ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170077
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
LET'S SAY we wanted to keep the amount spent on education where it is today (in truth, it needs to be higher), while shifting more resources to where they'd do the most good in improving educational outcomes.
Guess what: We'd need to shift education dollars and attention outside the existing system of public schools.
All the sound and fury about reforming primary and secondary schools notwithstanding, the biggest impact could be had by investing more in early childhood education - the very place where the least resources and attention now are focused.
A topsy-turvy, self-defeating status quo persists, in part on bureaucratic inertia, despite evidence about how kids actually learn. All of which adds urgency to proposals offered this week by the Carnegie Corp.'s Task Force on Learning in the Primary Grades.
To improve learning in elementary school, the Carnegie report suggests, first overhaul our hodge-podge of preschool programs, and provide universal access to high-quality education for 3- and 4-year-olds. For some kids, indeed, intervention at age 3 is late.
Neurologists have discovered that much of the brain's "hard wiring" occurs after birth. Links among billions of neurons - the basis for critical and creative thinking - develop rapidly in the first years.
Language, for instance, is programmed into the brain's circuitry early in life. A second language is learned most easily during preschool years up to age 10. (Why do most Americans wait until after age 10 to get foreign-language instruction? Well, that's the way we've always done it.) Similarly, researchers find that brain circuits handling math and logic form most rapidly between birth and age 4.
The fundamental point: Development of learning capacity depends on early mental stimulation. This finding ought to highlight, among other things, the significance of:
* Parents as first teachers. Parents clearly need to devote time every day to helping their preschoolers develop and learn. Just as clearly, the nation has an interest in assuring that parents receive the training and support they need to be effective first teachers. This is especially so with young, low-income parents of high-risk infants.
* The error of consigning children to mark time until "real" education begins in kindergarten. Talk about screwed-up priorities: Child-care employees are among the nation's lowest-paid workers. Most day-care facilities are deficient in educational stimulation. Across the country, preschool is an incoherent mix of fragmented programs, inconsistent standards and highly varying quality.
* Health as an educational advantage. Because poor health or nutrition during the crucial, early years can stunt later learning ability, it's all the more important to assure access to prenatal and pediatric care.
* The failure to analyze costs and benefits. Imagine the future costs to Virginians resulting from this fact: According to state officials, fully a third of Virginia's children "reach school not ready to participate successfully." By one estimate, a $1 investment in quality preschool saves at least $3 in later costs for special education, crime, welfare, etc. Yet Head Start serves only a fraction of eligible children. And cost is sure to be the major objection to the Carnegie proposal of universal access to preschool.
The task force also proposed linking preschool with what parents and kindergartens are teaching, reallocating resources to programs with proven track records, and raising educational standards. These are obvious steps, assuming we can recognize the folly of an education system that largely ignores the best learning years of life.
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