In Issues Journal: Transforming Education in the Primary Years

As budget cuts continue to loom, policymakers may feel resigned to take a defensive, “let’s just get through this” position, instead of moving forward on innovations. This would be a mistake. Early education has always suffered from a lack of resources to serve the full population and may be working with even less in the coming years, but that shouldn’t stop the field from continuing to press for reform of the education system. If anything, it should heighten the urgency for the most effective uses of tax-payer dollars, of which high-quality early childhood programs can be a prime example.

In a recent article that I co-authored with Sara Mead, former director of the Early Education Initiative and now associate partner for Bellwether Education, we argue for transforming the way education is structured, envisioning a public system for early education that starts at least when children are 3 years old and continues through the third grade.

The article appears in the Fall 2010 issue of Issues in Science and Technology, a journal of the National Academies of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the University of Texas at Dallas. Issues has been publishing several articles over the past few years that tackle important education topics; although it may not sound like the first place to turn for information on education, it’s well worth a look. For example, last year the magazine ran a commentary by Jack P. Shonkoff, founding director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, on how to mobilize science to revitalize early childhood policy.

Our article is adapted from A Next Social Contract for the Primary Years of Education, a paper we released last spring. The full issue is not yet online (print copies can be ordered here) but a PDF version is now available on our site.

P.S. Don’t miss the beautiful artwork that accompanies our piece. It’s by artist Benjamin Volta, who worked with elementary school children to create a “techtonic quilt.”