As if the student-loan crisis wasn’t bad enough, now there’s a proposal to create a market for loans for pre-school. The idea comes from New York City Mayoral candidate Christina Quinn.

Think Progress describes the program this way:

[The] pilot program will offer low-interest loans to families with children between the ages of two and four who have an annual income of $80,000 to $200,000. Parents will be able to get loans of up to $11,000 and make interest-only payments until Kindergarten. The loans will be available to 40 families in the first year.

Quinn’s pilot program is aimed at helping parents afford the cost of childcare, which in New York is $14,000 a year on average, making it the least affordable state. The competition for preschool in New York City is also fierce, as there were 28,817 applicants for 19,834 slots in 2011. In some neighborhoods, applicants for free preschool programs outnumber slots by eight to one.

The impulse to help more families get their children into early-childhood is a noble one. The value of pre-school in social, intellectual and emotional development is well-documented. And with just 28 percent of four-year-olds enrolled in state-funded pre-schools across the country, it’s clear that some children are falling behind, right from the start. Access to pre-school is toughest for middle-class families, for whom the ever rising costs have become, for many, prohibitive.

But student loans [maybe they’d be more aptly called “toddler loans”] don’t seem like the answer. College loans help you get a higher education, which ostensibly yields higher lifetime income, which ostensibly makes your loans more valuable and easier to pay back. What’s the up side of a toddler loan for pre-school? Not much. Yes, it could help your child attend a better quality pre-K program, but there’s no direct economic payoff. Neither your kid nor you will be making more money because he/she graduated from kindergarten. So, that toddler loan just adds to the cost of pre-school and to your overall financial liabilities.

There is, of course, an obvious solution—one that doesn’t involve banks, interest rates more privatization of things that should be publicly funded:  Universal, state-funded pre-school.

As Think Progress concludes:

Instead of focusing on subsidizing loans, state governments could follow the examples of Oklahoma, Georgia, West Virginia, and others in offering universal access to preschool. And President Obama has proposed a plan that would bring such access to all families. A universal program would not just benefit children and their parents, but it would have significant benefits for the economy and society at large.

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In an era when there’s a database for just about everything, you’d have a hard time finding one that tallies up the total number of children enrolled in kindergarten or pre-K programs in the U.S.  Is that really a problem?

Yes, it is.

Educational research continues to show that access to early-childhood education is a critical factor in children’s readiness for school. Early-learning research has shown that 85 percent of brain development happens before age 5. Clearly, children who have access to early-childhood programs are getting something very beneficial. Those who don’t—and access to these programs is often linked to income—are often forced to play catch-up once they get to school. And let’s face it: our K-12 system is not very good at helping catch-up kids who are very far behind.

The U.S.Census Bureau and child-advocacy organizations regularly publish statistics about early-childhood education. For example, the 2010-211 Yearbook published by the National Institute for Early Education Research [NIEER] says that 28 percent of America’s 4-year-olds are enrolled in a state-funded pre-school. The Children’s Defense Fund says that 14.2 percent of 3-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded pre-k, Head Start, or special education programs,  and that 40.3 percent of 4-year-olds are enrolled in state pre-k, Head Start, or special education programs. But both of these reports include footnotes that explain their own incompleteness. And if you attempt to drill down to state, local and even school-district levels, the information becomes increasingly unreliable.

And if we don’t know how many and which children are—or are not—getting the pluses of early-childhood education, we can’t advocate for policies to overcome the educational inequalities that are exacerbated by unequal access and participation.

Poor data can lead to poor policies, and the implications are serious, say the New America Foundation in a September 2012 report called, “Counting Kids and Tracking Funds in Pre-K and Kindergarten Education.”

City leaders, school board members, superintendents, and elementary school principals often have no idea how many three- and four-year-old children in their districts’ borders are enrolled in publicly funded pre-K programs, let alone whether these children are prepared for kindergarten. State policymakers cannot make sound comparisons between districts or shine light on disparities in access in low-income areas. Nor can they easily determine how many schools in their states offer only a half-day of kindergarten – a critical question as teachers across dozens of states will soon be held accountable for whether their students meet new standards.

