As Pennsylvania prepares for a new governor, two key issues confront our state: making sure our children are ready to compete in a global economy and seeing that every tax dollar invested in an austere budget produces significant returns.
This is why I, along with more than 1,200 other individuals and organizations, have joined a new, diverse statewide coalition called First Steps Pennsylvania, to encourage our next governor to make investing in early childhood education a priority.
More and more research shows the importance of high-quality, early learning experiences as not only getting a child started off well in school but also increasing the odds for that child's success throughout his or her entire academic career — and work life as well.
Results for children enrolled in pre-kindergarten through Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts classes show significant gains: At the end of the 2008-2009 school year, nearly 75 percent of children who attended Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts finished with age-appropriate proficiency in literacy, numeracy and social skills. Of those children who participated in Pre-K Counts in 2007-2008, a smaller percentage required early intervention services in kindergarten than among the total kindergarten population.
High-risk 4-year-olds in Allegheny County, who had access to publicly funded pre-K, showed special education and grade retention rates of 1 percent and 2 percent respectively, in districts where other students were referred for special education and retained at rates of 21 percent and 23 percent.
Across the country there's a host of research that mirrors the gains achieved from kids who attend high-quality pre-K programs:
- Children who attend high-quality, pre-K programs enter kindergarten with better language, reading, math and social skills. They have fewer grade retentions, less remediation, higher standardized test scores and higher graduation rates.
- Recent analysis of the Perry Pre-School Program in Michigan shows each dollar invested returned $16 in crime, education and welfare savings, higher earnings and taxes paid, as students are more likely to succeed in school, stay out of trouble with the law, graduate and get better jobs.
All of this is good news for our children and our state, which has made great strides in providing high-quality child care and pre-K over the past eight years.
However, the stark reality is that high-quality child care and publicly funded pre-kindergarten is not available to most children in our state — or right here in the Lehigh Valley.
In Lehigh County, only 14 percent of at-risk 3- and 4-year-old children have access to public pre-kindergarten; that figure drops to 8 percent for kids in Northampton County. And as far as child care is concerned, just 3.5 percent of child care providers in Lehigh are considered high-quality, as measured by accreditation by national child care associations or Keystone Stars, the state's quality improvement system.
The success of these programs in aiding the academic achievements of children and providing a substantial return on investment for taxpayers is well documented. Unfortunately, so is the lack of access to these programs for so many of our youngest citizens.
I urge all voters to visit our website, firststepspa.org, to learn more about the importance of these early childhood education programs.
There are many important questions we must ask the people who want to be our state's next governor. Ultimately, voters must determine which candidate is more committed to prudent investment of our limited tax dollars in proven programs that benefit our children in school today and our communities and future workforce tomorrow.
Early education is a sound investment that reaps rewards for a lifetime.
Terry Thomas of Bath is president of the board of directors for Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children and is an early childhood education adjunct faculty member at Lehigh Carbon Community College.