Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Day care may make more sense than kindergarten
Everyone agrees that children should start the first grade with the social and intellectual skills needed for success. Both certified day care centers and public kindergarten programs contribute to the needed preparation.
However, it is interesting to compare the costs and benefits for these two approaches, as well as to consider the possibility that day care could address some of the English-as-a-second-language problems that confront the public schools later.
Kindergarten serves 5-year-olds with a half-day program for about three hours of education during one school year, or about 500 hours, at roughly $6,000 per child.
For most working moms, this isn’t much of a gift. The start and end of kindergarten isn’t likely to match their shifts. They will need to find child care for those days, weeks and months when the public school system is not open. Kindergarten isn’t going to save them any time or money.
The private care of preschool children is partly regulated by the state of Oregon. Someone who takes in a couple of kids is not regulated. As the number of children being cared for rises, so does regulation. Whenever more than 16 children are being cared for, the operation must satisfy strict standards and become a certified child care center. Staff must be qualified, facilities must be of high quality, and the programs must be safe and stimulating, both socially and mentally. I know of no study that shows that care at this level doesn’t yield the same benefits as an abbreviated kindergarten experience.
Let’s suppose that rather than telling parents that they have only one option, kindergarten, we give them a second. They can take $250 a month for 24 months as a subsidy for certified day care. The cost to taxpayers of each option would be roughly equivalent, and there would be three quick, positive effects:
Suppose we know a 4-year-old boy who speaks no English. We can wait until he reaches first grade and then employ a 50-year-old woman with 25 years of teaching experience and a master’s degree to work with him for a few hours a week. Or, metaphorically speaking, we can take him to a sandbox occupied by a half dozen 4-year-olds who speak English and leave him there, day after day. In three months, he’ll be communicating. In two years, he’ll be babbling like all the others.
There are problems with this scenario, of course. To attract the kids, we might have to offer a more attractive plan than we offer native-born English-speaking children, and that would understandably create a furor. In some neighborhoods, it may now be difficult to find enough English-speaking kids to make it work. Clearly, this is an idea that is jsut in the intitial thought stage...
But what do you think? Maybe kindergarten isn't early enough to start.
Everyone agrees that children should start the first grade with the social and intellectual skills needed for success. Both certified day care centers and public kindergarten programs contribute to the needed preparation.
However, it is interesting to compare the costs and benefits for these two approaches, as well as to consider the possibility that day care could address some of the English-as-a-second-language problems that confront the public schools later.
Kindergarten serves 5-year-olds with a half-day program for about three hours of education during one school year, or about 500 hours, at roughly $6,000 per child.
For most working moms, this isn’t much of a gift. The start and end of kindergarten isn’t likely to match their shifts. They will need to find child care for those days, weeks and months when the public school system is not open. Kindergarten isn’t going to save them any time or money.
The private care of preschool children is partly regulated by the state of Oregon. Someone who takes in a couple of kids is not regulated. As the number of children being cared for rises, so does regulation. Whenever more than 16 children are being cared for, the operation must satisfy strict standards and become a certified child care center. Staff must be qualified, facilities must be of high quality, and the programs must be safe and stimulating, both socially and mentally. I know of no study that shows that care at this level doesn’t yield the same benefits as an abbreviated kindergarten experience.
Let’s suppose that rather than telling parents that they have only one option, kindergarten, we give them a second. They can take $250 a month for 24 months as a subsidy for certified day care. The cost to taxpayers of each option would be roughly equivalent, and there would be three quick, positive effects:
- The thousands of families that now take their children to certified day care would be relieved of a $6,000 expense while they raise each child to the age of 6.
- The thousands more who are accepting lower-grade care because they can’t afford a certified day care center would save money, while their children would be better prepared for school.
- And for the untold thousands more who are leaving the workforce or moving out of their communities because they simply can’t get care for their kids, the new child care centers that would pop up around the state in response to this program would be a godsend.
Suppose we know a 4-year-old boy who speaks no English. We can wait until he reaches first grade and then employ a 50-year-old woman with 25 years of teaching experience and a master’s degree to work with him for a few hours a week. Or, metaphorically speaking, we can take him to a sandbox occupied by a half dozen 4-year-olds who speak English and leave him there, day after day. In three months, he’ll be communicating. In two years, he’ll be babbling like all the others.
There are problems with this scenario, of course. To attract the kids, we might have to offer a more attractive plan than we offer native-born English-speaking children, and that would understandably create a furor. In some neighborhoods, it may now be difficult to find enough English-speaking kids to make it work. Clearly, this is an idea that is jsut in the intitial thought stage...
But what do you think? Maybe kindergarten isn't early enough to start.
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 7:07 PM 
