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President Obama’s initiatives for pre-kindergarten has attracted a lot of ire from a section of people who feel that it is not really worth investing so much in early childhood education anticipating results. Sceptics’ feel that there are a host of other educational challenges that have to be addressed and set right with appropriate funds rather than dumping money into a program that promises vague and unsure results.

Skeptics question as to whether there is any sense in investing billions in new fund programs before determining whether any lasting benefits would be provided by the Head Start. The pre-school program comes only next to the universal healthcare program with the President offering many American families subsidized pre-kindergarten.

Congress is all set to expressly pass the $10 billion bill for this purpose. Earlier a $5 billion grant was offered according to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act towards childcare programs and preschool. The Early Learning Challenge Fund was passed by the House in the month of September allocating $8 billion towards subsidized preschool grants for States. Senate is all set to follow on these lines now.

According to the President, for every dollar the government invests in, returns will be ten times more in terms of lesser crime, fewer health costs and reduced welfare rolls. If this is true, then very soon we can expect a world that is healthier, safer and qualified to handle the global competition.
The onus on tax payers will be $25 billion to support the Federal government’s childcare and pre-school programs.

Some feel that there is no sense in investing so many billions into a program which may or may not work. They also feel that more efforts must be taken by the administration and the Congress in focusing on evaluation of such programs before bringing them into effect.

The year 1965 saw President Lyndon Johnson creating the first ever childcare and national preschool program namely the Head Start. More than $100 billion has been spent on this for the past 45 years. Today $7 billion continues to be spent on this annually and each and every 900,000 low income child receives about $7300 every year.

There has been an effort by the Congress to determine the extent to which participating children have been benefited through the Head Start program. After seven years of study, findings revealed only modest positive benefits in children as compared to those who did not participate in this program.

Children who were a part of this program did far better in certain subjects such as vocabulary, pre-writing, pre-reading and literacy skills evaluated with the help of reports from parents. The question as to whether this program provided any lasting benefits for children still remained unanswered.

Now this brings us to the billion dollar question as to whether there are not other priorities that takes precedence over preschool. Or is kindergarten children ideally set to be moulded into constructive citizens of tomorrow? Seems like only time can tell and we have to wait for them to grow up.

Efforts still continue with the Obama administration pushing in this direction as sceptics continue to express their discontent.