HUFFINGTON
08.26.12
SMART START?
poor families and received a full day
of care every weekday from infancy
to the age of five. Their education
consisted of “games” (blocks figured prominently) and emphasized
the development of strong relationships between children and teachers. Reading and numbers were
considered essential, but not to the
exclusion of listening and playing
and sharing. Researchers interviewed and tested the children every few years, comparing them with
a control group, and found them
more likely to graduate from high
school and college, more likely to
work consistently throughout their
lives, and less likely to use public
assistance. This year, the oldest of
these children turned forty.
One of the beneficiaries of this
experiment was Latesha Foushee, a
woman who had such fond memories of her time at the Institute
that she pursued a career in early
childhood education and eventually got a job there. As Gallagher
expounded on the blur of activity
in the courtyard, Foushee stood
over the tub, watching a small boy
navigate a pirate ship through an
ocean visible only to him.
When Foushee was growing up
in Raleigh, she said, she had two
best friends. They were all from
poor families, but of the three,
only Foushee lucked out and was
accepted into the Institute. One
friend now drives a forklift for the
Keebler plant where she’s worked
since dropping out of high school,
and the other recently posted
something on Facebook about gastric surgery. “She was extremely
obese,” Foushee said. “She must
have been 500 pounds.”
Foushee graduated from high
school on time, received her childcare certification from a community college, and spent her 20s
working as a preschool teacher
and leading a youth group at her
church. She got a job at Frank Porter Graham in her 30s, and she’s
now finishing her associate’s degree while raising two kids of her
own. She’s also in the process of
adopting a 15-year-old neighbor
whose grandmother died recently.
Even a critic of the Institute—
and there are many—would agree
with the basic point of Foushee’s
story: preschool can help children
overcome great obstacles. When
conservatives in North Carolina
want to justify cutting the preschool budget, they refer to the
work of scholars like Eric Hanushek, at Stanford University, and
Chester E. Finn Jr., formerly of the
Reagan administration and now of
the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in
Ohio. Finn argues that public pre-