Suffer the Children

The right likes to emphasize the role that educational attainment plays in rising inequality, and it also likes to undermine efforts to improve educational outcomes for poor kids. Thus, the Bush brew of tax cuts for the rich, and declining per capita spending on preschool:

Discretionary grants under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) were flat funded at $2.1 billion, meaning that 200,000 children may loose assistance. Funding for HeadStart and Title I increased only at sub-inflation levels, leaving states to pick up the tab and putting more kids at risk of loosing access to early education.

We wouldn't want five year-olds showing up for kindergarden well-prepared now would we? But of course if your dividend earnings are almost large enough to pay out of pocket for preschool, Bush's prescient tax cutting has now put the dream within reach.

Comments

When the King James translators rendered Jesus' words as "suffer the little children to come unto me," they didn't mean that the children would experience pain. In seventeenth century English, the word "suffer" meant "permit" or "allow." To "suffer" meant to put up with something even if you didn't want to. Jesus was telling his disapproving disciples that the little children should be allowed to hug him and sit on his lap. Here's Jesus, from the Gospel of Mark:

Mark 10:13-15:
13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

Posted by Bloix | April 29, 2008 3:50 PM

"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein."
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Never cared much for snooty clubs anyway.

Posted by steve duncan | April 29, 2008 3:55 PM

Does the author of the quoted text use spelling errors to emphasize the poor state of education in this country?

Posted by DS | April 29, 2008 4:16 PM

And of course it is the federal government's responsibility -- the executive branch, indeed the President-- to make sure every 5 year old shows up for kindergarten well prepared.

You keep "loosing" sight that it's the parents that matter.

Posted by Beer Here | April 29, 2008 4:26 PM

Why does anyone think that rich repubs give a crap about the quality of public education? Their kids aren't going to public schools; and they're doing everything they can to make sure that none of their tax dollars get spent on public schools for anyone else's kids, either. It's all about vouchers, and how much public funds can be siphoned off into private tutoring programs, etc.

Posted by CParis | April 29, 2008 4:28 PM

Steve Duncan, I think the seventeenth century English is tripping you up again. Jesus is not saying that if you don't accept the Kingdom of God when you are child, you won't get in. That would rule out just about everyone he met. He's saying that a person's acceptance has to be "as," meaning "like," a child - that is, with the heart of a child. Not a particularly snooty requirement.

PS- I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm an atheist myself.

Posted by Bloix | April 29, 2008 4:30 PM

Why does anyone think that rich repubs give a crap about the quality of public education? Their kids aren't going to public schools; and they're doing everything they can to make sure that none of their tax dollars get spent on public schools for anyone else's kids, either. It's all about vouchers, and how much public funds can be siphoned off into private tutoring programs, etc.

Posted by CParis | April 29, 2008 4:30 PM

Steve Duncan, I think the seventeenth century English is tripping you up again. Jesus is not saying that if you don't accept the Kingdom of God when you are child, you won't get in. That would rule out just about everyone he met. He's saying that a person's acceptance has to be "as," meaning "like," a child - that is, with the heart of a child. Not a particularly snooty requirement.

PS- I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm an atheist myself.

Posted by Bloix | April 29, 2008 4:39 PM

Gee, why do I suspect that children within the Head Start program who have involved parents do pretty darn well, and those without involved parents do poorly, just like the children outside the Head Start program?

If it makes Matt fell better, I gave up on Tom Friedman over a decade ago, when he wrote that the Head Start program was critical to the nation's survival. I swear, Head Start is the Democratic version of strong supply side tax theory.

Posted by Will Allen | April 29, 2008 4:40 PM

If it makes Matt fell better, I gave up on Tom Friedman over a decade ago, when he wrote that the Head Start program was critical to the nation's survival. I swear, Head Start is the Democratic version of strong supply side tax theory.

