2012 No sir, the evidence isn't clear

Robert Reich was interviewed for the Wall Street Journal Supplement about "Guns, Butter and Retired Boomers" yesterday. In "Debating the issues," as a follow up to concern about the cost of entitlements with Medicare bypassing the cost of Social Security by 2025, Reich skips it and flits on over to early childhood education (and that drum beat for compulsory early ed was repeated today in an op-ed in the WSJ by James Heckman in "Catch 'em Young").

"The evidence is clear and compelling that these expenditures provide very large social returns. . . I'd have the government spend more on K-12 in poor communities. . .I'd even be in favor of a progressive voucher system if it was inversely related to family income."

No, Mr. Reich, there really is no evidence that we can compensate for unmarried mothers, who haven't finished high school and had their first child before 20 by sending the kids to an enriched pre-school for socialization and health care.* Head Start gains are lost by about age 7 or 8 because the children live in the environment that produced them. By then, Mommy may be on the second or third boyfriend, and more children are vying for her time.

Head Start, our government's early childhood education plan, has done a good job of employing adults, bloating state and local agencies' budgets, giving legislators a "feel good" bi-partsan vote, and providing safe day care and health benefits to poor children, but it has never been able in 40 years to do what a father in the home and married parents committed to their family well-being can do.

Whenever Head Start is criticized, some sort of "ideal" program is trotted out that no large number of poor children attend, and it certainly isn't administered by a federal bureaucracy. When tests show that early progress is short-lived and the children fall back, the blame is put on the controls or the test design, or not enough money, not enough programs, not enough incentives for workers, or not enough children enrolled--never the concept.

About a million children a year are served by Head Start and I think the cost is up around $7 billion. With the money we spend, it should be a first class education. But no matter. In the 90s the progressive experts were saying it was the welfare reform that was making children poor, and now it's probably that mean old Mr. Bush. If you want the real reason Head Start doesn't work, just look at FEMA in the rebuilding of Louisiana and then ask yourself why you think the government will turn this around for poor children.

The gap will never be closed because poor children from single parent poor families with early education will be attending school with children of in-tact families, higher incomes and well educated parents. And it is the gap, unfortunately, that concerns the educators and politicians.

*William Galston, once an assistant to President Clinton, put the matter simply. To avoid poverty, do three things: finish high school, marry before having a child, and produce the child after you are 20 years old. Only 8% of people who do all three will be poor; of those who fail to do them, 79% will be poor. And their lives did not improve if their mother had acquired a stepfather for them.

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, says that children raised outside marriage are more prone to poverty, substance abuse, school failure, delinquency and adult crime.

Head Start
early childhood education