Early Childhood Pre-K Education - Essay Example

Early Childhood Pre-K Education 1.0 What is Early Childhood (Pre-K) Education and why is its importance? Early childhood education is also commonly referred to by the use of a myriad of other terms such as pre-kindergarten and preschool. Early childhood education is the education that children obtain while they are still at the early stages of their childhood. It is designed to be a program for children aged between the ages of 3 and 5 years of age and is primarily aimed at helping in preparing these children for kindergarten. While most of these programs are seen to be academically – based, some of these programs are seen to take a generally more social approach. An example of one such program as presented by Currie (213), is the Head Start program that is designed with particular focus on disadvantaged children and aims to aid these children in improving their skills so as to enable them to be able to begin their schooling on an equal footing with their relatively advantaged peers. 1.1 Importance of Early Childhood (Pre-K) Education According to Karoly (xiii), business leaders, parents, the general public and parents are quickly appreciating the vital role seen to be played by a child’s first few years in the general promotion of the child’s healthy social, physical, intellectual and emotional development. be over emphasized as early childhood has been observed o be a relatively crucial time period that critically affects the general development of a child’s mental functions. According to Karoly (xv), this includes developments in a number of key cognitive functions such as social, self-regulatory and behavioral capacities. Currie (214), points out that early childhood education programs have been seen to help children effect some gains in their IQ levels. Currie cities and example of an eight week summer program that managed to help the participants attain an average of an estimated 10 point increase in their measured IQ scores. Early childhood education can also serve to increase the general degree of school readiness of the children. Currie highlights the fact that a survey on kindergarten teachers found that only about 65% of the students who were starting kindergarten were essentially deemed to be ready to learn. This is in terms of aspects such as their being physically healthy, well-nourished, rested, their curiosity and enthusiasm towards new activities, their ability to be able to effectively sit still and pay adequate attention and adequate communication skills. To this end, early childhood education has been found to be of immense benefit in the improvement of the education readiness of children (Currie 214). Recent experiments have shown that early childhood education can be instrumental in the development of some of the social skills such as self-control. This view is seen to be supported by experiments that showed that young children can generally be able to delay their engagement in any forbidden but attractive activities for longer durations in the event that they are provided with some useful hints on how they can be able to effectively distract themselves (Currie 215). Of note is that it is such programs help in the provision of quality child care. This is especially so in light of the social perceptions that tend to believe that mothers should work. To this end, early childhood education programs essentially ensure that mothers are able to easily access child care. In addition to this, Currie (215), points out that as a result of the fact that inadequate care can prove to be potentially harmful to children, the provision of adequate and good quality care can possibly be considered to be an explicit goal of early education programs. The importance of early childhood education has resulted in the formulation of a number of initiatives such as the PNC Grow up Great initiative that encompasses a number of key components critical to the promotion of early childhood development such as supporting objective research on the general benefit and cost involved in the promotion and adoption of early childhood programs, utilizing print and television media in the development and eventual dissemination of information pertaining to child school readiness and development. PNC is also seen to be actively advocating for increased access to various, quality early childhood programs (Karoly xiii). 2.0 Who would Possibly Stand to Gain the Most out of Universal Free Early Childhood Education Programs? The provision of universal free Early Childhood Education Programs is seen to potentially have a number of benefits that will not only accrue to the individual children under the program but also to their parents, teachers, the society and the government promoting this program. 2.1 Gains to the Country’s Workforce: According to Heckman (1), the general growth in educational attainment across the different cohorts of Americans that happen to have been born since 1950 has gradually been decelerating. This is as compared to the trend observed in the preceding 50 year time period. If measured correctly, the actual proportion of high school dropouts that enter into the cohorts of workers has been on the increase during the past twenty years, this trend is also seen to be reflected even among the nonimmigrant population. Across all the different demographic groups in the country there is a widening gap in the already substantial ethnic, racial and socioeconomic gap in college attendance. Heckman (2) points out that a possible remedy to this trend is for the country to effect considerable changes in some of the more often neglected long-term factors such as the environment that happens to be provided by parents and the amount of family resources that are made available to children over the span of their life cycle. Heckman cities a number of factors such as social skills, attitudes and cognitive abilities that primarily operate during early childhood and eventually tend to greatly explain inequalities during the person’s later socioeconomic attainment (2). These factors as provided by Heckman (2), are seen to be similar to those that early childhood education programs seek to enhance in children. It is therefore seen that the provision of universal free early childhood education programs will potentially prove to be of great benefit to the country’s workforce as the skills enhanced by these programs will cause the workforce to have a better level of education by reducing the number of school dropouts. The children will also be able to easily access the programs as the parents will incur no costs in enrolling their children into the programs. 2.2 Economic Gains for the Government: The government can be able to make substantial economic gains from interventions in early childhood education predominantly on the grounds of equity. According to Currie (215), economic actors that happen to start out while having extremely unequal endowments primarily in terms of environment, ability or opportunity are found to be more likely to end up having rather unequal allocations. This is seen to be so even if the actual outcome is efficient. Governments that are concerned with equity among their citizenry can try to compensate for the existing differences in the eventual final outcomes by attempting to equalize the initial endowments that are made available to the citizens while they are still at the childhood state. Currie further argues that attempting to equalize early endowments via the proper utilization of early childhood intervention programs might be considered to be the most superior approach towards the solving of the problem of unequal allocations. This is mainly because it is seen to essentially avoid most of the moral hazards that are seen to arise in the event that society attempts to try and compensate persons that happen to have poor outcomes. Early intervention has also been found to be a more cost-effective manner of promoting equity as compared to trying to compensate individuals for unequal outcomes (215-216). 2.3 Gains for the Participating Children and their Respective Families: The children and families participating in Early childhood Education programs are also seen to gain a number of key benefits from their participation in the program. Karoly (xvii) points out that according to research conducted by the Rand foundation examining benefit domains such as academic and cognition achievement, child maltreatment, emotional and behavioral competencies, social welfare program usage, educational attainment and progression, labor market success, health and crime and delinquency; it was found that with the sole exception of social welfare program usage, there were some significant statistical benefits recorded for each of these domains as recorded in an estimated two-thirds of the programs that that were reviewed and subsequently measured in the particular domain during the study. Karoly (xix) further points out that in some cases, the actual improved outcomes happened to be demonstrated almost soon after the program had ended while in some instances, the favorable aspects of a child having participated in the early childhood education programs were clearly evident and continued to be demonstrated throughout an individual’s adolescence and eventual transition into adulthood. There are a number of studies that indicate that the parents of those children participating in the early intervention programs stand to also benefit from the programs and particularly so, in the event that they happen to be particularly targeted by the intervention. It is thus seen that free access to the provision of universal early childhood intervention programs can be of great gain to both the children and the families participating in the program. 3.0 Conclusion The gains of Universal Free Early Childhood Intervention Programs are seen to potentially extend and extend benefits not only to the children participating in the program, but also their families, the government and the country’s workforce. To this end, it is important for the government to formulate and implement policies that will ensure that that universal free early childhood education programs are created and adequately promoted in the country. Works Cited Heckman James. Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?” Focus, Newsletter of the Institute for Research on Poverty. Volume 23, Number 3. Spring 2005. Web. Janet Currie. “Early Childhood Education Programs: What do We Know?”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 15(2), 213-238. Web. Lynn A Karoly. 2005. “Early Childhood Interventions: Proven Results, Future Promise.” Summary, pages xiii to xxviii. Rand. Web. Shonkoff Jack and Phillips Deborah. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academies Press, 2000. Print. Read More