At an annual conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science this week, scientists revealed startling new research about the 1 in 6 kids living in poverty in the United States. Their work showed that the stress of growing up in a home where food is scarce and books are limited can transform a child's very physiology and brain wiring, impeding intellectual skills for the rest of their lives.
Even worse, this all occurs before a kid's first day of kindergarten.
Indeed, our public education system mostly ignores the earliest--and most important--years in a child's development. We only spend 14 percent of public education dollars before kids are five. Ironically, it's this time in a child's development when 90 percent of brain growth occurs.
Simply put, these early years are when kids living in low-income areas need the most help, but that's also when our educational system does the least for them. It's an incongruity that dims otherwise bright futures.
Fortunately, the Obama administration has made investing in young kids a consistent budget priority since day one. Last year's stimulus bill allotted $2 billion for Head Start and this year's budget proposal asks for yet another billion dollars, which will go a long way to reaching and investing in the millions of kids whose future depends upon a solid education.
On top of this effort, President Obama and members of Congress who support a fair start for all kids are leading a fight for legislation that would cut bank subsidies and shift a portion of the funds into an Early Learning Challenge Fund. If the bill passes, the Fund would provide $1 billion annually in grants to innovative early education programs instead of $1 billion in bonuses to bankers.
Still, passage of this bill would only make a small start toward progress on ending a childhood poverty crisis that threatens the next generation and, consequently, America's ability to compete in the future global economy.
This week, millions of Americans are engaged in a noisy debate about the fairness of Olympic judges and the rules of sports. It's not clear why we don't have a similarly robust debate about basic fairness for the 1 in 6 kids living in poverty in the U.S.
Children would be better served if we had quality day care, manned by degreed professionals, compensated with a wage they could actually live a middle class with, low caregiver/educator to chldren/student ratios.
We don't tackle the problem head on, but go cheap, hiring people who are illiterate, high student/children to teacher/caregiver ratios, and wonder why we don't get good results.
education in our country. We have ignored the field of education where teachers make the least amount of money, in turn creatinf a field that has a hard time retaining the brightest teachers. After working with children for 25 years I can first see the impact a early education plays in a child's life.
These children have benefited socially and emotionally from feeling part of a school community, learning how to feel good about who they are, and learning to trust the world.
Just because children's brains grow fast in the early years does NOT mean we should adjust our spending proportionally. Early childhood education is great but the work kids do early on starts to fade by 3rd grade. That doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. It simply means that learning is more complex than starting early, that the best time to influence a child is right now with strategies that work for where ever it is they are at in their development.
The first five years DO NOT last forever in the crass sense it is being argued here. The amazing thing that neuroscience really shows us, if you take the time to actually find out, is not so much the grow early on but our capasity to learn through out life. What we need to understand better is HOW learning changes with age and in a specific social and cultural context. It would also help us on our way if we started taking a more skeptical view of research like that mentioned above. why don't you look up the reference and have a look at it? It's not telling you what you *think* it is.
Surely we can make a case for early childhood education without reducing children of all ages to bundles of neurons.?
Teachers and schools cannot raise children, nor should that be expected.
and the children can't speak for themselves so the teachers grab the mic from them always and want everyone to pity them instead of the children who are being hurt by their selfishness
it's high time to put children not teachers first
"10K per child per year spent on education" ...... NO it's 10K per child per year which is given to the teachers who ride on the backs of the poor children and continually make the u.s. of a.'s children worse and worse each and every year
they get malnourished because of these government workers who grab all the money via governmental unionism
But, of course, This reflects the importance our nation's leaders give to childcare, and to education in general. Those interested in early childhood development, primary and secondary education often do not pursue careers in this field. If they do, they eventually leave. Teaching has never had a higher attrition rate. Besides the many problems in the teaching field; pay is paramount in deciding to opt out.
for once in my life I'd like to see a list of all these people who as you say "opted out" of the teaching profession and took a "better" job somewhere else - perhaps the teachers union should start some sort of fake website claiming they have such a long list and it must be a long list because I hear this so often ~ but have never observed it - never
The reality is teaching pays well, but to hear public school teachers you'd think it barely provides them a living wage. These women can't teach because there are no openings. There are no openings because teachers in this area make on average 50K (many make a great deal more, hitting 6 figures).