Imagine a public school system in which parents have to pay extra if they want their kids to have up-to-date textbooks instead of 20-year-old ones. Or if they want them to learn algebra and geometry instead of stopping with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
It sounds ridiculous – and it would be. But philosophically speaking, the practice of making parents pay tuition if they want their children to have all-day kindergarten isn’t any different.
The State of Oregon provides funds to let all public schools offer a half-day of kindergarten. Back in 2004, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo ruled that it was okay for schools to offer a full day of kindergarten for kids whose parents were willing to pay for it. A bunch of schools throughout the state, including several in the Bend-LaPine District, took that option. But recent legal opinions ruled – correctly, in our view – that such a practice was inequitable and unlawful, and the paid kindergarten programs were suspended.
Now there’s a move afoot among state lawmakers to bring them back. Sen. Vicki Walker (D-Eugene), chair of the Education and General Government Committee, reportedly has given her blessing to proposed legislation that would make paid kindergarten programs legal. Such a measure is likely to be taken up by Walker’s committee when the legislature reconvenes for its emergency session next month.
Advocates of the paid-kindergarten policy argue that it doesn’t hurt anybody: The kids whose parents can’t afford to pay for a full day still get half a day. But that argument overlooks the whole issue of inequality.
Reams of research have shown that early childhood education is important to the success of children in their later school years. Children who receive less early childhood education will be inherently disadvantaged vis–vis other children who receive more. To add to the injustice, kids whose parents don’t have the money to pay for all-day kindergarten are precisely the ones who are likely to need it the most.
Children from low-income families are eligible for the Head Start program. But Head Start is unable to enroll more than a fraction of eligible children, and it doesn’t take those who have reached kindergarten age.
Of course inequality is a fact of life, in education as in pretty much everything else. Kids whose parents buy them books and laptop computers, send them to sports or science camps, enroll them in music and dancing and foreign language classes and hire special tutors will have the edge over their counterparts who don’t get those extras. But the goal of public education is supposed to be to reduce inequality, not increase it – to make the playing field a bit more level, not tilt it even further.
Instead of looking for a way to make paid kindergarten legal, Oregon legislators should be finding a way to make all-day kindergarten available to all children. The paid kindergarten approach is an evasion of our public education system’s true responsibility. We’re giving it THE BOOT, and we hope the legislature will too.
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2008.
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There are many problems in our public school system that need to be fixed before we try to fund all day kindergarten. Specifically teacher and administrator accountability for the large amounts of money spent and wasted.
This is nothing more that day care for parents looking for a place to stash their kids for a few more hours. Personally, I would MUCH rather have them pay for it that the rest of us.
And, PLEASE, the educational and social benefits of kindergarten are way over-rated–especially when nit-picking the advantages of six hours versus three hours and the disadvantage it creates for the other munchkins.
Parents who read and interact with their children from infancy create a real disadvantage for those who will not. Should we create a program to do that–vis a vis Head Start–at taxpayer’s expense? Should we make it unlawful for parents to create such a disparity?
Let’s face it–lots easier to dumb down that to educate upwards. ..and it seems to be working so far.
My son attended full-time kindergarten in Carpenteria Ca in the 80’s. It was the 1st year they had tried it. However, it was free and not all children qualified for it. The child had to be ready for it. The first month was only half day, the next month the kids stayed for lunch, the following month was the time that the kids were selected for full-time. This was more of a pre-1st grade. In the afternoons they studied math, science and history. The late mornings were for reading. I feel that this only helped my son through his scholastic years. He began First grade in Bend and only thrived during the next 12 years, attending college and graduating in 4 years. Oh yeah, I was a single parent w/ 2 children, not wealthy (worked in food service)If this had been available only to those that could afford tuition, he would have been short changed. Allowing a child the opportunity to learn should be a right of all children, not just the folks that can afford to pay extra.
“Parents who read and interact with their children from infancy create a real disadvantage for those who will not. Should we create a program to do that–vis a vis Head Start–at taxpayer’s expense?”
One-word answer: Yes. Parents of low-income kids often are working two or more jobs and don’t have much time to spend with the kids. During the day the parents are at work and the kids are in daycare (babysitting) where they learn nothing. Or in some cases the parents can barely read themselves.
It has been demonstrated again and again that Head Start kids do better in school than those who don’t have the program. If we want to break the cycle of poverty we have to make sure poor kids get a good education. I can’t understand why conservatives, who pay so much lip service to poor people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, always want to cut the bootstraps off.
Kim, thanks for sharing that. It’s always nice to have somebody who knows what she’s talking about to offset the comments of those who don’t.
HBM
I’m not a conservative–only someone who distrusts and dislikes anyone and anything that takes the money I work so hard to make and then wastes it. I am supposed to be accountable and responsible–why not those who take my taxes and then spend them on anything and everything that politicians decide is necessary to make a ‘feel good’ policy that buys them votes. Good intentions are not enough. The acceptance of waste and corruption because ‘some good’ is being done somewhere is not an adequate justification for me any longer.
The ACF was assigned responsibility for management and oversight of the Head Start programs–and the GAO’s 2005 Head Start report clearly showed that there were systemic failures that were leading to widespread fraud and a lack of accountability that the ACF refused to address or failed to address. There is no doubt that there are problems–and no doubt that the political will to address those problems doesn’t exist.
There are always success stories–but to attribute them to any particular single factor doesn’t make sense. Inner city program failures are rampant–not because the program doesn’t exist–but because other factors contribute to their failure: fraud–uninvolved parents–other cultural influences. Saying that a child succeeds because of head start makes no more sense than saying the child succeeds because their was milk in their diet. I am sure Kim was more than a casual influence on her son’s success.
I hate to use the term, but where does the nanny-state draw the line? There is no substitute for good parenting! My parents were small family farmers in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. They worked a job that required them to work long, long hours every day of the week. They were basically subsistence farmers who managed to make enough to struggle through, year after year–never much–but always enough. They raised seven children. We lived a life of limited expectations when it came to material things. We wore hand-me-downs. We suffered exclusions because we didn’t always have the latest, greatest, trendy things some of the others our age did–but we survived such slights.
But my parents were involved–as involved as they could be, in spite of being tired and having work demands that exceed anything I may have faced since then. Every one of their seven children graduated high school, college, and some got post-graduate degrees. There was no Head Start. There was no Medicare or Medicaid or WIC. There was no promise of comfortable retirement. Based on this success, should everyone be forced to live the life of small family subsistence farming?
Liberals and Conservatives all have their blind spots. The ‘Surge’ is working–just cherry-pick your data and do a little victory dance! For Liberals, the successes of any social program justify the failures and expense, and are more than enough reason for yet another program. And neither Conservative nor Liberal want any close review or reasoned discussion–degenerate into name calling and stereotyping immediately. Maybe the nay-sayers will go away.
I, and others such as myself, are not going away and we will defy the convenient labels attached to us by those who agree and disagree.
“I’m not a conservative …”
Well, “if it quacks like a duck,” etc. When I hear somebody use the phrase “nanny state,” I think, “Aha, that’s a conservative quacking.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. :^)
That’s why I was reluctant to use the term–but if the state is supposed to raise kids for parents who are too busy, too incompetent, or too anbivalent–what else can I call it–using the ‘Socialism’ bugaboo would definitely put me in the paranoid Conservative crowd. As it is, I will remain as independent as I can and have views that are as varied as the situations I find myself in, considering, or confronted by…
Quack!! :^)