The following column was submitted by Emily Haecker, Dept. Of Education, Manchester University

Decades of research confirm the deep connection between high-quality early childhood education and subsequent academic success, and yet, as a society, we put early childhood initiatives at the bottom of our budgetary priority lists.

We short change young children at the moment when education dollars are most effective, and we spend them twice over remediating older students when education dollars are less effective.

Apart from poor financial sense, our failure to invest in early childhood means that children enter kindergarten with underdeveloped cognitive abilities, a situation over which we have much control but don’t use.

Our community needs champions focused on the benefits of early childhood education for life. Decades of research indicate ways in which high-quality early childhood programs create a foundation for higher educational performance throughout life.

For young adults, this means perhaps an even more successful college experience. A meta-analysis of 38 studies focused on the long-term effects of early education opportunities for children indicate those who experience a high quality early childhood program or any program at all correlate to students enrolling in and finishing college (Barnett, 1998).

Perhaps the most compelling and most famous American longitudinal High/Scope Perry Preschool Study in Michigan provides us with the unarguable reasons for investing in high- quality early childhood education.

This seminal research further suggests that high- quality early childhood programs are linked to a high quality of living as adults, including higher wages.  Adults who experienced a high-quality early childhood program are less likely to be incarcerated and had more robust savings accounts.

Larger studies that follow preschoolers over a decade or more show that fewer of them need special education services and are retained less frequently than their non-preschool peers, a savings to the taxpayer.   

If we all observed a preschool class, we would quickly see the earliest buds of success in life. What children learn in high-quality early childhood education settings about effective communication, sharing or not sharing, self-regulation, and social skills can be learned later, but not as effectively as when the synapses in the brain are still forming.

For preschoolers, play is developmentally important. Structured daily tasks, such as picking up all of the red blocks, yellow balls, or seven items, involves deep cognitive development.

They are learning, not just playing. In a structured play environment, children work with their peers to complete tasks and learn basic information they will use the rest of their lives. It sounds odd, but these are the skills that when acquired early in life will help adults finish high school, go to college, get a good-paying job, buy a house, pay taxes and contribute to the local economy. Adults with early education will also use fewer public resources for emergency health care, criminal justice, and public aid. More savings for the taxpayer.

Ultimately, as adults, we have control over the conditions in which children’s early experiences shape their futures.  Investing time, money and human capital in early childhood programs should be a non-negotiable if we are truly going to be champions for children.