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.
Thinking critically…analytic and empirical (theory and method leads to practice/action)
ReplyDeleteThe piece by Brooks gives me room to underscore several points.
First, beware of pundits and op-ed headlines masquerading as insightful policy analysis. The piece can easily mislead the uninformed, mainly because space limits how much Brooks can say a big, complex matter of policy evaluation – does Head Start, as a policy tool, improve educational outcomes for kids from poor families?
Most empirical work assessing early childhood education programs (i.e., primarily categorical programs like Head Start and Even Start) suffers from what called the ecological fallacy. The research methods collect descriptive data, aggregate them, and then imply they tell us something useful at the level of an individual (an outcome for a particular person/child, family, or neighborhood). Aggregate data (i.e., group-level numbers and statistics) tell very little about the characteristics or experiences of particular individuals, although multi-level/hierarchical models collect, organize, and analyze ‘nested’ data (i.e., accounting for a kid in a class at a grade level in a school).
This article by Johnson provides a detailed, ‘systematic’ discussion of the question.
Johnson, Rucker C. “School-quality and the Long-run Effects of Head Start.”
His analysis puts Head Start in the broader context of poverty and inequality (i.e., life-cycle conditions beyond the control of individual but, nonetheless, affecting their ‘options and opportunities’.
Second, here’s piece by John Blomquist on evaluation research and policy, from perspective of international development. You can read it as a quick summary of methodological pitfalls of evaluation research and why it has marginal impacts of policy.
Blomquist, John. 2003. “Impact Evaluation of Social Programs : A Policy Perspective” (January). https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/11827.
Third, you make sense of the ‘conversation’ heard on the literature by applying what you hear to real world cases and questions. For example, how would an effective early childhood program look and operate.