1203PRESCHOOLBARNETT (Preschool Education Policy Update)
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Transcript 1203PRESCHOOLBARNETT (Preschool Education Policy Update)
Financing Early Education
Presentation to
Governors Forum on Quality Preschool
December 15-16, 2003
W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D.
National Institute for Early Education Research
Copies and details available from: www.nieer.org
(732) 932-4350, [email protected]
Financing Early Education:
Presentation Overview
Why does early education need more public funding?
Early education is an essential investment
Too few children have access to programs
Program quality needs to be increased
Parents need help
Can America afford high-quality early education?
How much money does early education need?
How much money is available now?
How can early education get the funding it needs?
Why This Matters Now
America faces a long-term public finance problem
The federal budget is on an unsustainable path
Social security, Medicare and Medicaid have risen from
30% of non-interest spending in 1980 to 45% today
These 3 will consume 75% of the budget by 2040
This unfairly burdens today’s children
Early education is one investment that:
Increases future workers ability to fund federal programs
Reduces future government costs
Increases intergenerational fairness
Economic Benefits of
Early Education
Increased Productivity
Increased maternal employment and earnings (child care)
Increased skills and knowledge
Increased high school graduation and college attendance
Increased skilled employment and earnings
Decreased Costs of Government
Reduced grade repetition and special education
Fewer protective services cases
Less welfare dependency
Reduced crime and delinquency
Decreased health care costs and mortality
Economic Returns to Early Education
for Disadvantaged Children
Cost
Benefit to Society
Perry Preschool:
$12,000
$108,000
Abecedarian:
CPC:
$35,864
$7,000
$136,000
$ 48,000
All three studies find that economic benefits from intensive, high-quality
programs to taxpayers and participants combined far exceed the cost of highquality programs (comparable to the cost of public education generally).
Could universal preschool produce
similar benefits for the middle class?
Middle class children have fairly high rates of the
problems that preschool reduces for low-income
children.
Reducing these problems could generate large benefits.
Income
Lowest 20%
20-80%
Highest 20%
Retention
17%
12%
8%
Dropout
23%
11%
3%
Source:US Department of Education, NCES (1997). Dropout rates in the United
States: 1995. Figures are multi-year averages.
Preschool Enrollment (Age 4) by
Mother’s Education
90%
80%
70%
60% 52%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
< HS
73%
82%
64%
HS
Some Coll Coll Grad
Mother's Education
High Quality Preschool Programs
Needed to Produce Benefits
Well-educated preschool teachers
Adequate teacher compensation
Small classes
Strong supervision
High standards for learning and teaching
Parents Need Help
High quality early education is expensive
Good preschool costs more than state college tuition
Parents can’t afford child care and educational quality
Early education has become a middle class necessity
Single earner families with a parent at home need help too
Lower-income families are left far behind
Left on their own parents invest too little in early education
Most families do not invest rationally for the long-term
Parents overestimate current quality of preschool
When most benefits are public even rational private
investment is too low
Cost of Early Education
What determines the cost of early education?
Design of the program--hours, services, quality
Who is eligible--targeted or universal
Take up rates
Systems costs--start up and infrastructure
What are benchmarks for cost?
Per pupil costs of K-12 education
Per pupil costs of preschool special education
Per pupil costs of Head Start
Cost is not the same as state expenditure
Early Education Cost
in Perspective
American economy, annual GDP
Federal annual spending
State and local annual spending
Social Security and Medicare
Agri-business subsidies
= $10,340 billion
= 2,000 billion
= 1,000 billion
=
705 billion
=
20 billion
All major federal programs 0-5
State Pre-K
=
=
16 billion
2 billion
What is the Real Early Education
Financing Problem?
America can afford any early education system it wants
Adequate public funding requires a small, but not
insignificant, share of government revenue
Early education must be marketed to voters, its natural
constituencies and new constituencies
There is no time like the present
for financing preschool
State and local revenues will improve in the near future
The number of young children will increase through 2020
The federal budget situation will become more difficult
Some states will gain population, others will lose
population which can shrink K-12 enrollment
Where can the money come from?
Increasing taxes and fees--dedicated taxes or general
revenue
Increasing gaming revenues
Borrowing
Obtaining a larger share of current education and child care
program funding (Title I, reducing 12th grade)
Obtaining a share of other program’s revenues
Cutting other government programs and tax breaks
Charging parents
Conclusions
Early education is a good economic investment
that needs greater public funding
Increased public funding depends primarily on
political influence
Finance is more a political problem than a
technical problem
Public financing (at least at the federal level) is
likely to become more difficult in future decades