On a recent gray, rainy afternoon a friend and I were in a trailer on a gravel road in one of the small towns scattered across southern Lowndes County.
The woman who owns the trailer is related to a musician I photographed years ago. She greeted us warmly and invited us in.
Inside the trailer were two women, two teenage girls and two small children, a boy and a girl. A crime show — or a comedy; I couldn’t tell without the sound — was playing on a TV; the women and teens all had smartphones; the room was bare except for a sofa, two upholstered chairs and a coffee table. There was no sign of any reading materials or toys for the children.
The woman I knew showed me pictures on her smartphone of her mother and sisters, all of whom I had known years earlier. We talked about old times and where everyone is now.
On the way back to town I wondered about the future of the children we had just been with. We’ve all heard about the importance of early childhood education and the disparity in knowledge and verbal skills of Mississippi kids entering the first grade.
Evidence the Perry Preschool Project, a study begun in the 60s that tracked the lives of 128 African American children born in poverty. The children were divided into two groups, one was exposed to a high-quality preschool program; the other group received no preschool. The differences were profound.
At age 27 the children who had received pre-schooling had a 44 percent higher high-school graduation rate, half the teen pregnancies and about 30 percent fewer out-of-wedlock children than their counterparts who received no preschool.
A follow-up at age 40 showed the preschool group 46 percent less likely to have served time in jail or prison and a 33 percent lower arrest rate for violent crime. That group had a 46 percent higher monthly median income and was 26 percent less likely to have received government assistance.
Taking into account education savings, taxes on earnings and welfare and crime savings as compared with the control group, researchers estimated an almost $13 return for every preschool dollar spent. Other estimates of return on preschool investment are less, but still significant.
If the benefits of a quality Pre-K education are so overwhelming, why haven’t we as a state embraced it? Georgia, using revenues from its state lottery, has publicly funded Pre-K for 4-year-olds since the mid-90s; Florida in 2004 passed a ballot initiative that resulted in universal Pre-K for 4-year-olds. Two years later Illinois became the first state to offer Pre-K for 3- and 4-year olds.
Michael Cormack CEO of the Oxford-based Barksdale Reading Institute acknowledges the road to universal Pre-K in the state is going to be a long one.
“We are just beginning to prioritize Pre-K in Mississippi,” Cormack said by phone Friday afternoon. “We need to look at Pre-K as an investment in the future.”
If past funding is any guide, Mississippi lawmakers’ enthusiasm for Pre-K has been tepid. The Legislature passed the Pre-K Collaborative Bill in 2013 that provides $3 million to supplement existing preschool programs. (Georgia spent more than $300 million in 2014 on preschool education.)
“When we compare the rate of return with other interventions, when we think about costs of prisons and other spending programs, we see the value of Pre-K,” said Cormack.
Earlier this month, David Dodson, a North Carolina based consultant who specializes in lessening economic disparity in low-wealth and marginalized communities spoke to a CREATE meeting in Tupelo about the challenges facing the region.
Dodson cited a 2013 report in The New York Times showing that upward mobility throughout the South is lowest in the nation. Born poor in the South, chances are you’re going to stay poor, data suggests.
Regardless of location, a child from a low-income family has a tough row to hoe. According to a 1995 study (Hart and Risling, Univ. of Kansas), a child from a high-income family will experience 30 million more words in the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family.
Hart and Risling also discovered a correlation between the intensity of these early verbal experiences and later achievement.
“We were astonished at the differences the data revealed,” they wrote in their book “Meaningful Differences.” “The most impressive aspects [are] how different individual families and children are and how much and how important is children’s cumulative experience before age 3.”
Read that again: “before age 3.”
As study after study confirms the societal and personal benefits of early childhood education, you have to wonder why we as a state are so slow to embrace it.
“I remain the eternal optimist we will get there,” Michael Cormack said, as we concluded our conversation.
When we do, it won’t be too soon.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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