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The Sooner The Better: Early Childhood Education, A Key To Life-Long Success

(1) Early childhood education is key to lifelong success and the impacts of experiences in early childhood have disproportionately large effects compared to later years. (2) Research shows that high-quality early education programs can improve outcomes like high school graduation rates, income levels, employment, home ownership, and reduce criminal behavior and drug use. (3) Studies find economic benefits from early education programs outweigh the costs through higher lifetime earnings.

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40 views3 pages

The Sooner The Better: Early Childhood Education, A Key To Life-Long Success

(1) Early childhood education is key to lifelong success and the impacts of experiences in early childhood have disproportionately large effects compared to later years. (2) Research shows that high-quality early education programs can improve outcomes like high school graduation rates, income levels, employment, home ownership, and reduce criminal behavior and drug use. (3) Studies find economic benefits from early education programs outweigh the costs through higher lifetime earnings.

Uploaded by

joan arreola
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Sooner The Better: Early Childhood

Education, A Key To Life-Long Success

Thomas Ehrlich and Ernestine FuContributor


Leadership

We write what’s on our minds.



“The sooner the better” is the perfect tag line for early childhood education.
There is no magic bullet to ensure a lifetime of self-fulfillment in personal and
career terms. But rigorous research shows that high-quality early childhood
education is an extraordinarily powerful means to promote continued success
in school, in the workplace, and also in social and civic realms.

It may seem surprising, but the experiences of children in their early years
have disproportionately large impacts relative to experiences during their
school years and beyond. If children lag in those early years, chances are that
they will never catch up. Remediation of deficiencies in learning of all types is
far more difficult and expensive than learning early on. The good news is that
high-quality programs focused on early childhood years can have powerful
long-term impacts for all racial and economic groups across the country.

Professor Susanna Loeb at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, in


collaboration with Daphna Bassok, wrote an extensive review covering studies
on early childhood education and achievement gaps based on it. The White
House issued a report last December that also summarizes research from a
wide variety of studies, and includes proposed actions to meet national needs
in this arena.

Perhaps the most often cited study is the HighScope Perry preschool


experiment that assigned randomly 123 at-risk low income black students to
either a control group or a high-quality, two year pre-school program. These
students were followed from ages three through 50. The impact of the pre-
school program was powerful. Of those who participated in the program, 65%
graduated from high school compared to 45% in the control group. By age 40,
the annual income of those who were in the program was $20,800 compared
to $15,300 in the control group. As the Loeb and Bassok article states, the
study showed that those in the program “were more likely to be employed, to
raise their own children, to own a home or a car, and to be far less likely to
experience arrests or utilize drugs.”
Another study examines kindergarten test scores to predict whether children
will attend college (and the quality of the colleges if they do), the earnings of
those children as young adults, and many other adult outcomes.

Research also shows that high-quality early childhood programs lead to


income gains of 1/3 to 3.5 percent each year when the children are adults. That
may not seem like much. But compounded, the higher earnings account for
between $9,000 and over $30,000 when the program costs are subtracted.
Viewed nationwide, if all families were able to enroll their children in pre-
school programs at the same rate as high-income families do now, the total
enrollment nationwide would increase by around 13 percent and would yield a
present value of at least $4.8 billion – some estimates approximate this
number as high as $16.1 billion – from the lifetime earnings per person after
deducting the costs of the program. High-quality early childhood education
programs provide long-term benefits that far outweigh the costs.

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