CFK reports from: Brookings Institution
Event: Discussion of the Spring, 2005 issue of The Future of Children journal, "School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps."
Organized by: The Brookings Institution and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School
Where/When: Washington, D.C., March 15, 2005

By: Michele Clute

Today, two panels of experts discussed policy perspectives, research findings and practical issues surrounding the problem of racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness which put many low-income youngsters at a disadvantage even before they start kindergarten.

The panels were convened by the Brookings Institution and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School to discuss the Spring, 2005 issue of The Future of Children journal. The journal addressed research that finds serious gaps in school readiness between minority children and white children, reflected in such areas as vocabulary, behavior, knowledge of numbers, letters and colors. These gaps then persist throughout the years of K-12 education, seriously affecting graduation rates, college readiness, and employability.

The first panel addressed policy issues relating to improving preschool programs for low-income children, and to increasing the availability of high-quality preschool. It included Mayor Steve Burkholder of Lakewood, Colorado, whose city is one of the very few to run its own Head Start programs; Grover Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, who expressed skepticism about the ability of traditional Head Start to significantly improve school readiness among low-income children; and Clifford Johnson, executive director of the Institute for Youth, Education and Families of the National League of Cities, who argued in support of improving Head Start rather than moving towards state-operated systems.

The second panel included Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, Helen Blank, senior fellow at the National Women’s Law Center; Donna Derochers, director of education studies at the Committee for Economic Development and Cynthia Jones, special projects coordinator at the National Head Start Association.

Besharov suggested that traditional Head Start programs are facing increasing competition from school-based pre-Kindergartens. Blank noted that since the enactment of welfare reform in 1995, low-income mothers of very young children are facing increasingly stringent work requirements, but that the supply of quality subsidized child care programs has not kept pace with their needs. Derochers summarized research that has found a high rate of return on investments in quality preschool for the most disadvantaged youngsters, in terms of higher earnings later in life, lower incarceration rates, and generally improved outcomes. Jones argued that Head Start, while in need of improvement, is working to improve itself, with a new focus on improving the training and education of its workforce.

Current proposals to allow some states to start preschool demonstration projects funded by a federal block grant outside of the Head Start system consumed much of the discussion time, with panelists taking very different positions on the idea. Relatively little time was spent discussing effective program design or how to target resources in order to have the greatest affect.

You can see a webcast of this event if you'd like to know more.