reading on the subject.)
As Geli reported, Elizabeth R. Martin School Principal Barbara Andrews was among those surveyed. She said she sees in her school’s students the enduring benefits of high-quality pre-K. “It provides a foundation which enables these children to be confident and successful in their journey through school and in their personal lives as well.”
The School District of Lancaster is one of the largest pre-K providers in the county, Geli reported.
Several Lancaster County school districts, such as Pequea Valley, Conestoga Valley, Cocalico and Manheim Township, partner with third parties to offer publicly funded pre-K programs.
But most county school districts don’t offer pre-K programs. We’d ask them to consider doing so.
We know school districts already are overburdened by the demands placed on them by the state and by school populations with ever-expanding needs. But this is a matter of paying now or paying later.
According to the Pre-K for PA website, longitudinal “research studies indicate that as much as $17 is returned on every $1 invested in high-quality early learning programs.”
Starting a preschooler off on the right track is much easier — and much less costly — than trying to get him back on track when he’s in high school.
For school districts to be able to offer prekindergarten, the state needs to make greater investments in early education. More money has gone into early learning in the two most recent state budgets, but access to high quality pre-K remains limited.
The children’s advocates and educators who produced this new report want to see an additional $85 million invested in prekindergarten this fiscal year.
The 2017-18 spending plan approved by the General Assembly and allowed to become law by Gov. Tom Wolf added only $30 million to Pennsylvania’s Pre-K Counts early childhood education program and Head Start.
They would like that investment to grow to an additional $310 million by fiscal year 2020-21 to serve all the low-income children now eligible for publicly funded pre-K.
And then they’d like to see an additional investment of $100 million by 2022-23 to help middle-class families afford high-quality pre-K.
It seems like a tall order, meeting the needs of our littlest Pennsylvanians. But this is a vital task.
We can imagine some of you saying, “Well, I didn’t go to preschool, and I turned out just fine.” To that, we’d say you’re lucky, and we’re truly glad for you.
But research has shown that kids whose vocabularies and experiences don’t match those of their classmates risk falling behind. And once they fall behind, they generally need more expensive remedial instruction and special education services. Often, these children never catch up, which presents problems when they enter the workforce.
The better, more economical path is to pay for quality preschool. We’ll keep pushing this for as long as needed.
Read the editorial here.
PennLive: If you think early childhood education is just snacks and nap time, you haven’t been paying attention
October 6, 2017 by John Micek
On a fine, early fall morning in 2005, my wife and I made the most difficult choice we’d yet made as parents.
A mere three months into our daughter’s life, we packed her into her baby carrier, drove the 10 minutes or so to the other side of the Susquehanna River, and handed her over to a daycare provider we’d chosen with more precision than the planning for the Normandy invasion.
I held my wife’s hand as she tearfully handed our daughter over. The knot in my throat was palpable. And every minute we did it, we questioned our motives and chastised ourselves as parents. But as a dual income household, where every spare dollar counted, there was no other choice.
A decade later, it’s a decision I’ve never regretted.
In that program, and then another one later on, my daughter got the tools she needed to be ready for her school career. At four, she was reading above grade-level, learning Spanish, and taking classes in Suzuki-method violin – all thanks to the program we’d found for her.
I fully recognize that we were lucky to have the wherewithal to find those programs for her, and that other Pennsylvania parents aren’t nearly so lucky.
Still, that’s why it always frosts me to hear people dismiss the importance of these programs as little more than glorified story-time, instead of what they actually are: key preparation, not only for school, but also for work and the lifetime of learning that comes afterward.
And in my experience, those arguments are often made by people who haven’t set foot in a kindergarten or pre-k class in decades, their memories trapped in amber, recalling something that’s long since ceased to exist.
And that’s just one of the reasons why strong state support for publicly funded pre-k programs is so vitally important. Every kid – regardless of their situation – deserves a fair shot at success out of the gate.
There’s a mountain of data out there proving what I already know in my gut: Kids with access to high-quality, early childhood education exhibit higher levels of proficiency in math and reading; they’re less likely to be held back in the primary grades and more likely to graduate high school; they need less remediation, and there’s less of a need for those “individual education plans,” often formulated for struggling students.
Those arguments were backed up this week by a new joint report by the Pennsylvania Principals Association and Pre-K for Pa. — a coalition of advocacy groups that that lobbies for increased state funding for these critical programs.
The 2017-18 budget that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf allowed to lapse into law in early July without his signature increases state spending on two key, programs – “Pre-K Counts” and Head Start — by $30 million from the year before.
That’s not too shabby.
But advocates say that’s not enough. They were thwarted in their effort to preserve the $75 million increase Wolf proposed back in February, arguing that it would fund pre-kindergarten seats for 8,400 school children.
These state programs serve families who earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level, according to published reports. That’s about $72,000 for a family of four – which means about two-thirds of pre-schoolers statewide are missing out on those programs, the report indicated.
During a stop in the Pittsburgh are on Wednesday, Joan Benso, the forcefully enthusiastic head of Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a leading group in that coalition, pointed out that more than half the families in Allegheny County who are eligible for publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs don’t have access to them, The Tribune-Review reported.
Yes, $75 million is a lot of money – especially when you consider that Wolf and state lawmakers are locked in an increasingly high-stakes (and long past absurd) debate over how to pay for that $32 billion spending plan that landed on the governor’s desk nearly four months ago.
Here’s another reason why this spending is so important: Economic competitiveness.
