Our public K-12 education system gets the lion’s share of attention from the media, the legislature, the state budget, and – these days, at least – the state Supreme Court.
But there are two other education systems in our state that fill vital roles in our society and our economy: higher education and early learning. Ideally, these would fit seamlessly on either end of the K-12 system, providing our students with a smooth transition at each step.
However, we know that isn’t yet the case.
Ask any college student – or parent of a college student – and their number one concern is affordability. While the legislature did hold back tuition increases this school year, we all know costs have increased dramatically over the last decade. And too often, it’s the middle-class families who are feeling the effects. Their income is too high to qualify for state financial aid, but not high enough to afford the full price of a college education.
During the Great Recession, funding for critical state services was cut by more than $12 billion, and our higher education system suffered deep and painful reductions. Meanwhile, businesses keep reporting that they can’t find enough workers in the fields they need.
There are other pressing issues, too. More and more students can’t get into the classes they need to graduate on time, which keeps them in school longer and drives up the cost even more. And some people graduate from college and find the skills they obtained don’t always match those required by new and growing industries in our state.
At the other end of the K-12 system is early learning – making sure our youngest learners arrive at kindergarten with the skills they need to hit the ground running.
We know that much of a child’s brain develops before they get to kindergarten, so high-quality early learning pays big dividends down the road. In fact, evidence shows that good early learning programs lead to the results we all want like higher academic achievement, improved graduation rates, and lower incarceration rates.
Right now, there are 8,741 3- and 4-year-olds in the state-funded Early Childhood Education Assistance Program (ECEAP) and more than 11,000 enrolled in Head Start, the federally-funded program. There are nearly 2200 children on the ECEAP waiting list and, perhaps more disturbingly, about 33,000 more kids who are eligible for one of these programs but not being served.
Way too many of these youngsters will enter kindergarten already academically behind their peers. For example, the most recent survey of Washington’s kindergarteners showed that only 54 percent of those assessed had math skills expected at that age – things like counting to 20 or comparing two groups of objects to decide which has more or less.
We want all kids to enter school with the basic skills they need to succeed. But how do we provide that? How do we meet the needs of our college students and also the needs of Washington’s growing industries? I want to hear from you.
Please join me this Saturday, February 1, for a Community Conversation on higher education and early learning for Washington students. I will be in the Glacier Room at Green River Community College from 10:30 a.m. until noon. The address there is 12401 SE 320th Street in Auburn.