Yeah, except for your lack of evidence that Head Start doesn't work.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | April 29, 2008 4:48 PM

Scott, it's up to the person who wants to continue the funding to prove that it's worthwhile. The most charitable claim that can be made with regard to Head Start is that measured results have been mixed. Nobody has any degree of certainty whether the 100 billion plus spent on Head Start has done any good, but it's job really isn't to help poor children. It's job is to make people like Matt feel better. Building the self esteem of comfortable folks, by spending other people's money, is the one task we can be sure that our Federal Government excels at.

Posted by Will Allen | April 29, 2008 5:12 PM

"Building the self esteem of comfortable folks, by spending other people's money, is the one task we can be sure that our Federal Government excels at."

Whereas comfortable folks who muster smug contempt for federal programs that serve the less fortunate, and rail against the injustice of estate and dividend taxes, are the true defenders of the downtrodden.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 29, 2008 6:04 PM

LaFollette once again shows that he thinks self-righteousness is an actual argument for throwing money at government programs of dubious value.

Posted by Mixner | April 29, 2008 6:36 PM

No one who supports the slaughter of innocent Iraqis with our tax dollars has any right to complain of wasted funds directed at helping children.

Posted by Not As Stupid As Will Allen | April 29, 2008 7:25 PM

LaFollete, nobody should care whether a program "serves" the less fortunate, the issue should be whether it serves them well. From what I've seen, Will Allen is right -- the evidence that Head Start works is pretty thin. If we're going to spend money on programs for the less fortunate, perhaps they should actually help.

Posted by too many steves | April 29, 2008 7:41 PM

Yeah, except for your lack of evidence that Head Start doesn't work.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | April 29, 2008 4:48 PM

*************************************************

Other commenters are correct. Opinions are definitely mixed about long term effect/benefit

http://www.behavior.org/reviews/index.cfm?page=http%3A//www.behavior.org/reviews/behavioral_reviews_meaningful_differences.cfm

The long-term effects of Head Start have been widely debated (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Supporters of Head Start and Follow Through (which followed Head Start in elementary school) point to the positive gains from the Distar reading program (Biloine, 1968; Gersten & Gutkin, 1983) or to studies showing other gains, such as Meyer's (1984) finding that of three schools exposed to Distar the immediate gains of one school persisted as children continued in school. The Pigetian Perry School Preschool project reported two long term effects: a decrease in special education placements and criminal arrests (Barrent, 1985). Herrnstein & Murray (1994) pointed to a study by Westinghouse Learning Corporation (1969) showing that all 10 effects and educational outcomes of Follow Through faded within five years and that “sleeper effects.” Finally the effects of the Perry Preschool project were smaller than initially predicted and often failed to reach statistical significance (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Spitz, 1986) Discussions of politics and research surrounding Head Start still continue.

One issue remains clear: despite the successes of Head Start, it failed to raise 1Q scores (Haskins, 1989; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Lazure & Darlington, 1982; Lee, Brookes, Gunn, Schnur, & Liaw 1990; Westinghouse Learning Corporation, 1969; Zigler & Muchenchow, 1992). While some have questioned the relevance of using 1Q (Locurto, 1991), the importance of studying IQ is that it is the single best predictor of academic achievement. An intervention that could raise IQ would lead to better prediction of educational outcome for children living in poverty. In addition, society and the educational establishment attend to IQ changes

Posted by Campesino | April 29, 2008 8:37 PM

Tell me, why is it that Head Start requires study and defense of its funding, but the kind of genocide favored by those who hate Head Start is always just a few lies away?

Could someone point to the trillions of dollars wasted and hundreds of thousands of lives snuffed out by Head Start? I'm just trying to get my head around the animosity towards this program by the supporters of War Forever.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 29, 2008 9:05 PM

Um, maybe you're arguing with the right-wingers in your head. When did I say I support the war?

Posted by too many steves | April 29, 2008 9:37 PM

No, I was making a generalization. That's different.

The program's cost of $7 billion a year works out to less than $25 per citizen. It's lost in the noise. The people who are doing the actual cutting, like Dick Cheney, have decided that it is better to spend that same amount of money (at least) every month in Iraq.

