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Getting a headstart in life
Following the President’s call for expanding access to high quality preschool during the State of the Union, the White House has now released a new document providing more detail. You can read the entire fact sheet here.
While the proposal is framed as “Preschool for All”, it would focus primarily on expanding federal funding to help pay for preschool for children up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The plan would strongly incentive states to do more to expand preschool, but is not technically a universal preschool plan.
Expanding preschool, though, is only one part of the overall plan. It would also create a new Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership, expand a program that provides home visiting for at-risk families, and would encourage states to adopt full day kindergarten.
Most of the elements sound promising and could make a positive improvement in our society, but the details of how it would work are still vague.
Noticeably absent is any indication of how the administration wants to pay for these new programs. Since Obama said deficit reduction must come first and that any preschool proposal will not “add a dime to the deficit,” all these proposal now completely depend on finding a funding source. This artificial constraint imposed by Obama is going to be nearly impossible to overcome with Washington still deficit obsessed.
This is deeply unfortunately because with interest rates so low what the government should be doing is simply borrowing money cheaply to put into what is clearly a smart long-term investments.
Photo by Rona Proudfoot under creative Commons license
5 Comments
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No one really talks about it but IMO its high time we FEDERALIZED public education.
First, many cities do a piss poor job. Sometimes its football football football instead of actual academics. Other times its simply not managed well. (I have a friend who is on the verge of getting fired because she is failing her ENTIRE freshman class. They are not cutting it but the school says that OK pass them)
Second and most important, your education as an AMERICAN should not depend on where you live. You shouldnt get poor education because you live in a rural area or a poor neighborhood. Yoi shouldnt get a poor education because you have right wing nuts changing history and denying science. Eevery american no matter where they live should have equal opportunity.
Here is what I see happening with most everyone I know with school age kids. The overly religious, conservatives homeschool,(which is another topic all together. and needs to be addressed SOON IMO), so they wont be exposed to anything outside their parents belief system.
The people who are more liberal, educated all send their kids to montessoris.
No one I know actually uses public schools.
I suggest you check out what the SmartStart initiatives in states have developed into. Public/private partnerships, subsidies to private and non-profit providers, and so on. This is what “incentives for states” will produce.
Looks to me like it’s gonna be the usual Arne Duncan pattern.
Priceless. You couldn’t have said it better yourself.
Sounds like the wisdom of the HELOC.
But maybe this one item is of such importance it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. It turns out the government has lots of those. We’ve ended up with deficit spending in 62 of the last 74 years.
With all these sure-thing investments, how could we be $16T in debt?
Yep, corp. per-schools that should work well and I’m sure not only ducan but so are the billionair melinda gates.