The Economics of Early Child Education

At the National Press Club earlier this month, a group of business leaders, economists, and philanthropists launched a modest, $3.1 million, ten-year project to make early education a top U.S. priority. Entitled Partnership for America's Economic Success, the partnership is now in the midst of a two-year research phase, and is commissioning about 15 studies to discern the economic benefits of early education and policy options for public and private financing, among other things.

This project is the latest signal of corporate America’s increasing interest and involvement in young children’s education. Concerns over global competition and the need for an innovative and better-trained workforce are fueling this interest. Early education is viewed as a sound economic investment that will yield a healthy rate of return. Invest in kids is not just a slogan. . . it's now workforce policy.

This project has benefited immensely from the leadership of Susan Urahn and her staff at the Pew Charitable Trusts, which manages and helps fund the Partnership for America’s Economic Success. The Trusts have made considerable contributions to early childhood education. Their State Policy Initiatives program, for instance, has funded rigorous, policy-focused research and supported public education campaigns that demonstrate the value of high-quality preschool for all three- and four-year-olds. The Trusts has invested over $50 million to advance this goal since 2001, launching pre-K campaigns in over a dozen states. And progress has been made: over the past two years, states have increased preschool funding by over $800 million.

"Secondary-Postsecondary Learning Options"

I spent my lunch-hour today listening to an informative webinar on “Secondary-Postsecondary Learning Options,” a catch-phrase coined by the American Youth Policy Forum (www.aypf.org) to describe schools and programs that link secondary education with two- and four-year institutions of higher education and allow high school students to participate in college-level courses. The webinar was presented by the Educational Policy Institute (www.educationalpolicy.org), which excels in disseminating knowledge of educational opportunity policy issues to a wide audience of policymakers and practitioners.

I particularly enjoyed the comments of Betsy Brand, the president of the American Youth Policy Forum, who shared her thoughts on the common characteristics of successful SPLOs: supports for students; transferability of academic credit; and rigor of classes. Providing support for secondary students pursuing college-level credits is essential for their success, and Betsy pointed out that the most successful programs had a “caring adult advisor” assigned to each student. She also noted that academic assistance and tutoring and the presence of a peer support network were also characteristics of successful SPLOs. The transferability of credit, while a common characteristic of these programs, can also pose a problem: Credits are too often not portable between institutions of higher education, even within the same state, and too often the responsibility for figuring out which credits transfer and which don’t fall on the student. The solution, Betsy suggested, is the use of articulation agreements at the local level but also, ideally, at the state level. The rigor of the curriculum is also important, supported in large part by the proper preparation of teachers and faculty who teach the courses.

Much of this webinar was inspired by The College Ladder, a recent publication of the American Youth Policy Forum, which is available on the AYPF website. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was one of the reviewers of this publication.