
High quality pre-kindergarten has become something of an elusive luxury for middle class parents, caught between rising prices, the housing crisis and stagnating wages, according to report released by Pre-K Now during a Hechinger Institute Webinar on Wednesday.
The report provides a great starting point for rich and worthwhile stories journalists should be telling about the hard choices middle class American families are making as they struggle to pay mortgages and credit card debt and worry about holding onto their jobs.
Families earning too much to qualify for state-funded programs but not enough for higher quality private schools in some cases are choosing substandard care or keeping their children out of pre-kindergarten altogether, said the report’s author Albert Wat, a policy analyst for Pre-K Now.
Middle-class families and their children need and would benefit from voluntary, high-quality pre-k indergarten programs funded by their states but they often don't have access to them, notes the report, which calls for states and the federal government to expand such programs. Wat found that the average middle class family of four, living in a state with a public pre-k program, spent about 29% of their income on pre-kindergarten for their two children.
"Middle class families are feeling increasingly pessimistic about their financial situationn,'' Wat noted during the webinar, which will be available on the Hechinger Institute's website.
The webinar also offered views from William Gormley of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, the author of a study on the benefits of Oklahoma's early childhood programs. Gormley's study found students experienced substantial gains and that the negative effects of family and environmental risk factors can be lessened by a strong preschool program.
Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, , pointed out that emphasizing the needs of the middle class can divert attention from the most needy children in the U.S. He said the federal government help poor children by strengthening federal Head Start programs.
The report comes at a time when 80 percent of Americans believe it is more difficult to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago, and some twenty percent think their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.
Rising expenses and declining incomes are leaving more Americans in debt, although many still earn too much to qualify for state-funded pre-k programs.
The report's recommendations include a phase-in plan to expand pre-k to all children, using factors other than family income to define eligibility, creating full-day programs to meet the needs of working families and extending eligibility for voluntary pre-k to three year-olds.