Early Childhood Education Expansion

Is early childhood education important? The Op-Ed article “When Families Fail” by David Brooks in the New York Times argues that quality preschool could reduce poverty and increase social mobility. Although the federally funded Head Start program has been unable to improve school readiness of children from disadvantaged families, many local and state programs have emerged as successful. There is evidence to suggest that local programs like the Perry and Abecedarian Project and state programs in Oklahoma, Georgia, and New Jersey can make at least an incremental difference in school readiness. Although the improvements are small, they add up over years to produce significantly better lives (Brooks). It seems to me that the capability framework would support free early childhood education for children of disadvantaged families. It provides these children with similar opportunities available for children from wealthier families who can afford private preschool, minimizing the disadvantaged faced by children who cannot afford preschool before kindergarten and elementary school.

Reaction to Obama’s proposed expansion of early childhood education has been mixed, but mainly over issues related to cost. After reading about the capability approach, it seems that Obama is arguing for the responsibility of the local and state governments to provide early childhood education. The state should provide it so that every individual child has the same level of capabilities upon entering school After reading this Op-Ed article, I briefly looked up a few other articles in the last week or two from other newspapers. Most other articles acknowledge the importance of school readiness, but expressed concerned due to the minimal impact of Head Start despite the massive federal cost. Georgia Republican Senator Isakson stressed that his state’s program, which offers free pre-kindergarten to all 4 year olds, works because it started locally and is funded locally. This highlights the importance of focusing on educational programs at a smaller scale. This complements discussions we’ve had in class about focusing on the individual and the problem of increasing the scale when trying to solve issues of equity and efficiency. I think that the expansion of early childhood education will only be successful if it is implemented on a small scale.

Concern over Capabilities

When discussing the capability approach, Amartya Sen argues that education is important on its own, not just as a commodity for production. This reminds me of David Labaree’s article “How Dewey Lost: The victory of David Snedden” where he contemplates how the beliefs of popular Dewey lost out to the view of the wild card David Snedden. It seems to me that Sen’s beliefs share some of the “romantic and naturalistic” vision of education that Dewey had. Both Sen and Labaree point to the economic incentives and social mobility goals tied into the American education system today, which aligns with Snedden’s desire for a “socially useful school curriculum”. I wonder if the ideologies of Sen and other supporters of the capability approach will fall to the background, just as Dewey’s did. I know this is just a small fraction of the capability approach, but the almost romantic vision of the education system reminded me of the analysis of Dewey’s beliefs. My understanding of the capability approach so far is that the authors believe that education has the ability to influence social change at the individual level, and not because of the economic incentives tied into the human capital approach.

From my readings thus far, this approach to education seems to contradict the support for standardized testing. Standardized testing tries to make the material taught in schools uniform from school to school, and rates achievements off of test scores. Although the capability approach is concerned with egalitarian goals via schooling, standardized testing places too much concern on testing scores as a means of competition and mobility. Instead, the capability approach emphasizes the interactions in schools and the relationship between not only knowledge and skills, but also options and opportunity. Focusing on standardized testing and scores further draws the emphasis away from democratic morality and equality and towards economic efficiency and social mobility.