Editorial
'Universal' preschool saves in the long run
One of the headline-grabbing ideas thrown out in Gov. Ben Cayetano's State of the State speech earlier this year was his proposal for a "universal" system of preschool for Hawai'i youngsters.
What Cayetano actually meant was a program aimed at 3- and 4-year-olds from lower-income families. If these children, estimated to number at least 8,000, could be reached, then Hawai'i would have de facto universal preschool.
The rest are covered by families who can afford pre-school or those who are swept up in a variety of programs through the Good Beginnings Alliance, the Kamehameha Schools, existing tuition subsidies and others.
The challenge is more organizational than financial. Federal money and support from other sources are already in place; the job is finding quality preschool situations and then putting them together with the families who need them.
That assignment has been given to Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, who is working with both public and private agencies to build new preschools on existing public school campuses.
All of this has been criticized as nothing more than a political ploy that sets up expensive taxpayer-supported daycare for grateful voters.
Such criticism belies the growing mountain of evidence that suggests a quality preschool experience is a key element in separating those who succeed in school and life and those who do not.
A new study out of Chicago nails down what intuitively should be obvious. It found that a good preschool experience makes a poor child more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to be arrested, drop out or require special services.
What's more, this latest study actually quantifies the advantages. The study was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It focused on a 33-year-old program in Chicago where some 1,500 youngsters were tracked for 15 years, until they turned 20.
The youngsters either attended private preschools or were in one of Chicago's Child-Parent Centers in poorer neighborhoods.
While the study is complex, the bottom line is that it appears there were long-term savings of $4.71 for every $1 invested, in terms of successful development and avoided social costs.
One response to this finding is to push ahead for universal, public preschool. This is an expensive proposition.
A less expensive alternative, the one Hawai'i is exploring, is to close the gap by providing this important learning experience to those who otherwise would be missed.
One of the lessons of the Chicago study was the importance of parental involvement in a youngster's preschool experience. That lesson should be heeded here. It suggests that simply providing universal public education for 3- and 4-year-olds may be the wrong approach.
Parents must be involved, either through their pocketbook or through the agency that provides the schooling.
