Early Education Leads to More Caps and Gowns and Fewer Orange Jumpsuits
Submitted by editor on Wed, 05/13/2015 - 10:15am
During my eight years as District Attorney of Carson City, I never hesitated to prosecute people who broke the law. But no matter how many convictions I won, I knew then as I know now that our streets will be a lot safer if we prevent more people from turning to crime in the first place.
Our success in doing so depends directly on the educational success of our students. By the time kids get to kindergarten, many are already behind in vocabulary development and pre-literacy and pre-math skills. They can also have problems with behavior and impulse control — which makes it hard to get along with other kids and teachers.
Participation in high quality preschool can put kids on a far better course. As profiled in recent reports from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, long-term studies of a high-quality preschool program in Chicago found that at-risk kids who did not participate in the program were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18 than participants. Furthermore, by age 26, individuals who participated in the program were 20 percent less likely to be arrested for a felony or be incarcerated than those who did not attend.
Unfortunately, many at-risk kids in Nevada don’t have access to high-quality early education programs. In fact in 2014, Nevada served just four percent of four-year-olds in state preschool—ranking below 36 other states in its share of children served.
The good news is that Nevada lawmakers have an opportunity to set Nevada kids on a path to success by supporting Governor Sandoval’s plan to invest $10 million over the next two years for high-quality early education for the kids who need it most.
This investment will provide access to an additional 1,560 children and upgrade existing preschool programs to a full day program. This is important because results from a trial show that children who participated in a full-program improved more on vocabulary and math assessments than did children in a part-day program.
This investment is good for these at-risk children and for taxpayers as well. A rigorous analysis showed that preschool for disadvantaged children can save more than $26,000 per child served based on reduced costs of crime, grade retention and special education.
Based on this formula, Nevada could save at least an additional $40 million per graduating preschool class in the long-term if we implement Governor Sandoval’s plan. The Fight Crime report also shows that if we reduce felonies by just 10 percent, we can reduce our prison population by nearly 1,300 each year and save approximately $26 million per year in corrections costs.
This isn’t about big government. In fact, it’s about smaller government since reductions in crime will lead to fewer inmates and fewer people needed to manage our prisons and jails. It’s also about a bigger, better economy, because more high school graduates will ultimately lead to more young people who are prepared for the workforce.
For these reasons and more I hope lawmakers act on Governor Sandoval’s proposal to invest in high-quality early education, because we all win when young people bypass handcuffs and jumpsuits in favor of caps and gowns and diplomas that signify they’re truly prepared for success in life.
— Neil Rombardo is a former Carson City District Attorney. He is now Senior Attorney at the State of Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, Employment Security Division
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