Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 109
CHAPTER 3
Quality Education as a Constitutional Right (QECR), a YPP-led effort to establish a
federal guarantee of high-quality public education for all, is supported by groups such as
the Children’s Defense Fund, the Frameworks Institute, and the SNCC Legacy Project.37
QECR envisions a day when every young person in the country—regardless of ethnicity,
gender, or class—has access to a high-quality education. This may seem to be a grandiose
vision, but at one time, voting rights were the same kind of vision. In a typical school year,
500,000 students in grades 9-12 drop out of school.38 YPP estimates that it serves 5,000
students per year.39 So clearly, it can’t be left as the only program to take responsibility and action.
“Sure there was hunger
for knowledge, but
Early Education
there was also real
Early childhood education is a topic that has attracted
physical hunger.”
widespread attention and fanfare in the media and state legislatures. By now, most Americans are aware that high-quality
— Albert Sykes
early childhood education can improve a person’s lifelong
educational achievements. In his 2013 State of the Union speech, President Obama called for
universal Pre-K education in the United States. As we said in Chapter 2, the United States is
the only high-income country that does not offer universal Pre-K.
Longitudinal research—the study we’re about to discuss has followed the same people
since the 1970s—suggests that low-income children can make dramatic and lasting educational gains with quality education in early childhood. Between 1972 and 1977, 111 lowincome children in North Carolina participated in a study starting when they were infants,
the now-legendary Carolina Abecedarian Project. Of the children in the study, 57 received
high quality child care and early education, and the rest formed a control group.40 The
Abecedarian group received care and instruction year-round until age 5. The educational
program featured low student-to-teacher ratios and emphasized cognitive, language, social,
and emotional development.
By the time the children in the Abecedarian group turned 21, they had more advanced
reading and math skills, had finished more years of schooling, were attending college at
higher rates, and had jobs that were higher-paid and required more skills than the children
Figure 3.6 Percent of U.S. Population Enrolled in Preschool
17%
16%
14%
3%
2%
3%
3%
3%
3%
4%
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008 2009
3-year-olds
4%
28%
27%
25%
24%
22%
20%
17%
28%
4%
4%
4%
2010
2011
2012
4-year-olds
Source: W. Steven Barnett et al (2012), The State of Preschool 2012, National Institute for Early Education Research.
www.bread.org/institute?
? 2014 Hunger Report? 99
n