Sandy Chen

Instructor Kendra Fish

Historical Conversations Project Final

February 9 2017

                                                              Unequal Early Childhood Education

Knowledge is always a motivation to promote the development of society. Highly achievement should be built upon the solid knowledge foundation. K-12 education systems are sometime might be too little and too late for people to start learning. Hence, preschool is an essential place for children to help them make fully preparation for the future. Many studies showed that early education has significant benefits on children reading readiness, social skills, and future performance such as career and salaries. The achievements of children who receive high-quality early education make in the future are mostly higher than those who don’t receive. But everyone is equal and every child deserves to receive high-quality early childhood education. In the past, the low-income kids always began kindergarten behind their peers. As the hope of the U.S., kids are not provided equal opportunities to access to early education in nowadays. Although the people sought a way, that was pre-k education to reduce achievements gap, it was still not efficient as originally thought. The differences between education hinders children from succeeding in their future and even from making contributions to the U.S., which is a huge loss for the whole nation.

Specially, why is early education so important? A research established that it can “produce substantial gains in childrens’ learning and development” and “have persistent gains on achievement test score”. (Barnett 2003) Missing preschool in childhood would cause a tremendous loss for people, whatever in academic, social, and economic. A poor person dreams to go from dirt poor to filthy rich.  However, according to a recent from Pew Charitable Trust, people born in poor and stay poor and only a few can make it to the middle-class. In addition, according to Figure 0, we can see that people who received early education are more likely to be successful and rich in the future. In other word, the reason for poor to stay poor is lacking early education. Even though some have opportunity to enter preschools, there are some factors prevents them from getting high-quality early education. Everyone has right to get education. Early education is important, for it will change a person’s life.

Figure 0: This chart shows two groups of people, one goes to preschool and one doesn’t. This is the economic effects on them at 40. Whatever in salaries, employment and saving account, people who go to preschool is always higher than those who don’t.

One of the ineradicable obstacles for children to have equal chances to enter preschool and to receive equal treatment in education comes races. Racial inequality in education existed in history. In the 1960s, most none whites students were educated in separated schools at rates much lower than those schools serving whites. Although this problem has been alleviated, it is still a barrier for children to approach preschools today. At a Crossroads: A comprehensive picture of How African-American Youth Fare in Los Angeles County Schools released by Education Trust-West, wrote a part that “African-American children are less likely to access preschool than white children” and “In L.A. County, 59 percent of African-American three and four-year-old attend preschool, compared with 69 percent of white children. Across the state, just 13 percent of African-American children are estimated to be in preschool classrooms in which the lead teacher has at least an associate’s degree in early childhood education, compared with 41 percent for white and 42 percent for Asian children” (8). It indicates that different races have different enrollment of preschools. African- American have less possibility to access preschools. Once they enter kindergarten, they would be far behind those children who went to preschools. Not only the enrollment of preschools is unevenly distributed, the program of preschools serves students partially. Taking Head Start for an example. It is a program established in 1965 to promote preschools to provide low-income children all kinds of service, something related to educational, nutritional, health, and social (Fiscal Year 2014). It provided services for a diversity group of children, like Whites, Native Hawaiian, Black or African American, American Indian and many other races. During 2013 and 2014, it total served about 1,076,000 children (Fiscal Year 2014).

Figure 1                                                         Figure 2

Figure 1: This is a pie chart that shows the percentage of different races served by Head Start program during 2013 and 2014. Among 1,076,000 children they served, 43% was whites.

Figure 2: This diagram represents the percentage of children who are poor.

By seeing Figure 1, we can find out that the mainly group of children Head Start served was whites, which was forty-three percentage of total population. The least portion of group was Native Hawaii and Pacific islander, which was 0.6 percent and about 70 times less than whites. Furthermore, according to the Figure 2, Black and Hispanic play a big part in poverty, who are supposed to be concerned by Head Star.  However, why did Head Start mainly serve whites but not Hispanic? In the U.S. history, the position of whites was always higher than other races. For education, whites had priority to access. Acoording to National Center for Education Statistics, in the table that the percentage of persons 14 years old and over who were illiterate, white was 11.5%, Black and others was 79.9%. From 1870 to 1979, although the number of illiterate people kept decreasing, white illiterate was far less than other races. This is a historical problem and whites are used to be put on the first place on everything. The race bias on education hasn’t been eliminated yet. Unequal early education due to races influences children’s future.

