Prometheus 6

I saw this headline

South leads in early childhood education

...and said, "What's wrong with this picture?" I mean, besides this

The South has trailed the nation in education and income levels since before the Civil War, the Southern Education Foundation report said.

...and this?

A report released a day before the Southern Education Foundation's study said the Southeast had the highest dropout rates in the country.

The nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center said South Carolina, Georgia and Florida had three of the five lowest high school graduation rates nationwide. South Carolina was at the bottom: 52.5% of students graduate after four years of high school.

Here's the deal.

The Southern Education Foundation, a charity based in Atlanta, said the Southeast provided public prekindergarten to the largest percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds in the country: 19%, compared with 12% in the Northeast, 9% in the Midwest and 5.6% in the West.

"That is a dramatic difference," said Steve Suitts, who wrote the report.

That's not education, that's child care. And I'm not knocking it. Just saying it's not education, it's child care...which explains why middle and upper-class kids don't see as much benefit as poor kids.

Suitts cited a study by Rutgers University's National Institute for Early Education Research that showed prekindergarten programs in Arkansas, South Carolina and West Virginia had developed children's language, literacy and math skills.

Fuller said a recent study by UC Berkeley and Stanford University showed substantially weaker benefits for middle-class and affluent white children.

The pre-K programs provided a more enriched environment than poor parents can provide. So I like it, I just think they should be expanded to the rest of the states the Southern Education Foundation incorrectly lauds by saying 'southeastern states.'

Suitts said early leaders such as Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas had fallen behind as their populations had grown.

Not all Southern states have praiseworthy prekindergarten classes. Mississippi, which has the nation's largest percentage of children living in poverty, has no state-financed program. Alabama's program enrolls 1% of its eligible children.