At least some of those who voted for the Iraq war, people on this very board who voted for those who would continue it and on that basis, have time and again insisted that social programs pay for themselves, but insist on military adventurism based on scenarios they cannot demonstrate are probable or even likely, are in this thread once again demanding a social program meet a requirement they have likely never applied to the creation of a killing field.

The evidence on Head Start is mixed. That gives no reason to kill it. The cost/benefit ratio is much greater than what Bush/Cheney have placed at a higher priority.

Picking this as your starting place is like complaining that your hundred dollar bill shredder is wasting $10 a day on electricity.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 29, 2008 10:41 PM

More stupid than Will Allen,

The evidence on Head Start is mixed. That gives no reason to kill it.

They're not killing it. They're just reducing the funding level. A perfectly reasonable policy given the dubious evidence of the program's effectiveness.

Posted by Mixner | April 29, 2008 10:57 PM

So you are the kind of genius who looks a cure for cancer and says "hm...the results are mixed, we should abandon this line of inquiry entirely"? How do you remember to breathe?

If you think that the analogy is flawed because other lines of research might be more productive, then please - feel free to show where this government is increasing its investment in some more promising alternative. Good Luck.

Again, this cut might make sense if even a vague hint that the people doing the cutting were at all good government types who were cutting as part of an intellectually honest plan to reduce wasteful spending. The current Killing Fields so beloved by some of the posters here demonstrates that this is not the case. This is merely another ideologically driven decision likely based more on spite than research.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 29, 2008 11:33 PM

Just to drive home the idiocy of complaints about a program that costs no more than a total of $7 billion - the total Federal Budget was $2.6 trillion, or 300 times this. Seven billion is only 3.5% of the excess taxes paid into Social Security.

And that analysis assumes you are gutting the program. The actual savings? Effectively nothing.

Now, the idiot contingent will read this and imagine that I have endorsed any and all comers for federal monies. That's just stupid. But so is cutting funding for a program that has, in some studies, provided real benefits at a time when the economy is tanking and the Federal Government is wasting billions every week on the wholesale murder of non-Americans. A program whose benefits are not merely ill-defined but are demonstrably non-existent; a program that is actively harming our nation.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 30, 2008 12:17 AM

"The long-term effects of Head Start have been widely debated (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994)."

FWIW, the 1994 Herrnstein & Murray work repeatedly cited in Capesino's pasted comment is, of course, The Bell Curve. This isn't to say that there's a genuine discussion over Head Start, albeit one that tends to miss Head Start's important role in making sure poor children are well fed, receive some measure of medical care, and have perhaps a wider degree of mainstream socialization.

"And of course it is the federal government's responsibility -- the executive branch, indeed the President-- to make sure every 5 year old shows up for kindergarten well prepared.
You keep "loosing" sight that it's the parents that matter."

I definitely agree that parents matter. So, given that parents matter, what do we do when parents, for whatever reason, have limited or basically no ability to ensure their child starts their school career adequately prepared? (It might help to realize that in today's (frequently full-day) kindergarten children are often required to read books with several sentences on a page, perform addition and subtraction, understand and make simple graphs, etc. It's increasingly turned into what 1st grade was for most of us. And if you're already falling behind in kindergarten . . .) Don't forget, even if one feels absolutely no community responsibility for other small, almost completely helpless humans at least within our own polity {spits in one's general direction}, one will still have to deal with the consequences, as in most cases one will not be sufficiently wealthy to fully insulate oneself.

Of course, some of these consequences are arguably why all attempts to level the socioeconomic playing field for children - that is, to provide equality of opportunity - are so bitterly rejected. It's all about ensuring one's children have an edge over the competition. Even if means looking the other way while they're crippled.

Posted by Dan S. | April 30, 2008 12:46 AM

Hey, just give the 7 billion to me. It's nothing. It's lost in the noise. I promise I'll find someone who will write a study saying somethng good happened. Now the idiot above will maintain that he hasn't endorsed federal monies for all comers. He hasn't. Just all comers who can produce some reports that say something good happened. By that standard, Iraq has been a success.

