EXCERPT FROM: Detroit Free Press
By Jack Kresnak
Thanks for last week’s “Fixing our schools” series of articles on the education reforms Michigan must have to have an economic future, and in particular the reporting on the crisis in Detroit. Scant attention, however, was paid to the critical need for quality preschool programs that help the most vulnerable children come to kindergarten healthy, safe and ready to learn.
A recent survey commissioned by the Early Childhood Investment Corporation showed that the state’s kindergarten teachers estimate that one-third to one-half of the children they see are not prepared to learn. Those teachers have to spend time helping those children at the expense of their peers who do come to school ready.
The preschoolers who face significant obstacles — poor health, poverty and unskilled parents — are the ones whose schools will need to help with expensive remedial learning programs. They also are the kids who are more likely than their peers to drop out of school, go into foster care, become juvenile delinquents and, later, fill our adult prisons.