Houston's Future Starts With Preschool for ALL

   In the midst of all the challenges facing our state and our nation, we must not lose sight of the importance of making the investment necessary to ensure that our future is a bright and prosperous one. Research clearly documents that preschool-age children are prodigious learners, capable of developing many of the social, cognitive and language skills that prepare them for success in school and in life. With the increased demands of the new TAKS test and a high school dropout rate that is unacceptably high, we must work to ensure that the young children of Texas can access a quality preschool program and obtain the critical foundational skills they need.

     Preschool For All, a joint effort of the Center for Houston's Future and the Greater Houston Collaborative for Children, has involved more than 100 members of the Houston business, early childhood, public education, government and philanthropic communities to examine the benefits that a quality preschool program can provide to 3- and 4-year-old children in the Houston region.

    National studies demonstrate that an investment in preschool education has a high-yield return that will continue to provide long-term benefits in the form of higher graduation rates, higher earnings, lower unemployment and a lower crime rate. There are also more immediate benefits in higher math and reading scores, lower grade-retention rates and lower special education referrals. Despite the grim budgetary talk we hear coming out of Austin, we must resolve to make investment in our children -- our future -- a true priority.

    After a year of study and data gathering, Preschool For All found that the current preschool education system in the Houston region is insufficient to meet the developmental needs of our young learners. Access to quality preschool is limited to the children from families at the upper and lower end of the income spectrum. Wealthier families can send their children to a preschool program that typically costs $7,000 to $10,000 per year for a full workday program, or $4,000 to $6,000 per year for a shorter school-day program. Children from low-income families are eligible for the federally funded Head Start program or state funded pre-kindergarten program, but these generally last three to seven hours per day and operate only during the nine-month school year.

    Many middle- and lower-income parents, however, most of whom are in the work force, have limited choices about their children's preschool education. As our region's parents have chosen to enroll more than 60,000 of our 126,000 3- and 4-year-old children in preschool programs, we must ensure that the resources exist to provide a quality preschool program to all of these children. Moreover, parents need the ability to make informed choices in the best interests of their children during these critical developmental years.

     So what are Houston's choices? Preschool For All believes that we have three options:

• We could do nothing, which means that a limited number of children will be able to access quality preschool, leaving many children unprepared for success when they enter school.
• We can work to maximize existing funding streams that pay for preschool programs which would mean serving perhaps an additional 21,000 eligible children in the Houston region through existing public pre-kindergarten funding
• And/or we can make a commitment to all of our community's children that quality preschool education is an important first step in their educational path and work to maximize existing funding streams, streamline the existing preschool systems into one overall integrated system and, as needed, identify necessary additional funding over time to make a quality preschool education a reality for all of Houston's children.

     Significant resources are already in place. We can begin by measuring the quality of our current preschool programs. A quality rating system that uniformly measures every preschool program's ability to provide children with a quality preschool environment would provide policy-makers a baseline by which they could determine how effectively programs use the dollars they receive. It also would provide parents with an objective way of knowing whether or not the program they are paying for, either directly through fees or indirectly through tax dollars, is providing their children the type of quality experience needed to prepare them for school. Finally, it would help identify a pool of quality programs among the three preschool systems that could begin to integrate their resources to create quality, full-day, full-year programs that meet the developmental needs of children and the working needs of parents.

     In the long term, a total rethinking of how to best deliver a quality preschool system that addresses the developmental needs of young children, the increasing number of working parents and the needs of employers to have a well-trained work force is required. The choice is clear. The vision is exciting. Preschool for all -- let's make this commitment to our region's future.

Mosbacher is President of Mosbacher Energy Company and Vice Chair of the Greater Houston Partnership. Mosbacher serves as Co-Chair of Preschool for ALL. For more information concerning Preschool for ALL, visit its website at www.preschoolforall.org or call (713) 572-2211.