Early Start: Preschool Politics in the United States by Andrew Karch

Author:Andrew Karch
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Prekindergarten Early Dropout Intervention Act of 1988

Members of Congress considered several proposals that were less ambitious than Smart Start. Senator Lawton Chiles (D-FL) introduced the Prekindergarten Early Dropout Intervention Act of 1988, which would have authorized grants to local educational agencies, community-based organizations, Page 146 →and nonprofit private organizations that operated early intervention programs for dropout prevention. The main goal of the legislation, according to Chiles, was “to reduce the number of children who later drop out of school by providing high-quality early education which focuses on the development of language and cognitive skills.”45 It would have provided twenty-five million dollars to programs for three- and four-year-olds. The Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources held a hearing on the bill in May, but the chamber took no further action. Despite its limited legislative progress, the Senate testimony illustrated four important features of the debate over early childhood policy in the late 1980s.

First, early childhood education was increasingly viewed through an economic lens and framed as an investment. Multiple witnesses cited its cost-effectiveness. A major theme of the hearing was that every dollar spent on preschool would pay for itself by reducing long-term spending on various government programs. One witness said of high school dropouts, “Many of these children will, of course, drop out of school, but they will not drop out of our lives. They will linger to haunt our pocketbooks, if not our individual or collective consciences. They will…fill our welfare rolls and our jails.”46 An academic researcher claimed that early childhood programs would reduce spending on the criminal justice system, welfare, and special education and would increase the taxable earnings of older youths.47 Other witnesses cited the results of the Perry Preschool Project and the recent report by the Committee for Economic Development in their calls for massive investments in prekindergarten and child care. Committee chairman Edward Kennedy summarized this line of argument: “We have benefited in recent times from the very convincing evidence that this investment in early intervention—and it is an investment—has enormous potential.”48

Second, the bill's supporters generally envisioned a circumscribed role for the national government. A representative of the American Federation of Teachers argued that “there is a federal role in providing leadership and support aimed at stimulating additional early childhood education services.”49 Another witness explained, “One of the things that excites me about this bill is that it suggests that state and local agencies really do need to take a very strong role in implementing appropriate programs.”50 Multiple witnesses described the national government as an agenda-setting force that could highlight the significance of early childhood programming or as a potential funding source. Program development was generally viewed as something that was better left to service providers or state Page 147 →and local officials. Kennedy noted that national officials had “a lot to learn from the local experiences,” a sentiment that was not expressed during the hearings of the late 1960s and early 1970s.51 The Prekindergarten Early Dropout Intervention Act envisioned a demonstration

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