In addition to the unequal treatment through races, the gap between preschools’ quality is also a significant factor to cause unequal early education. Going to a preschool doesn’t mean a child must be higher-achieving in the future. If a child went to a worse preschool, it might not be beneficial for him but even could confuse him. In the chapter 21 of the book The Economics of Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination in the 21^st century, it points out the problem that “the children who need the best schooling actually start their education in the worst of our nation’s public schools” (Rycroft 385). This problem still exists in present days. In Coleman and his colleagues research, they revealed that schools prove more effective for children from first-class families instead of low-income families. It is because that most good schools established in rich areas, but not the needed areas. Moreover, in 1998, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reported quality of early education that “8% were rated "poor," 53% "fair," 30% "good," and 9% "excellent"”. The disparity of schools leads to different teaching level of education. The children from low-income families always go to worse preschools, which are rated as “poor” and “fair”. Parents who have limited resources hope preschools can compensated their deficiency. However, weak-resources base of school still doesn’t have ability to provide children good education as good preschool does. Hence, the reason for lower achieving of children is not their innate problem but schools’ deficiency and low maternal education.

Low-income children are less likely to attend preschools, because the family budget is not allowed them to access to high-quality early education, even which can benefit them in their whole life. There is an increasingly numbers of children go to schools, from only 60 percent of 5-year-olds in preschools in 1965 to 91 percent in 2005 (Barnett& Yarosz), which means the demand of preschools increases which leads to the increases in preschools fees. According to Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, it shows the average cost of preschools ranges from $ 4,460 to $13,158 per year depending on quality of preschools and the locations. “In 2011, the low-income threshold for a family of four with two children was $45,622” (PRB). If this family send both of their kids to the preschools, it would cost half of their earnings. It seems impossible for low-income children to reach to high-quality education.

Another challenge for children to enter preschool and get high-quality education is state. Different state owns different state founding and teaching resources. In U.S., different states spend different amount of founding on preschools. During 2004 and 2005, the average state spending was $3,551 per child (Barnett&Robin). However, according to Figure 3, we can see that states have tremendously differences spending on preschools. In the New Jersey, the amount highly reached to $9,300. In the Maryland, the spending was only about $800, which was 12 times lower than New Jersey. The disparity of state spending on preschools cause inequality for children.

Figure 3: States spending was different on every state. During 2004 and 2005, the New Jersey had the highest spending on preschool and the Maryland had the lowest. The average spending was about $3,000-$4,000. The disparity in spending led inequality problem.

Taking New Jersey and Maryland for examples. The children lived in New Jersey can take $9,300 funding to go to a nice preschool and enjoy professional teaching. On the contrary, the children lived in Maryland have to seek someone else help and pay most tuition for them so that they are able to go to preschool and may not get equal professional quality of teaching. For preschool teachers, this occupation earns less than others.

Figure 4: This diagram shows the difference in salaries of several occupations. The preschool teachers earned $20,000, cook earned $30,000, and kindergarten teachers earned more than $40,000. Which shows preschool earned least in several occupations.

According to Figure 4, the salaries of preschools teachers was $20,000 and kindergarten teachers’ salaries was more than $40,000. Facing such low salaries, teacher recruitment would be much harder. Specially, in these poorly funded states, good teachers cannot be hired and retained for longtime. Once salaries can’t meet the teachers’ satisfaction, they would leave and children would be victims.  Because every teacher has their own teaching method and plan, changing teachers all the time would hurt the consistency of curriculum and influenced children’ learning capacity. Therefore, even though children in the poorly funded states got chances to go to preschool, they got inefficient education, which was not beneficial for their future achievement and the cost of preschool would be a burden for low-income families. For richly-funded states, they can have ability to maintain good teachers by increasing their salaries. Geography causes limitations which lead to education inequality.

Historically, the issue of equality of preschool education has been concerned for several decades. Low-income and non-whites children have always been placed in inferior positions and had less opportunity to access to education. This neglection jeopardized the enthusiasm of learning of these children and made them lost confident to improve themselves. For them, it seemed that they were always behind their peers. Throughout history, many people had made a lot of contribution to improve this situation by issuing related laws and establishing programs. In 1965, as the fight of President Johnson’s for poverty, the federal government established Head Start. In 1970s, several states provided free education for disabled children. In 1986, the federal government made a law and advocate states to provide free early education. In 1991, some states had establish special early education programs for at-risk youngsters. However, this problem cannot be solved within a short time. In some rural areas, children still can’t get high-quality early childhood education and some even have chance to go to preschools. The issue for equality for children to get good early education in the academic world should arise everyone’s attention.

In conclusion, children are still facing some difficulties to get necessary education in their children due to races, preschools’ quality, and geography. New generation is essential force to push our society moving forward in the future. By limiting the access to high-quality early education, less children may be outstanding in the future, which is our big loss. It is preschool that benefits children’ future performance and achievements. Whites are not the most intelligent people in the world. African Americans are not low-achieving. If every child get equal chance to attend preschools, the value they create in the future would be immeasurable. This is an urgent issue in our society, and if no one pay attention, the achievement gap would be larger and our society may not be well-developed in the future.