Jackson Free Press

Mississippi does not prepare kids for school early enough. As we report this week (See, "Early Ed: Critical to Child Success," page 17), the benefits of early education investment is huge.

The annual Kids Count study, from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows that the state would get $8.40 back in economic activity for every dollar invested in early education. When those dollars are targeted at low-income children, that return-on-investment shoots up to $12.30 per dollar, data show.

That's to say nothing of the societal benefits. Well-prepared students will be better, more engaged learners, score higher on class work and standardized tests, remain in school and graduate. Afterward, they have the choice of joining the workforce or the armed services or enrolling in college. The better they do at each step, presumably, the more incentive they have to stay out of trouble and go to the 
next step.

So far, Mississippi has not cashed in, largely because we have failed to make the necessary investments in early childhood education. And we see the consequences of our inaction. The quality of life for children in Mississippi is among the lowest in the nation. Our test scores and high-school graduation rates are routinely at the bottom among the states. Meanwhile, jails, locally in Hinds County, and prisons remain full of young men and women who wandered out of the classroom and into the streets.

There are no simple solutions, not even among well-intentioned people who care about children. For example, Jackson Public Schools—the state's largest urban district, one that is also poor and overwhelmingly African American—has implemented a program called grade- or credit-recovery, which gives students who are on course to fail a way to pass. In doing so, students avoid the social stigma of being left back and can at least take a diploma to an employer and secure employment.

In the long term, this is probably not the best thing for students, and we share in the concern shared by educators about the program, which is used in a number of districts around the state and the nation.

But what's the alternative—to hold students back and let them drop out of school rather than face embarrassment among their peers as someone who is not in the grade they're supposed to be? It's a cliche, but it's true that it's cheaper to invest in children than fix broken adults. To that end, we're encouraged by initiatives such as Better Schools, Better Jobs that want to make full education funding a constitutional requirement, as well as rumors of a number of planned lawsuits over the Legislature's failure to fund schools.

If anything positive comes from either of these efforts, we hope that the littlest Mississippians are not forgotten.