Deseret News | Help low-income children succeed

Help low-income children succeed

By Doug Macdonald

Published: Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 12:05 a.m. MDT

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We have problems in this valley, this valley that my forebears came to from Europe to live among the "saints," a valley free from repression and poverty. Our poverty today is not as severe as it was in industrial England during the 1850s, but it still makes life difficult, unfair and depressing for more than 250,000 Utahns.

Our food banks are only half prepared to meet the needs of the poorest among us. Wages for even the median worker in Utah are not keeping up with inflation. One out of six Utah families cannot afford health insurance. Twenty-eight percent of our schools, most of which are probably in low-income neighborhoods, do not meet the No Child Left Behind guidelines.

How can we help the poor rise out of poverty? What boost can we give our friends and neighbors to "lift the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees"? At Utah Issues, we search and scour the news and literature for short- and long-run solutions to the challenges of poverty.

Economists in the Midwest may have very well found a cure: high-quality preschool education for 3- and 4-year-olds. Two groups of 150 kids each have been tracked since the mid-1960s. One group of low-income children attended a high-quality preschool called the Perry School in Ypsilanti, Mich., for two years, with well-paid, certified teachers trained in child development. The students attended preschool 2.5 hours per day for nine months a year. Parents received weekly 90-minute home visits from school trainers and/or teachers. The control group of low-income children from the same community did not attend preschool.

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Both groups are now in their 40s, and the results are very compelling. Not only was it revealed that the preschool control-group children learned their ABCs, but more importantly they learned social and negotiation skills. Not only did they learn math skills, but they also learned how to pay attention and follow teachers' directives.

Compared to the control group, the children who attended the Perry School showed higher rates of high school graduation and enrollment in college and had higher earnings in the long run. There was less juvenile delinquency, and fewer Perry School children used the adult correction system, saving the state millions of dollars in prison expenses.

The University of Chicago economists calculated that for every dollar invested in early education, $17 was saved in either lower government costs or higher earnings for the individuals who attended high-quality preschool when they were -3 and 4-year-olds.

Our current school system is failing our low-income children. The latest Iowa SAT scores for low-income elementary schools run between 10 and 40, while those in the affluent neighborhood schools score in the 70s. This does not meet the Utah statutory test that "all children in the state are entitled to reasonably equal opportunities regardless of their place of residence."

Salt Lake's Head Start program reaches only one-half of our eligible low-income children who are 4 years old. Only a few hundred eligible 3-year-old children are in Head Start programs, and they are not receiving teaching services.

It is time to start thinking about how to most efficiently and effectively spend the state's surplus dollars. What better use of the funds could we find than to save our young children who are living in poverty?

Doug Macdonald is executive director of Utah Issues, a nonprofit organization committed to ending poverty.

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