private preschool to foot the rest of the bill. “I can’t imagine running a [preschool] that’s primarily Working Connections children and making that work,” says Anita Morgan, director of the Community Building Children’s Center. (This legislative session, State Sen. Andy Billig introduced a bill, still in committee, to bolster the program.) Washington state also has a state-funded equivalent of Head Start: The Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP). (Idaho is one of only 10 states without state-funded preschool.) But with occasional exceptions, ECEAP and Head Start only take children close to the poverty line. A single mom with one child, working for minimum wage full-time, usually would be too affluent for her kid to be eligible. Even those below the poverty line have trouble finding a space: Last year more than 60 percent of infants and toddlers in poverty in Spokane weren’t served by ECEAP, Head Start or Early Head Start. That’s where Obama’s plan comes in: He wants to use federal funds to expand state preschool programs and dramatically increase Early Head Start funds for infants and toddlers. Rep. Kevin Parker is skeptical of universal preschool. But he plans to push for more ECEAP slots during budget negotiations later this spring. Parker’s daughter went to an ECEAP school. The results weren’t just academic, they were philosophical. “Emelia doesn’t seem to have prejudices that some would have at her age,” Parker says. “She doesn’t seem to draw differentials between high-income and low-income friends.” To his frugal conservative colleagues, he makes an economic argument. “At the end of the day, a high school dropout costs the state $400,000,” Parker says. That’s 58 times the cost of enrolling a child in ECEAP. In his State of the Union address, Obama made a similar argument. “Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on — by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime,” Obama said. Universal preschool is a solution that, depending on who you talk to, is either clearly reinforced or conclusively refuted by the evidence. Obama refers to the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, a four-decade examination of 123 high-risk, low-income black children. The kids with home visits and intensive preschool were far more successful. But skeptics counter with the Head Start Impact Study. Yes, children who attended Head Start were substantially more prepared for kindergarten, it found, but those positive effects had nearly completely disappeared by third grade. Critics of the Head Start study point to flaws in the control group, while critics of the Perry study point to its small sample size and unrealistic cost. Some owners of private day-care preschools, like former state representative candidate Tim Benn, worry about small businesses getting squeezed out. “We’re perpetuating a spending problem, and we’re taking children away from nurturing environments in the private sector,” Benn says. Liv Finne, with the conservative Washington Policy Center, believes the focus should be on parents, not preschool. “We’re all up for early learning, but we’re fearful of institutionalizing it at even younger ages,” says Finne. “It seems to me that if society was serious with creating conditions to promote the development of the young brain, and had extra money to spend, you’d spend it on keeping parents home with their children.”
Play to Learn
But as the national debate continues, in the Head Start classroom at West Central, the focus is on these kids, now. “You love them. Your heart hurts for them if they’re going through issues, but you get to see this growth and these changes and these successes,” teacher Samantha Tuskan says. “They have such a dramatic amount of growth within the few years you have them.” Little hands dabble in shaving cream, push tiny cars down a road, grab paintbrushes, play “kitchen,” and build skyscrapers out of blocks, Duplos, pegs and brightly colored balls and sockets. It’s education masquerading as play — lessons in sharing, socializing, and creating. Whether or not it lasts, for now they’re learning. n
FEBRUARY 28, 2013 INLANDER 15