Early Ed in Duncan’s Confirmation Hearing

Education secretary-designate Arne Duncan faced some not-so-tough grilling from senators in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee yesterday morning. In his prepared remarks, Mr. Duncan highlighted early education:

First, we must invest in early childhood education. Too many children show up for kindergarten already behind. Many never catch up. The President-elect’s “Zero-to-Five” proposal calls for:

• Greater supports for working parents with young children;
• Early-learning challenge grants to states;
• Voluntary universal pre-school quality enhancements; and
• More resources to build on the successes of Head Start and Early Head Start.

The President-elect also plans to establish a Presidential Early Learning Council to better integrate pre-school programs and resources.

And when it came time for Q and A, the first question was about early education:

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D-IOWA): Back in the 1980s, President Reagan had asked a group of business people to set up a committee to look at education in the United States, and to look at it from the hard-headed business standpoint, not the sort-of soft-sided social sciences standpoint. What was needed in education. The group met Chairman Renier, who I think was the head of 3M at the time, and then it spilled over into the first president Bush’s administration.

I remember the first report came out. … I had never met Mr. Renier, a very successful businessman. He wanted to deliver the report, and he wanted to point to the executive summary of this two- or three- year involvement of all these business leaders. It was summed up thusly: We must understand that education begins at birth and the preparation for education begins before birth. They got it, and this was in the 1980s. As we discussed then and later on, that when so many of these kids come to school, they had terrible diets, they had had a television as the babysitter for four years, they come from tough homes and really tough neighborhoods, as you pointed out, maybe they didn’t have parents to read to them, who loved them and cared about them a lot. So they come to school and we try to patch and fix them in. And a lot of times during those early, formative years, as you know, that’s when the brain develops. That’s when learning really starts. And yet so many of these kids, we get them in kindergarten — or if there is no kindergarten, first grade – and we have a tough time.

And it has not been really the purview of the Department of Education in this. That has been over more with the Department of Health and Human Services. Somehow we’ve got to break this down. The two of you have got to get together, get this melded down to really focus on this early childhood education, whether its Early Head Start, Head Start programs – how that’s melded into education. But somehow we have got to make sure that every child comes to school ready and able to learn. Any thoughts that you might have on that I would appreciate.

ARNE DUNCAN: I just echo your sentiments. I think there is nothing more important that you can do than giving people a great start to their life. As you said, we have children that we see all the time who come to kindergarten that have been read to, who are absolutely fluent in reading. And then you have other children, tragically, who don’t know the front of a book from the back of a book. And how is the best of kindergarten teachers going to be able to handle that great spread in their classroom? It is very, very difficult. And so that we can do is to get to our children as young as possible, to emphasize quality of programs, to make sure that what we are doing isn’t just babysitting, a glorified babysitting, but we are going to give them early literacy skills, early socialization skills so that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and ready to read.

I absolutely commit to working in partnership with working with Senator Daschle and the HHS team trying to do something dramatically better around early childhood. We need to increase quality, we need to make sure that we are getting to our children as young as we can. You know, all the money we spend on prisons down the road, it is just the best investment, whether from an economic standpoint, whether it is sort-of from a human potential standpoint, it is the right thing to do. And I commit to doing whatever I can to work in partnership with him and with HHS to do something dramatically better for children.

HARKIN: Well, I am glad to hear that. We just have to somehow break this thing down and get these two together and how we focus education on these early kids. I will be, as a member of this committee and as a member of the appropriating committee, looking for advice on how to do that. Senator Daschle, and the president, of course I want the president involved in all of this.

DUNCAN: As you know, the president has talked about setting up this Early Learning Commissioner, a childhood commission, which I think is important. I think we have to look at this not as leaders of bureaucracies but as what’s right for children. And what’s right for children, we just need to get it done. I will bring that spirit to this work.

[….]

SEN. BERNARD SANDERS (I-VT): What are you going to do with the disaster in childcare in terms of early childhood education so that in Vermont and all over this country working families, today, at the most important moment in child’s life, cannot find high-quality, affordable childcare?

DUNCAN: As the president-elect has talked about repeatedly, and he has a huge passion and commitment around this, he totally understands that the best thing that we can do for children is to give them access to high-quality early childhood programs. The more we get to our children before they hit kindergarten, the more this is not glorified babysitting, they are getting their early literacy skills, their early socialization skills attacked so that they hit kindergarten ready to read and ready to learn, the better our students are going to do. As a country, if we can invest more in education and less in jail cells, I think that is absolutely what we have to do.

SANDERS: Specifically with regard to childcare, do you agree that our current early childhood education system is totally inadequate? What can you tell us that will happen in the next four years?

DUNCAN: Again, as the president-elect has said repeatedly, he wants to include not only access but quality of early childhood. I will tell you in Chicago, we have each year increased by 1,000 to 1,500 seats the number of children able to go into high quality programs. That is the kind of thing that from day one, the president has reiterated his tremendous commitment to improving both the quality and the access around the country.

SANDERS: Would you agree that our goal should be that every parent in this country should be able to find access to high quality, affordable childcare?

DUNCAN: I think we have to move toward that opportunity to universal access. I think the more we get to our children early, the better they are going to do.