One of the cornerstones of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan for families and children is universal pre-K—the opportunity for young children in every household to attend public preschool. “We’re going to make sure that every three- and four-year-old in America has access to quality preschool,” Biden has said in promoting the program. It’s a more than laudable goal which not only gives children a solid start in learning, but also frees up a big chunk of their families’ budgets, saving the cost of private daycare or preschool and allowing parents more freedom in choosing work opportunities.
With every good idea a Democrat comes up with that helps regular people and boosts the economy, there’s a Republican saying “we’re not going to do that.” In this case, it’s a bunch of red states which are threatening to boycott the program. We’ve seen this before with Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. That legislation was written to make Medicaid expansion universal among the states, but the Supreme Court decided it had to do something to undercut the law, so they made that provision optional, leaving tens of millions of people without healthcare. This legislation, Build Back Better, gives $110 billion in federal funding for states to offer free prekindergarten, allowing states to pursue the funding or not. And for a growing number of Republican states, it’s “not.”
The Washington Post talked to Republican lawmakers in Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Minnesota, Texas, and Arizona who either say outright they’d reject the funding or that they have serious problems with it. They have a problem with federally imposed education standards for preschool, as well as the possibility that federal funding would end at some future point, leaving states holding the bag.
Which is another way of saying they’ll oppose anything that a Democratic president and Congress passes, because that’s just how it work. One legislator, state Sen. Roger Chamberlain, told the Post. “Using short-term federal funds for a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t something we are interested in here in Minnesota.” He chairs the education committee in the Republican-led Senate. He calls the plan “a bait and switch on our kids’ future.” Other Republicans, like New Hampshire Republican Majority Leader Sen. Jeb Bradley, use that excuse as well, arguing that “especially the way it’s been described, funding for six years and then it goes away.”
That’s a tacit admission that a future Republican Congress and administration would likely try to do away with the program, just like they tried to repeal Obamacare. Because of course they are! While the funding for the program might truly be an issue for legislators, it’s a handy excuse, too. Extending any program to help young families might just end up helping people they don’t believe are worthy of help. That includes the would-be preschool teachers, who would be paid at least $15/hour or on par with the state’s K-12 teachers with comparable qualifications.
On the other hand, there are a few red states—West Virginia and Oklahoma—that already provide universal pre-school to all 4-year olds. Beginning in 2023, Colorado will also offer it. It’s a popular thing, so on the one hand it’s a thing Democrats in refusenik states could point to—“we want to give this to you, Republicans wouldn’t let it happen.” But it would be better if they could actually just have the preschool for all their kids.
Given the likelihood that this Republican opposition was going to happen, since they’ve seen it before, the take it or leave it approach for the program in Biden’s plan is surprising. Any time you center a program on the common sense notion that even a Republican is going to do the thing that will help their constituents, you’re not showing a strong grasp on reality.
An alternative, which might be too late for Congress to do, given Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s timeline to have the bill done by Christmas, is to build out an existing program. Head Start For All would be one option. Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a partner at the Children’s Equity Project, has made a case for that. There’s a lot to argue for it—there wouldn’t be a fight over educational standards lining up between the states and the federal government. “To expand access while maintaining quality, any new universal pre-K system will have to connect and align existing state and local preschool systems,” Williams writes. “The easiest way to do this is to apply Head Start’s standards—or equivalent—across the entirety of the system (while providing supplemental funding to help programs upgrade to meet those standards).”
Additionally, the staff and the facilities are already there—building them out would be faster than creating new ones from scratch. Williams also argues that “expanding Head Start could enable greater socioeconomic integration in early learning programs.” Because of the different eligibility criteria from the various funding options for pre-K—federal, state, non-profit, private—the result is often “socioeconomically and, in some cases, racially segregated classrooms.”
“Harmonizing these standards would make it easier for local leaders to enroll diverse classrooms of children,” Williams argues. What that means in the larger landscape:
John J. Drew, President/CEO of Action for Boston Community Development, which provides Head Start and Early Head Start services to more than 3,000 low-income children and their families in the Boston area, points to the decades of experience in the Head Start program as a reason to use it as the basis for universal pre-K. “Head Start is synonymous with high-quality early education and care,” he said. “No program has been reviewed and scrutinized like this one. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”
“In many communities, we have affluent parents who want to pay for their children to attend Head Start because the quality of education and care are so much higher than other available early education programs,” he said. “Head Start can make a difference for all our children.”
