Investment in preschool programs is key to sustained growth for America’s economy, according to the Committee for Economic Development, a D.C.-based think tank.
“There has been no more important issue that we’ve worked on,” than preschool education said Charles E.M. Kolb, the group’s president and a former domestic policy adviser to [former] President George H.W. Bush.
Speaking to education officials, advocates and business leaders at a Thursday breakfast in the Mayflower Hotel, Kolb said there is a direct connection between the country’s lack of investment in early education and the national recession.
A series of short-term solutions have created a nation of residents who don’t save, municipalities that frequently run deficits and rates of obesity and diabetes that are growing, he said, and he urged government to take consider research showing the returns made in quality pre-K care. “Does it make more sense to invest in our young people or to build another stadium? We have the answer,” he said.
In May, the District passed legislation sponsored by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray that could dramatically expand quality pre-K offerings in the city. The law requires the city to assess current pre-K providers, establish standards for care, provide grants for quality improvement and requires that by 2014 all city-funded programs to meet the District’s criteria.
Gray and Deborah Gist, D.C. State Superintendent of Education, said the District’s program was in the early stages of implementation but would eventually ensure quality early care for all the city’s children beginning at age 3. For the 2009 fiscal year, $9.8 million in city money has already been set aside. A group of local businesses and charitable foundations is moving to raise another $1 million or more for pre-k in the area.
Gray said working with mentally retarded children and adults early in his career helped him realize the importance of children’s early growth. “There were so many of them that were the victims of their formative years,” he said. The District’s legislation, he said, would guarantee all 3-year-olds “a seat that is steeped in a quality experience.”
