Budget cuts and the future of early education: a conversation with Maryellen Schaub by Victor Sensenig

Marking the end of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip and the release of the Pixar film Toy Story, 1995 was a landmark year for American children. In roughly the same year, most eligible children began attending full-day kindergarten, and most three- and four-year-olds were enrolled in preschool programs (Jamieson, Curry, and Martinez, 2001). Many states have instituted some form of universal prekindergarten and the federally-funded Head Start program, which provides full-year preschool for children from low-income families, has been enduringly popular since its founding as part of the War on Poverty in 1965.

Early education has become a societal norm, but it is still an ill-defined concept, generally referring to prekindergarten, but also often to kindergarten, and distinguished from child care with a custodial emphasis. Describing early educational experiences as “pre-school” is complicated because the age of compulsory schooling varies from 5 to 8 across different states and because the activities of early education are often indistinguishable from those of formal schooling. However broadly defined, early childhood education has expanded despite not being compulsory, reflecting widespread, taken-for-granted concern about children’s cognitive readiness for school and the conviction that children benefit from early formal learning. Much current educational research focuses its inquiries on the optimal nature and intensiveness of early education programs.

This century’s Great Recession has disproportionately affected prekindergarten education. State funding for preschool programs was cut by almost $250 million in 2010, and that total could reach $338 million through 2011 (Epstein and Barnett, 2010). Preschool enrollment growth has slowed, and per-child spending has declined. Arizona has been the most draconian, halving its early childhood education funding in 2010. Among other states, Florida reduced its voluntary prekindergarten funding by $20 million in 2010, and in its 2012 budget, Pennsylvania included $30 million in cuts to early education.

Steve Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, argues that these cuts have both an immediate effect on low-income families and longer term institutional implications: “The worst economic decline since the Great Depression has sharply reduced the ability of parents to provide for their young children. As family incomes fall, more children become eligible for and in need of state preschool programs. Yet, at the same time, state pre-K budgets are being squeezed, making it nearly impossible for them to meet the need. . . The immediate future of pre-K seems much more perilous than past trends might suggest” (Shipp, 2010). Barnett’s perspective suggests that universal preschool is by no means an inevitablity, raising the question of whether these recent reductions in early education funding a temporary, recession-based blip in a larger trend of schooling expansion, or whether they represent a more significant reversal of this trend.

I addressed this issue to Maryellen Schaub, a scholar of early education who has particularly studied the effects of the expansion of mass education on parenting practices. Schaub (2010) argues that in the last fifty years parents have increasingly engaged in behaviors that target their young children’s development of cognitive skills. In an earlier institutional analysis, O’Connor (1990) argued that the institutionalization of early childhood programs has been hindered by nation-states’ willingness to leave certain major functions to informal socialization systems. According to O’Connor, “mass schooling excludes important and necessary aspects of child rearing, leaving the provision of additional elements to another institution, the family” (p. 118). However, Schaub argues that the rise of parenting for cognitive development is a consequence of the influence of schooling as a powerful institution in transforming parents into teachers. In the following conversation, she addressed several questions that are raised by her research and by recent developments in the funding of early education.

Q: What are the major current perspectives on early education among scholars in the field? 

A: A lot of the public discussion around early childhood education stems from our concern with the achievement gap and our knowledge that it appears before the start of formal schooling.   For many, early childhood education is the answer. Some envision a centralized, uniform system available to all children while others argue we should concentrate on providing high quality programs to economically disadvantaged children.  Both perspectives make legitimate points:  that a centralized universal system of pre-K would more likely guarantee high quality (e.g. David Kirp in The Sandbox Investment) and that a decentralized, patchwork of state funded pre-K programs would avoid the bureaucratization of early childhood education (e.g. Bruce Fuller in Standardized Childhood). But our best evidence shows that if the main goal is the reduction of the achievement gap then our effort must start much earlier and be much more intense.

Q: What are the implications for early education of the parenting trends reported in your research?

A: The rapid rise in participation in early childhood education programs, both kindergarten and preschool, are evidence of our general belief in schooling as a legitimate way to allocate opportunities in modern society. But unlike expansion at the upper end of the schooling spectrum, expansion to younger children has less obvious human capital benefits.  Instead, it is connected to the general trend toward greater engagement in cognitive activities of young children. Over the course of the 20th century, parents increasingly choose to enroll their children in kindergarten and over the second half of this century we saw the same rapid rise in preschool enrollments. Parents also increasingly engaged their young children in cognitive activities over the second half of the 20th century as cognitive development became part of the “good parent” role.

 Q: Why is early childhood education subject to fluctuation in funding?

Budget cuts are threatening to all segments of education. In particular, budget cuts are most frequently felt in art, music, and physical education programs as well as after school programs and athletics. Early childhood education programs are also frequently threatened during lean times because they are the least institutionalized of all public school years. However, survey after survey has shown that Americans overwhelmingly support full-day kindergarten. In addition, with the support of public opinion many states have been moving toward some type of publicly funded pre-Kindergarten education.

 Q: What do recent cuts to preschool education mean in the big picture of early education? What is its future?

A: The Kindergarten has experienced a radical transformation in the last 50 years.  It has changed from an introduction to schooling to the first formal year of schooling. Part of that transformation has included the switch from part-day to full-day. This was a slow change as school districts debated the merits and expense of full-day kindergarten. However, now more than half of all children attend full-day kindergarten.  Urban and rural children are more likely than suburban children to attend full-day kindergarten and economically disadvantaged children are more likely than advantaged children to attend full-day kindergarten (NCES). Although some districts may feel strapped enough to return to half-day kindergarten, this will probably be the exception not the rule.

The United States has supported a publicly funded preschool program for economically disadvantaged kids since the Johnson Administration created Head Start in 1965. However, Head Start is a part-time program that runs nine months per year and has a diverse set of goals. It is also highly decentralized so the quality varies by location.  State progress toward universal pre-K is likely to slow or even experience setbacks due to budget cuts. But the general trend to a more academically oriented, state supported pre-K year will continue.

 Q: What groups are most affected by reductions in states’ early childhood education funding?

Because education is a state and local matter in the United States, there is tremendous variation in the delivery. However our belief in education as a legitimate institution able to enhance the individual and create adult opportunities spurs the continued expansion of education both upward and downward. It is unlikely that the general trend toward full-day kindergarten or universal pre-K will disappear. Instead, it is likely that the most effected by budget cuts will be working class and near poor children, those children who attend school districts that receive limited federal dollars but lack the advantages of high local property values or school taxes.

References

Epstein, D., & Barnett, S. (2010). Funding cuts to state-funded prekindergarten programs in

FY10 & 11. National Institute for Early Education Research. Retrieved from http://nieer.org/docs/?DocID=303

Jamieson, A., Curry, A., & Martinez, G. (2001). School enrollment in the United States: Social

and economic characteristics of students. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-533.pdf.

O’Connor, S. M. (1990). Rationales for the institutionalization of programs for young children.    American Journal of Education, 98, 114-146.

Schaub, M. (2010). Parenting for cognitive development from 1950 to 2000: The   institutionalization of mass education and the social construction of parenting in the      United States. Sociology of Education, 83, 46-66.

Shipp, C. (2010). Recession hits state preschool programs; More cuts expected. The Pew

Charitable Trusts. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=58753