Who Cares About Education for Low-Income Kids?

Ruffled by The Daily Howler's accusation that "liberals stopped caring," I started an email exchange with Mr. Howler himself, Bob Somerby. My argument was that, when confronted with a lack of easy solutions, liberals had to work harder -- and far longer -- to figure out the problem and work to build solutions to the ever-changing challenges of getting a decent education for all kids, including those most at risk. Mr. Somerby's response, oddly, was: "Liberal journals and liberal bloggers don't discuss low-income education." By "liberals," he doesn't mean that the many Americans across the nation who hold left-of-center and/or progressive views don't care about, talk about, and work for the improvement of access to good education, but that "The Nation, the New Republic, the Washington Monthly and the American Prospect rarely discuss low-income ed. Ditto for major liberal bloggers...."

As a non-coastal person, I've often railed at the right-wing view of "liberals" as a small coterie of coast-dwelling writers, their blogs and their journals. And here was a noted (DC-based) watchdog blogger espousing the same view, ignoring the vast numbers -- and range -- of left-leaning types across the country.

OK, Mr. Somerby has a somewhat valid point in criticizing the blogosphere for the lack of attention sparked by an excellent investigative Los Angeles Times series, The Vanishing Class, on the large number of dropouts in LA's Class of 2005. But this is hardly the same as his declaration: "Modern liberals don't care about low-income kids. We dropped out decades ago."

One of the ways that modern liberals have been making progress on education for low-income kids has been improving access to early-childhood education for at-risk children, spurred by the wealth of research in the 1990s about crucial brain development in the first few years of life. Holding off on education till age 8 was no longer a great idea, and many organizations like The National Association for the Education of Young Children have been working to emphasize preschool quality, not merely custodial care, and like the Build Initiative have been working with states to improve access to good pre-kindergarten programs. And not everybody heralding pre-K is a crunchy-feely lib. One of the biggest boosters is PNC Financial Corp., using the economic development argument: "Every $1 spent on early education saves $17 later, mostly in welfare, special education and other social services."

Disclosure time: In my off-web life as a freelance writer, I recently wrapped up a magazine story, to be published this spring, on one aspect of the pre-K movement, so I've been awash in research. Despite Mr. Somerby's comment, pre-K for at-risk kids has been a hot topic, e.g. in the next day's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote about California's Proposition 82, which would raise taxes to guarantee preschool for every 4-year-old in the state. Further disclosure: The proposition is the brainchild of fellow HuffPoster Rob Reiner, but I know neither him nor the particulars of this pre-K proposal.

I've probably seen much of the same research, however, like the Carolina Abecedarian Project, which has been following its subjects since they were born into poverty in the 1980s. And the even older High/Scope Perry Preschool study, which began in 1962 (click here for the press release on the test group at age 40). Both longitudinal studies show lasting, significant benefits -- higher rates of home-ownership, education and income, lower rates of drug use, early pregnancy, arrests and (here's a surprise) smoking -- for adults who as low-income children were in education-based preschool programs, compared with their peers who did not. And then there's that PNC-funded study on the economic benefits of good pre-K (full pdf of report here, though a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution story refers to it also).

There's a growing, national movement for universal access to pre-K, whether liberal bloggers and journals know it or not. As the folks at the Committee for Economic Development, a non-partisan organization of top business execs and university presidents, put it:

All children deserve the opportunity to start school ready to learn, both mentally and physically. As other industrialized countries have recognized, a child's future and a nation's economic future increasingly depends on giving children a strong early start. CED Trustees have a long-held belief that the development and education of all children from the earliest stages of their lives must be a national priority.

Yet much of the United States still relies on preschool arrangements that not only do not give all children equal access to early learning, but all too often leave disadvantaged and lower-income children behind. Policies and programs remain fragmented and progress has been slow because of an unwillingness to make the necessary public investments to give our young children the early start they need.