The 74 Million – Conor Williams
“The usual case for early education is already well established in American public discourse. Research shows that low-income children fall behind their wealthier peers’ language development almost from birth. By age three, the children from the poorest American families have heard an average of 30 million fewer words than children from the wealthiest families. These gaps only grow in the years before elementary school. Fortunately, early education programs can help. The dollars we spend on pre-K and quality care for infants and toddlers can save us lots of money and energy down the line. If we get kids on track by kindergarten, we spend less on later gap-closing efforts — and those kids are more likely to grow up healthy, wealthy, and wise. Research suggests that they’ll generate more tax revenue through their increased incomes, cost less in public assistance dollars, and generally be better citizens. (The Upjohn Institute’s Tim Bartik is amongst the best resources for the research behind these programs’ returns on public investment.) Done right, early education programs work just about as intuitively as they sound.”(more)