Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Summer 2006
Although the scientific community had been aware of the dramatic findings
on brain development for decades, the 1990s saw a burst of enthusiastic
activity by zero-to-three advocates that led, some experts felt, to an
overemphasis of early development at the expense of other critical developmental
periods such as adolescence. Today, most educators and child advocates
would recommend a balanced allocation of resources throughout all developmental
stages. Still, it is generally accepted that the early years are crucial
ones, and although children are resilient and can benefit from later intervention,
the costs of reversing the effects of a poor start in life increase as
the child grows older. These facts have serious implications for parents
and policymakers.
With increasing numbers of children growing up in households where all adults work full time, the demand for optimum preschool and care services, especially for low-income families, is greater now than ever. Yet only three out of five eligible children are served by basic Head Start, early education advocates claim, and only one out of twenty eligible infants and toddlers is enrolled in Early Head Start (which targets the very young). All eligible children—1.5 billion—could participate with a budget of $10 billion, they contend, and the increased cost would be worth it because public money could be saved in the long run.6
A 2005 study conducted by the Rand Corporation, for example, found that “investing public money to make preschool available to every 4-year-old in California would generate an estimated $2 to $4 in benefits for every dollar spent.”7 A 2005 proposal by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis states that the annual rate of return on investment in good early childhood development programs is 12 percent for society in general.8 While there are reasons far beyond economics for protecting young children and their families, the issues of human capital—the combined skills, knowledge and ideas of a nation’s people—are real. For most of this century, increased productivity rates have been attributable mainly to improvements in human capital, a trend that is expected to continue and intensify. According to the Carnegie study, by supporting families during the child’s earliest years, society ensures that children will enter school ready to learn and ready, in time, to be productive workers and good parents.
Despite these reports, there is a lack of national consensus on the benefits of basic early childhood education. Rather, preschool has been a political hot potato from day one, with skeptics claiming there’s no definitive evidence such high-price programs make a lasting difference. The Department of Health and Human Services has a study underway tracking thousands of Head Start participants through the first grade—the outcome of which may largely determine what the future holds for federally funded early childhood education. Preliminary results released in 2005 were open to interpretation. Proponents found evidence that good programs “narrow the school readiness gap between low-income children and their more advantaged peers,” according to the National Head Start Association.9 But the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research argued, “this new report found that Head Start has disappointingly small impacts on disadvantaged children.”10
At the same time, the nonprofit research and service agency WestEd evaluated a number of smaller programs located in various U.S. communities over the past several decades and determined that, “investing in high-quality early childhood development programs can positively impact children, their families, taxpayers, and the government.”11 Taking a wider view, international studies show other industrialized countries—some far less prosperous than the United States, and representing a wide spectrum of political viewpoints—have made preschool for all children a priority. Early childhood teachers in these countries are also required to have four-year university degrees or to receive specialized training, which helps ensure the programs’ high quality, the American Federation of Teachers claims.12
Politics aside, it should be noted that differences in opinion on this subject reflect, to a degree, the inherent difficulties of designing and carrying out reliable research on interdisciplinary programs involving very young children—especially research that involves the entire family and takes place over decades. Nevertheless, there is a growing body of knowledge, based on studies of a variety of programs and approaches, that is helping to fill in some of the gaps in government research, and to which the BEEP follow-up study discussed here may make a valuable contribution.
A Strong, Early Start
In 1972, all expectant parents in Brookline, Massachusetts were offered
the opportunity to enroll in an innovative child health and development
program, beginning three months before the birth of their baby
and continuing until kindergarten. The Brookline Early Education Program,
which received over $2.8 million in grants from Carnegie Corporation of
New York plus funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, offered
guidance and support to participating parents and their very young children,
with the goal of starting the youngsters off in school healthy and ready
to learn. In their initial proposal submitted to the Corporation in 1970,
the program’s designers explained the thinking behind BEEP: “Although
modest gains have been achieved in preschool programs, we do not believe
that a comprehensive approach to early education throughout the first
five years of life has been tried anywhere,” they wrote. “There
is a need for organization of facilities and personnel and for greater
continuity of care for each child.”
Carnegie Corporation’s interest in BEEP was consistent with its established philosophy of confronting problems of educational access and equal opportunity. Alan Pifer wrote, “No nation, and especially not this one at this stage in its history, can afford to neglect its children…. Not only are they our future security, but their dreams and ideals can provide a much-needed renaissance of spirit in what is becoming an aging, tired and disillusioned society. In the end the only thing we have is our young people. If we fail them, all else is in vain.”13 In the years leading up to this program, a series of studies on early learning had provided intellectual justification for many of the federal government’s antipoverty programs. At the same time, the groundbreaking book Intelligence and Experience by J. McVicker Hunt demonstrated that intelligence is not determined at birth and fixed forever. Along with other studies of young children’s cognitive development, it turned the spotlight on early childhood experience, showing it to be critically important for educational competence and achievement. Reevaluating hundreds of studies of young children, Benjamin Bloom had confirmed the direction of this work in his 1964 book Stability and Change in Human Characteristics, concluding that, by the age of school entrance, children had developed most of the intelligence they would have at maturity—50 percent by the age of four and an additional 30 percent by the age of eight.
6 Background on 2005 Head Start Reauthorization
(www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=618).
7 Karoly, Lynn A., and James H. Bigelow. The Economics of Investing in Universal Preschool Education in California. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 2005.
8 Rolnick, Art, and Rob Grunewald. “Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return.” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Fedgazette March 2003 (minneapolisfed.org/pubs/fedgaz/03-03/earlychild.cfm).
9 Background on 2005 Head Start Reauthorization (www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=618).
10 Besharov, Douglas J. “Head Start’s Broken Promise.” On The Issues American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, October 2005.
11 Lynch, Robert G. “Early Childhood Investment Yields Big Payoff.” Policy Perspectives, 2005.
13 Pifer, Alan. “The Report of the
President.” Annual Report, Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1978.