Investing in Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development

13. Thinking and Acting Locally: What Potential Is There for Local Support for High-Quality Early Childhood Programs?

353 13 Thinking and Acting Locally What Potential Is There for Local Support for High-Quality Early Childhood Programs? While working on this book, I have also been involved in efforts to implement universal pre-K education in my home community, Kalamazoo , Michigan. A local interfaith community organizing group, ISAAC, adopted early childhood education as an issue. (ISAAC is affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation, whose most famous former community organizer is Barack Obama.) ISAAC members decided on universal pre-K education as a key “ask” for which they would solicit the support of community leaders. The ISAAC effort led to formation of a Kalamazoo County committee, with representation from United Way, local school superintendents, many pre-K programs and child care centers, parents, local political leaders, and local business leaders. This committee has been drawing up a plan for universal pre-K education in Kalamazoo County: how many additional slots would be needed, how many years and hours of pre-K education would be provided to children under the program, who would provide pre-K education, the role of existing providers, how quality would be determined, and other aspects. The plan is now (2010) at the early stages of seeking funding from various sources. If it is funded, it will not be fully implemented until at least 2013–2014.1 Such local efforts face a fundamental issue: Do they make any sense? Does it make sense to think of early childhood education as a policy that can be locally pursued? Does universal pre-K really provide any “local” benefits? The answer this book has given is “Yes.” Universal pre-K, and other early childhood programs, can provide significant local economic development benefits. Local benefits justify the potential for local activism. The remainder of this chapter gives more context for both the potential for and the need for local activism for early childhood programs. In the process of providing the context, I emphasize some of the important findings of this book. 354 Bartik EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS AND LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: HOW DO THEY FIT INTO THE BIG ISSUES? Is the effect of early childhood programs on local economic development a big issue? Obviously the United States and the world face many major challenges. There are major environmental challenges such as climate change. There are problems with lagging development in much of the Third World. There are issues of improving global financial regulation and macroeconomic stability. There is religious and cultural strife. There are issues of the quality of culture and family life around the world. Within the United States, a major issue is how to make sure the gains from economic growth are shared more fully with the bottom and middle of the income distribution. Over the last three decades, real earnings have grown sluggishly for most U.S. households. For example, in calculations I did with my colleague Susan Houseman, we found that from 1979 to 2006, real wage growth for 90 percent of all U.S. workers lagged behind the growth in labor productivity of the U.S. economy. If wages below the ninetieth percentile had grown as fast as overall U.S. productivity growth from 1979 to 2006, earnings for these workers would have been over $700 billion higher in 2006. These higher earnings would equal about 12 percent of all U.S. wage and salary income (Bartik and Houseman 2008). Sluggish earnings growth for most U.S. households has many costs. The economic costs are the most obvious. But, as Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman (2005) argues in his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, a U.S. society with sluggish growth for most households is likely to be mean-spirited in many ways. Sluggish growth reduces support for stronger environmental protection. It reduces support for engaging generously with the rest of the world. Sluggish growth increases the appeal of simple answers, even authoritarian answers. Global progress as well as U.S. progress is likely to be impeded by a United States in which the broad middle class fears it is losing ground.2 We need to figure out how to increase the earnings of the lower and middle portions of the U.S. income distribution. As this book has argued in Chapter 2, these earnings gains are particularly valuable if Thinking and Acting Locally 355 they are provided in one’s home region. Such higher earnings in a home region, which I have...