Broader and Bolder, but Missing Something

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently released a statement, endorsed by some 60 education scholars, foundation officials, and “big names” from other fields, calling for a “broader, bolder” approach to education that extends beyond schools to address early childhood education, health care, and out-of-school time. The argument runs as such:

1. Student achievement is highly correlated socio-economic status,
2. Schools, while they can mitigate some of the consequences of economic disadvantage, are inadequate to overcome social and economic disadvantages altogether, so
3. Education reform should focus more on factors outside of school that impact student achievement.

That should sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the work of EPI’s Richard Rothstein. Based on that argument, the statement proposes a “broader, bolder” education reform agenda focused on four areas:

1. Continued K-12 school improvement,
2. Increased investment in early education,
3. Increased investment in health services, and
4. Increased attention to out-of-school time.

Richard Colvin, David Hoff, Andy Rotherham, and Alexander Russo all offer reactions.

Here at Early Ed Watch, we’re—not surprisingly—pleased to see this statement give such prominence to early education programs. As the drafters aptly note, as much as half of the achievement gap exists before students even begin first grade—so efforts to eradicate achievement gaps need to begin much sooner, too. Signatories Sharon Lynn Kagan and Jane Waldfogel also lay out the evidence* that high-quality early education programs (particularly high-quality pre-k) actually work to improve disadvantaged youngsters’ educational and life outcomes. In education, where we often struggle with a lack of high-quality evidence about what does or does not work for kids, the evidence for the benefits high-quality early education is some of the most compelling.

That’s the good news.

What gives us pause, however, is the way this statement treats early education relative to K-12 schooling in general and K-12 school improvement or reform efforts in particular. The entire structure of the statement is designed to draw a distinction between reforms focused on improving K-12 schools (which the statement argues have been the focus of recent efforts to close achievement gaps) and reforms focused on out-of-school factors (which it argues are needed). It places early education firmly in the latter category.

That’s a mistake. Early education investments can’t occur in isolation from K-12 school reforms. While the evidence for the benefits of early education is strong, evidence also suggests that a significant portion of those benefits is lost in the first three years of schooling—a phenomenon known as fade-out.** Researchers Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas have demonstrated that fade-out among Head Start alumni is linked to poor elementary school quality. So, getting the most bang for our buck out of early education investments requires linking them to real reforms in the K-12 schools children will enter following early education. That means improving the quality of K-12 programs for disadvantaged youngsters, with smaller classes; stronger teachers; increased customization; and clearly defined academic expectations, supported by aligned, academically rich curricula and appropriate assessments.

Moreover, we can’t really talk about significant new early education investments without also engaging the structural issues that are at the center of K-12 school reform battles. When policymakers make large investments in early education, they’re not just investing in programs and services. They need to think of these new investments as building systems of early care and education, on par with the system of K-12 public education we currently have. That’s essential, because the patchwork nature of our existing nonsystem of early education and care creates inefficiencies, allows tremendous quality variation, is confusing and difficult for parents to navigate, and allows too many children to slip through the cracks. Fixing these problems requires thinking about systems.

That doesn’t mean our early education system should look like, or be just another part of, the existing K-12 system. The last thing we should do is build an early education system that simply replicates the flaws in our current K-12 system. But there’s no getting around the fact that the questions policymakers have to answer in designing early education systems are the same ones at the center of K-12 school reform battles: Who may deliver publicly funded education programs? Who can teach? How should we prepare, credential, and compensate teachers? How do we measure quality? How do we hold programs accountable to the public who funds them? What should children know and be able to do? What are the goals of publicly funded education? Efforts to build early education systems must be informed by how these debates have played out in K-12 education. Policymakers investing in early education must learn from what has worked—and what has not—in the K-12 sector. At the same time, building new systems of public education to deliver early education gives policymakers an opportunity to try out new approaches to public education that, if successful, should eventually inform and help to reshape the K-12 sector as well. Unfortunately, when we go to conferences on early education, or meetings on K-12 school reform, there’s virtually no overlap in the participants. And this statement’s decision to treat early education as an “out-of-school” reform issue only exacerbates that divide.

Early education investments are neither a substitute for K-12 reforms, nor an escape from it. The very issues that are hot-button issues in K-12 reform—school choice, teacher quality, accountability, funding—are also inevitable in early education. And, by turning away from K-12 reform to focus on out-of-school issues, this statement doesn’t provide any real answers on those questions.

*One note to the good folks at EPI who put this together: The “background papers” you offer reviewing the evidence on various policy areas would be much, much more helpful and compelling if they included links to the studies you cite, many (though not all) of which are available on the web. And as for those that aren’t on the web–they should be! (See Kevin Carey here for more on this.)

**To be clear, the evidence of fade-out does not negate the benefits of early education entirely. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that high-quality early education programs produce benefits for participants—in the form of higher wages, lower crime rates, and reduced welfare dependency—well into adulthood. But the fact that, by grade three, a significant portion of the advantages early education graduates had over non-participants at kindergarten entry disappears, suggests that we are losing out on some of the benefits of early education. If we could help children preserve a greater share of early learning gains throughout early elementary school, they (and we) would reap even greater benefits in adulthood.