Right now, Pennsylvania invests $682.17 per child, the study found. Fifteen states invest more than $1,000 per child, including such economic competitors as New Jersey and New York, the study found.
And a study by National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University shows that 19 states and Washington D.C. each make a higher per-capital investment in high-quality preschool programs.
Do you seriously want to be shown-up by … ugh … New Jersey?
Still, if you’re inclined to dismiss Benso and her fellow-travelers as a bunch of liberal do-gooders intent on parting the taxpayers from their hard-earned money, consider one more argument as well:
Both Cumberlahd County District Attorney David J. Freed – who’s hardly a known radical – and Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John E. Wetzel, are also fierce advocates for these programs.
The reason is pretty simple: Spending money on quality programs on the front-end means it’s far less likely that your kid will ever need to run into either Freed or Wetzel on the back-end.
“Early learning programs are a ‘fork in the road’ opportunity to reduce the number of future criminals by placing more at-risk children on a secure path to school and life success,” Freed, a Republican and likely central Pennsylvania’s next United States Attorney, said in a 2016 interview.
Read the full article here.
Lancaster Online: Report: 80 percent of at-risk Lancaster County children miss out on high-quality pre-k programs
October 6, 2017 by Alex Geli
Four-fifths of eligible Lancaster County children don’t attend high-quality, publicly funded pre-k programs, a new report says.
The report, produced by the Pennsylvania Principals Association in partnership with the Pre-K for PA Campaign, reveals that many of the most at-risk students — those from low-income households — are missing out on pivotal pre-k opportunities. That’s despite near-unanimous public support of pre-k services among elementary school principals.
To minimize that, officials are requesting state funding increases of $62 million annually for five years to expand pre-k access statewide.
“Pre-k works,” said Joan Benso, president and chief executive officer of Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a founding member of the Pre-K for PA Campaign. “Decades of research has proven it and this survey adds the validation of Pennsylvania’s elementary principals.”
Surveyed were 1,300 principals, 99 percent of which said high-quality pre-k was an important tool for preparing children for kindergarten, particularly children more at-risk of falling behind.
Elizabeth R. Martin Elementary School Principal Barbara Andrews was one of those surveyed.
“In my school, I see the long-lasting benefits of high-quality pre-k,” she said. “It provides a foundation which enables these children to be confident and successful in their journey through school and in their personal lives as well.”
School District of Lancaster is one of the largest pre-k providers in the county, with programs at Martin School as well as Burrowes, Carter and MacRae, Fulton, King, Lafayette, Price, Washington and Wickersham elementary schools.
Yet, according to Pre-K for PA, more than 1,000 eligible 3- and 4-year-olds still miss out on those programs. Fifty-five percent of eligible children, in other words, are underserved.
The countywide percentage is 80 percent. Statewide, it’s 64 percent.
Most Lancaster County schools don’t offer pre-k programs. Several —such as Pequea Valley, Conestoga Valley, Cocalico and Manheim Township — partner with third parties to offer publicly funded pre-k services.
Despite those third parties often being private community organizations, they receive financial support from the state’s Pre-K Counts or Head Start Supplemental Assistance programs.
Community Action Partnership is one of the county’s leading Head Start organizations. According to its 2015-16 report, CAP served 710 children and 758 families in Lancaster County. In addition to closing the achievement gap in math, language and literacy skills, the program provides health screenings; nutritional meals; educational field trips; emotional, social and behavioral support; and more.
“Children that experience high-quality pre-kindergarten see themselves as capable learners and walk through the kindergarten door not just ready but eager to keep learning,” Stacy Lewis, CAP’s director of Head Start programs, said.
Children that don’t experience high-quality pre-k are said to be at an unfair disadvantage when they enter kindergarten, especially those from low-income households.
That’s why programs such as Pre-K Counts and Head Start exist — to help economically disadvantaged families send their children to kindergarten on proper footing.
But the Commonwealth can do more, the report states.
An additional $310 million in state funding for pre-k by 2022 will ensure that every at-risk child has access to high-quality pre-k programs, the report says. An additional $100 million would allow middle-class families more easily afford high-quality pre-k programs.
Read the full article here.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Not enough seats for Southwest Pa. preschoolers, advocates say
September 27, 2017 by Jamie Martines
Research shows that attending preschool helps students succeed later in their academic careers. The problem is that the number of students eligible for publicly funded preschool programs continues to outpace the number of available seats, advocates say.
They gathered in Irwin and Pittsburgh Tuesday to discuss the need for more state funding to grow such programs.
“I have spent far too much time telling parents who would like to enroll their children in our program that they cannot, simply because we don’t have more public funding,” said Carol Barone-Martin, executive director of early childhood programs in Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Lawmakers increased funding for preschool by $30 million in the 2017-18 state budget. But advocates argue that more is needed, citing the findings of a report released this month by the Pennsylvania Principal’s Association and the statewide coalition Pre-K for PA that shows about two thirds of students eligible for publicly funded programs still do not have access.
Publicly funded programs serve families earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, or about $72,000 per year for a family of four. Both Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties are designated by the state as areas of high unmet need.
In Allegheny County, about 52.5 percent of preschool-age children eligible for publicly funded programs do not have access.
That share is higher in Westmoreland County, where about 65.5 percent of eligible children do not have access to those programs, according to 2015-16 school year data from the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning.
The regions within the New Kensington-Arnold, Kiski Area and Norwin School Districts are among the most in need of additional preschool opportunities, said Cheryl Werner, manager at Westmoreland Community Action, which manages 19 state and federally funded preschool centers.
Read the full article here.