In any case, I don't really care if Head Start exists or not, so no, I'm not saying it should be gutted. My point was that people like Matt chant "Head Start", without connection to an observable, measurable, world, in the manner that Republicans chant "taxes cut, revenues increase" without connection to an observable, measurable world.

Finally, the phony above who professes such concern for Iraqis was perfectly fine with enslaving them until the end of time. It's all about feeling good about yourself, doncha' know.

Posted by Will Allen | April 30, 2008 1:53 AM

I see that there are, in fact, morons still willing to claim that my comments are effectively a blank check for any to claim seven billion dollars. Never mind that we started with the premise that we were helping children - not an individual sociopath.

As to enslaving Iraqis, that's a good joke Will. Those who aren't as stupid as you are know that their government is a sham and that the real ruler of Iraq is George W. Bush. It is his army that determines what happens there and woe betide any Iraqi who works against the great and powerful Bush.

So under the Will Allen plan for national greatness we give seven billion dollars to a single moronic individual, we slaughter foreigners to steal their resources, and we enslave them until the end of time.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 30, 2008 10:40 AM

No, there is a moron whose comment is effectively a blank check for any to claim seven billion dollars, as long as a report is produced that states that somebody poor was helped, which is essentially the same thing. Give me the 7 billion, and I'll guarantee a report to that effect.

Hey, moron? The Iraqi have had the resources stolen for eight decades. You're fine with that, because you think they are just wogs who are only fit to be oil chattel.

Posted by Will Allen | April 30, 2008 12:39 PM

Poor Will, he doesn't have any claim to the seven billion dollars he wants to steal so he wildly misrepresents my point. Do you, oh so thick-witted one, have a plan that will help hundreds of thousands for your seven billion? Do you have the backing of thousands of educators? Do you have, in short, anything that changes your selfish and idiotic demand for billions into something that could get the support of people like me who are so much smarter than you?

As to your calling the Iraqis wogs, that speaks for itself. As to your support for both murdering the Iraqis and stealing from them, that too, speaks for itself.

Nothing you have done, in word or deed, stops the oppression of the Iraqi people. Indeed, what you and your thuggish tribe have done is to take an unbearable situation and make it genuinely hellish. Good Job fuckwit.

That you have made Iraq a living hell is unforgivable. That you have done it with my tax dollars is infinitely worse. That you do so while begrudging children a program that has demonstrated success, and is countered by studies done with the goal of supporting racist diatribes, makes you not merely stupid, but also an inhumane monster. You truly are a sociopath, unfit for any contact with rational human beings.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | April 30, 2008 9:44 PM

Hey, meathead, give me a half hour and I will come up with a plan, and in about two days I'll have the backing of thousands of educators, as long as they think it likely I'll control the 7 billion. What sort of rube are you?

Look, you're the one who thinks Arabs are only fit to be oil chattel, not me.

Posted by Will Allen | April 30, 2008 10:59 PM

You've had much more than half an hour, you haven't presented anything. In other words, all you have is bullshit. But, I guess if you got rid of it you wouldn't have any brains at all.

That being said, only one of us supports the slaughter of those they call wogs and chattel. Only one of us has ensured that the citizens of Iraq continue to live under the oppressive regime of chaos. The fact is, it isn't me you dimwitted waster of other people's lives.

Explain, as best your tiny brain can muster, how your votes for waging war on the Iraqi people has bettered their lives. Not in the abstract, not in some unspecified future, but now. Under the rule of their unelected ruler George W. Bush. Actually, don't bother, you've already explicitly endorsed stealing their oil because you were afraid that they might one day figure out its worth.

Oh, and stop lying about my position. Unlike you I have supported neither the murder of nor theft from the Iraqi people. It was your tribe's representative shaking hands with Saddam Hussein - and don't bother denying your allegiance to George W. Bush - you voted for him twice. Both times when anyone able to complete the alphabet without help could see that he was the worst possible candidate of all of those running.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 1, 2008 1:09 AM

Meathead, unless you've been living in a cave, you've been stealing the Iraqis' oil your whole life. You're just too stupid or dishonest to grasp it. Probably both.

Posted by Will Allen | May 1, 2008 8:26 PM