Even as pre-K education and kindergarten have gained importance in the educational landscape, federal and state governments, and even local school districts, lack basic information about how many children are enrolled in federally funded early-childhood programs, such as Head Start. The New America foundation’s report explains that our system of early-childhood education is not a system at all. Rather, it’s an incoherent, non-standardized patchwork of local, state and federal programs, with a byzantine, chaotic non-system for funding. What data there is can be difficult to aggregate, because different programs report their information in different ways.

The big picture in this very important education area is that there is no big picture. The report offers several suggestions for getting better data. One would be to encourage the U.S. Census Bureau to improve its on-going American Community Survey questionnaire.

It currently asks whether children in the household attend “nursery school,” “preschool,” or “kindergarten” but does not ask whether that experience is for half or full day, in a publicly funded or private program, or whether parents are paying fees or tuition for these services. Without these data, it is impossible to get a good picture of how many families enroll their children in publicly funded early childhood programs.

To close achievement gaps between economically disadvantaged and advantaged students, policymakers and educators desperately need access to the most basic data on enrollment and public funding for all young children. These data will increase understanding of how public dollars are spent, expose disparities in access to early learning programs, and have the potential to increase educational opportunities for young children. Getting the data right is a critical step toward providing better learning experiences for all young children, laying the groundwork for alignment across the PreK-3rd grade years, and building a strong foundation for their success in school.

And one more suggestion: Don’t fire Big Bird.

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There are more than 300 agencies and organizations in the St. Louis metropolitan area working to provide programs and services for children, according to Richard Patton, director of Vision for Children at Risk (VCR).

One might then logically ask:  with this kind of attention focused on them, why are our kids in such bad shape?

There is no question that many of our children are suffering.  Patton’s organization, which does research and collects data, has been publishing “Children of Metropolitan St. Louis” every other year for the past 18 years.  The most recent publication revealed that 22 percent of the children in our five-county metropolitan area live in zip codes where “the risks to their well-being are severe.”

Even affluent St. Louisans who rarely venture from their suburban zip codes know what these children need.  They need what all kids need:  adequate housing.  Safe neighborhoods.  Good medical care.  Plenty of healthy, nutritious food.  Loving caregivers.  Quality education, which begins early.

Patton estimates that there are 150,000 children in our area who are not getting these things.

It’s not because people haven’t tried.  Most of the 300 organizations working on behalf of kids have mission statements and action plans.  They’ve assessed needs and written policies.  They’ve collected information and developed strategies.  They’ve set goals and objectives.  They’ve raised money.  They’ve involved stakeholders and set up committees.  They’ve launched initiatives and measured outcomes.  They’ve organized and lobbied.

In the name of the children, they have continued to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

No one is more frustrated by this than Patton.  For the past several years he has focused much of his time and effort trying to convince legislators and business and civic leaders that quality early childhood education is a good idea.

“Studies have shown the importance of early brain development, and people who are looking for a good return on their investment need to look at what happens when we invest in quality early childhood education” he says.  He admits that he has not been successful in “striking a spark” in the local business community to make early childhood education a part of economic development efforts.  And the state of Missouri  “doesn’t care about this stuff,” he says.

Patton continues to press on.  His latest effort is something called the St. Louis Regional Early Childhood Council, which will “develop a community vision for a comprehensive system that addresses the full range of early childhood needs for all St. Louis area children.”  Council members will work together to achieve that vision, “implementing and coordinating policies and programs in collaboration with involved systems, programs and initiatives all playing their appropriate roles.”

With all due respect to the underpaid, overworked, idealistic individuals who are laboring to keep this ship afloat, maybe it’s time to consider something else.  Maybe what this ship needs is a captain.

Someone like Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, an aggressive (and expensive) effort to change schools, families and neighborhoods in a poverty-stricken area of New York City so the children who live there will be able to compete with their middle-class peers.

At the local level we do have Chris Krehmeyer, executive director of Beyond Housing, who has led the effort to develop a project called 24:1 in the Normandy School District.  Under Krehmeyer’s direction, individuals and organizations in the two dozen municipalities that make up the Normandy School district are working together to create good schools, healthy children and successful communities.

But Canada is not here and Krehmeyer is busy, so the field is wide open for others.  Someone who is creative, and energetic, and knows how to lead.  Someone who has plenty of money, or who knows how to get it.  Someone who is willing to take chances.  Someone who cares about kids.

Undoubtedly that will be someone who has had more advantages than the 150,000 at-risk kids who are waiting for him or her to get here.

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