Preschool requires serious investment

Most 3- and 4-year-olds can't tie their shoelaces, much less pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They need help from their parents and - in the absence of parents willing or able to help - from a community prepared to reach out and lift.

During recent editorial board interviews with candidates for local school boards and city councils, the conversation frequently turned to the challenges facing our school systems, particularly regarding dropout and graduation rates.

Often, the candidates emphasized a need for greater parental involvement. That's true, certainly, and it's a goal that educators have been striving to attain for years. The quest for ways to engage more parents in their children's school life is never likely to end.

But sounding a steady drumbeat for parental responsibility isn't enough.

Communities and school systems need to intervene directly, at very early ages, if there's any hope of lowering dropout rates, of graduating students ready for the work force, of loosening the grip of gangs on struggling teens, of building generations of future parents who will take a reflexive interest in their children's minds.

There is substantial interest to build on. As The Pilot's Lauren Roth reported, 50 or so parents stood in line recently to apply for a Head Start program that begins next fall. Crowds at sign-ups have become the norm.

Regionally, the demand outpaces the available spaces. Applications already have been submitted for about two-thirds of the 1,501 slots next fall in 35 Head Start preschools stretching from Virginia Beach to Southhampton County.

Some critics contend that the government should have no role in preparing children for school. In other words, if parents won't or can't do it, that's just too bad. It's a shortsighted, not to mention callous, view.

Expanding Head Start, bolstering its offerings and investing in other early childhood education initiatives must become a higher priority here and nationwide.

As South Hampton Roads Smart Beginnings - a group dedicated to preparing children for kindergarten - points out, 90 percent of a child's brain development occurs in the first five years.

Multiple studies have shown that achievement gaps begin appearing early. Harvard University researchers found that 50 percent of the gap in the 12th grade is present by first grade.

Some progress is being made. Regionally, 1 in 8 children need remedial help when they enter kindergarten, Smart Beginnings' executive director Lisa Howard reported in a recent column in The Pilot. That's an improvement over 1 in 5 children in 2004.

But we still have a long way to go.

If you've ever had the privilege of seeing preschool children immersed in a learning environment, you've seen the capacity - the often astonishing capacity - for a child to grow. And if you've witnessed it, you've very likely thought of the children who do not share those opportunities, whose very real potential is slipping away, perhaps forever.

The Obama administration has proposed investing $8 billion over eight years in bolstering early childhood education programs. Economically, the timing isn't ideal. But the nation's children can't wait for the ideal.