creating additional bureaucracy. Focusing on at-risk children and en-
couraging direct parent involvement would help reach those children
and families with the greatest need for ECD programs. Providers
would receive incentives for successful outcomes and make local deci-
sions on how to best achieve strong results. Finally, with a long-term,
demand-side commitment through the creation of state-level public–
private endowments, we would expect a strong response from the
supply-side of the ECD market.
In our view, the case is closed on why we must invest in ECD. Now it
is time to design and implement a system that will help society realize
on a large scale the extraordinary returns that high-quality ECD pro-
grams have shown they can deliver.Web Resources [as of November 2006]
Committee for Economic Development, conference publications,
reports, and events to promote investment in early education:
http://www.ced.org
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, research studies on early child
education and links to related sites: http://minneapolisfed.org/
research/studies/earlychild
Rob Grunewald’s e-mail: [email protected]
Arthur Rolnick’s e-mail: [email protected]
References
Barnett, W. S. 2003. Better Teachers, Better Preschools: Student
Achievement Linked to Student Qualifications. Preschool Policy
Matters(National Institute for Early Education Research), 2
(March):2.
Barnett, W. S., K. Brown, and R. Shore. 2004. The Universal vs.
Targeted Debate: Should the United States Have Preschool for All?
Preschool Policy Matters6:7.
30 Rob Grunewald and Arthur Rolnick