If President Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, succeeds in his goal of delaying Build Back Better into 2022, Democrats should take the opportunity to fix that, to take the decision out of state hands and put it directly into the programs that have been so successfully providing high-quality pre-school for decades.
With every good idea a Democrat comes up with that helps regular people and boosts the economy, there’s a Republican saying “we’re not going to do that.” In this case, it’s a bunch of red states which are threatening to boycott the program. We’ve seen this before with Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. That legislation was written to make Medicaid expansion universal among the states, but the Supreme Court decided it had to do something to undercut the law, so they made that provision optional, leaving tens of millions of people without healthcare. This legislation, Build Back Better, gives $110 billion in federal funding for states to offer free prekindergarten, allowing states to pursue the funding or not. And for a growing number of Republican states, it’s “not.”
The Washington Post talked to Republican lawmakers in Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Minnesota, Texas, and Arizona who either say outright they’d reject the funding or that they have serious problems with it. They have a problem with federally imposed education standards for preschool, as well as the possibility that federal funding would end at some future point, leaving states holding the bag.
Which is another way of saying they’ll oppose anything that a Democratic president and Congress passes, because that’s just how it work. One legislator, state Sen. Roger Chamberlain, told the Post. “Using short-term federal funds for a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t something we are interested in here in Minnesota.” He chairs the education committee in the Republican-led Senate. He calls the plan “a bait and switch on our kids’ future.” Other Republicans, like New Hampshire Republican Majority Leader Sen. Jeb Bradley, use that excuse as well, arguing that “especially the way it’s been described, funding for six years and then it goes away.”
That’s a tacit admission that a future Republican Congress and administration would likely try to do away with the program, just like they tried to repeal Obamacare. Because of course they are! While the funding for the program might truly be an issue for legislators, it’s a handy excuse, too. Extending any program to help young families might just end up helping people they don’t believe are worthy of help. That includes the would-be preschool teachers, who would be paid at least $15/hour or on par with the state’s K-12 teachers with comparable qualifications.
On the other hand, there are a few red states—West Virginia and Oklahoma—that already provide universal pre-school to all 4-year olds. Beginning in 2023, Colorado will also offer it. It’s a popular thing, so on the one hand it’s a thing Democrats in refusenik states could point to—“we want to give this to you, Republicans wouldn’t let it happen.” But it would be better if they could actually just have the preschool for all their kids.
Given the likelihood that this Republican opposition was going to happen, since they’ve seen it before, the take it or leave it approach for the program in Biden’s plan is surprising. Any time you center a program on the common sense notion that even a Republican is going to do the thing that will help their constituents, you’re not showing a strong grasp on reality.
An alternative, which might be too late for Congress to do, given Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s timeline to have the bill done by Christmas, is to build out an existing program. Head Start For All would be one option. Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a partner at the Children’s Equity Project, has made a case for that. There’s a lot to argue for it—there wouldn’t be a fight over educational standards lining up between the states and the federal government. “To expand access while maintaining quality, any new universal pre-K system will have to connect and align existing state and local preschool systems,” Williams writes. “The easiest way to do this is to apply Head Start’s standards—or equivalent—across the entirety of the system (while providing supplemental funding to help programs upgrade to meet those standards).”
Additionally, the staff and the facilities are already there—building them out would be faster than creating new ones from scratch. Williams also argues that “expanding Head Start could enable greater socioeconomic integration in early learning programs.” Because of the different eligibility criteria from the various funding options for pre-K—federal, state, non-profit, private—the result is often “socioeconomically and, in some cases, racially segregated classrooms.”
“Harmonizing these standards would make it easier for local leaders to enroll diverse classrooms of children,” Williams argues. What that means in the larger landscape:
John J. Drew, President/CEO of Action for Boston Community Development, which provides Head Start and Early Head Start services to more than 3,000 low-income children and their families in the Boston area, points to the decades of experience in the Head Start program as a reason to use it as the basis for universal pre-K. “Head Start is synonymous with high-quality early education and care,” he said. “No program has been reviewed and scrutinized like this one. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”
“In many communities, we have affluent parents who want to pay for their children to attend Head Start because the quality of education and care are so much higher than other available early education programs,” he said. “Head Start can make a difference for all our children.”
If President Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, succeeds in his goal of delaying Build Back Better into 2022, Democrats should take the opportunity to fix that, to take the decision out of state hands and put it directly into the programs that have been so successfully providing high-quality pre-school for decades.