[EDLING:2338] Oklahoma: Bridging Gaps Early On

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes,  February 7, 2007
Economix

Bridging Gaps Early On in Oklahoma

By DAVID LEONHARDT
TULSA, Okla.

To get to the new preschool in the Kendall-Whittier neighborhood here, you
drive down a dead-end stretch of East Fifth Place. Two of the houses on
the street have been boarded up. Outside some of the others, cardboard
boxes and appliances sit on the front lawn. Last week, those boxes and
appliances were covered with snow.  But then you get to the end of the
block and see the brick and stone building with the bright blue roof.
Inside, sunlight streams into a front atrium, and children run around big
classrooms that are filled with new wooden furniture. Set aside the
neighborhood, and most parents would be thrilled to have their child going
to school in a place like this.

The school is called Tulsa Educare, and it is the showpiece for the finest
state preschool system in the country. And, yes, that state is Oklahoma, a
bastion of small-government conservatism that hasnt voted for a Democratic
presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson. Almost a decade ago,
thanks to a low-key push by a small group of state legislators, business
executives and educators, Oklahoma agreed to pay for one year of
prekindergarten. The program is voluntary, but 70 percent of 4-year-olds
here now attend public preschool, more than in any other state. In every
classroom, the head teacher must have a bachelors degree nationwide, most
preschool teachers dont and there must be a teacher for every 10 students.

This combination of quality and scale makes the Oklahoma program one of
the most serious attempts to deal with economic inequality anywhere in the
country. Long before children turn 5, there are already enormous gaps in
their abilities. One study found that 3-year-olds with professional
parents know about 1,100 words on average, while 3-year-olds whose parents
are on welfare know only 525. Much of the gap is caused by environment
rather than genes, according to a wide body of research. By letting
children start school at age 4 and, if the current governor has his way,
eventually at age 3 Oklahoma is trying to give all of them at least a shot
at success. Dexie Organ, a former drug user whose son David attends a
Tulsa preschool she loves, put it better than I can: I dont care if theyre
drug addicts children or doctors children there is no child that should
not have this opportunity.

James J. Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of
Chicago, even argues that spending on preschool ultimately pays for
itself. Early childhood education is so important that it makes workers
more productive and reduces crime. No other form of education spending,
certainly not the college financial-aid package passed recently by the
House of Representatives, brings nearly the same bang for the buck. For
years, advocates of early education have pointed to a few well-known
success stories like the Perry Preschool Project in Ypsilanti, Mich. The
low-income children from those programs went on to do better in school
than many of their peers, to be arrested less often and to earn more
money. But Perry was small and intensive, not the sort of program likely
to be replicated nationwide. Oklahoma is not a test. It suffers from all
the typical imperfections of a big bureaucracy (including urinals at some
schools that were too high for 4-year-old boys).

The state pays about $4,000 per 4-year-old, which isnt enough for a
full-day program. So some school districts offer only a half-day, leaving
working parents to cobble together day care for the other half; other
districts use federal or private funds to make up the difference. A local
oil billionaire named George B. Kaiser, No. 27 on the Forbes 400 list of
the richest Americans, and Warren E. Buffetts daughter, Susan, essentially
paid for the construction of Educare. But the early results in Oklahoma
have still been very encouraging. In every socioeconomic group,
4-year-olds have benefited from attending public preschool, researchers at
Georgetown University found. (Most go to an elementary school, not a
separate school like Educare.) All else being equal, for example, a child
who went through a year of prekindergarten did 52 percent better on a
letter-recognition test than one who didnt.

Not surprisingly, the gains were largest for low-income children and for
Latinos, many of whom dont hear English at home. At McClure Elementary
School here, where 97 percent of families are poor enough to qualify for
free or reduced-price lunches, one whole class of kindergarteners started
writing full sentences last month. Before the preschool program existed,
teachers would celebrate if every student knew the alphabet by the end of
kindergarten. When I asked Bertha Jimenuez, whose son Ivan attends another
Tulsa preschool, what he had learned there, she laughed and said: Todo.
Todo.  Everything. The big remaining question is whether the gains will
last for more than a few years, as they did for the Perry graduates. That
wont be clear for a while. But Oklahomas program has already been
promising enough to inspire Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia and other
states to try to expand preschool. (Georgia has a pretty good program that
predates Oklahomas.)

As this list of states suggests, preschool cuts across some of the usual
ideological lines. Liberals like its antipoverty bent; conservatives
prefer education to straight income redistribution; and business
executives see preschool as a way to build a better work force. Mr. Kaiser
likes to refer to himself as a robber baron from red-state America who has
come to love public preschool. The biggest preschool opponents tend to be
religious conservatives worried about the creation of a nanny state. There
are plenty of critics, Brad Henry, Oklahomas Democratic governor, told me,
shortly before calling for universal preschool for 3-year-olds in his
State of the State address on Monday. Well just have to make the case.

Its worth remembering that some of this opposition stems from simple
self-interest. Universal preschool is a threat to the many churches that
help support themselves with the revenue from their day care programs. For
the same reason, a coalition of Montessori schools in California helped
defeat a flawed preschool ballot initiative there last year. The opponents
do have one important point to make: governments can put too much emphasis
on preschool and day care. Children below age 1 fare better on average
when a parent is home with them, research has shown, and toddlers can
suffer if they spend long hours in day care. The ideal early-childhood
policy wouldnt just pay for preschool. It would also make it easier for
parents to take time off from work.

But this country isnt yet in any danger of having too much preschool. Just
consider what has happened in the last generation: millions of women have
entered the work force, making child care a real challenge for many
families, and a deluge of scientific studies has pointed to the importance
of early learning. Yet most states have done almost nothing to respond to
the changes.

Did I mention that you can buy a perfectly nice house in Tulsa for
$200,000?

leonhardt at nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/education/07leonhardt.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print