Early childhood education provides a promising way to limit the widening of the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap by providing all students with more equal footing from the start. These programs are particularly beneficial in urban settings, as low-income and minority students tend to be concentrated in urban areas.  Due to a history of racism, segregation, and income inequality in the U.S., these students have the largest achievement gaps and would receive the largest benefits from early childhood intervention.⁷⁵ Thus, these programs provide an opportunity for highly effective and targeted programming; Garcia, Heckman, Leaf and Prados (2016) provide an example of an early childhood education program that was targeted at students of color and had overwhelmingly positive results.⁷⁶

Unlike many other issues, the public seems to recognize the benefits of early childhood education programs, which offers legislators a rare opportunity to harness bipartisan support and grassroots momentum for an issue. A 2014 poll found that 71 percent of all voters and 60 percent of Republicans supported investing in these programs, even when they expanded the national deficit in the short run. This reflects an understanding on the part of constituents of the high returns to such programs in the long run, as explored in the peer-reviewed articles.⁷⁷

Below are my main takeaways from this project.

1. There shouldn’t be a universal design for early childhood education programs.

Every child has unique needs and programs need to be cognizant of how they can best serve their given population. One of the few consistencies across organizations should be a high-quality educational service—the definition of which varies depending on the needs of the population being served but should focus on incorporating student’s cultures into the curriculum.⁷⁸ Grassroots organizations are engaging in this culture-specific approach; for example, the Parent to Parent program at UCLA engages in janitor-centered field trips.

2. Effective early childhood education programs are intersectional.

As we have learned throughout the semester, issues in urban education cannot be tackled without dismantling other systems of power. Grassroots organizations recognize that early childhood education cannot be tackled in isolating; other policies—such as fair pay and bilingual education—are important components of this issue. Few organizations focus on early childhood education alone; rather, they pursue a more holistic approach that recognizes the other problems that contribute to the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap.

3. High-quality early childhood education programs save taxpayer dollars.

As an economics major and government minor, I am interested in how legislators use data about the long-term benefits of a program to inform their funding decisions. I was astounded by the magnitude of the positive effects of early childhood education programs done by Garcia et al (2016). The authors found a societal return of 7.3 dollars for every dollar spent on the program.⁷⁹

4. The gains to be had from early childhood education programs are higher for the students who need it most.

Low-income and minority students have the largest achievement gaps by the time they enter kindergarten and targeted programs offer a rare opportunity to provide relatively small, yet targeted, programs to these students. Evidence suggests that doing so could narrow the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in math and reading by 45-106% and 27-41%, respectively.⁸⁰

In sum, my research for this project left me optimistic about the future of early childhood education in the United States. Despite a number of legislative hurdles, grassroots organizations are doing incredibly inspiring work to address the gaps that low-income students and students of color face in early childhood education. Before doing this research, I naively thought that progress in early childhood education was the job of the government and was dubious that small groups could effectively tackle such a large cause. I was pleasantly surprised by how many grassroots and national organizations are working to address this cause from an intersectional perspective, recognizing that child education does not exist in isolation to other causes.