Better childcare will curb social ills

The first few years of a child’s life are the most important; it is in these early years that the quality of their lives is laid down. Yet too many parents who wish to nurture their children at home are being forced back to work by financial pressures when their children are still babies.

We need to level the financial playing field for parents. The current system pressurises mothers - and it is mostly mothers - into going back to work soon after their children are born. Yet the research shows that the seeds of later unhappiness and antisocial behaviour by young people are often sown by the failure of parents to form a close and loving relationship with their babies.

Society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth.

We seem, as a society, to place economic and academic concerns well above relationships despite the latter’s crucial role in a child’s - and later an adult’s - wellbeing. Regardless of the very large body of scientific and sociological evidence, children’s policy and political thinking miss the influence of the early years on a host of social problems we face today.

I asked Dr Samantha Callan to form the Early Years Commission to study this question. Its report, which will be published tomorrow, should make compelling reading for policy makers and parents. Crucially it shows that violent and antisocial behaviour by young people can be traced back to parental neglect when they were very young. They in turn pass on this dysfunction to their own children, perpetuating the cycle.

Professor Margot Sunderland, a child mental health expert on the commission, unambiguously stated that the quality of childcare has lifelong consequences for mental health as the first three years of a child’s life are crucial for healthy brain development and psychological stability.

The yardstick of quality applies across the spectrum of childcare: parental, informal and formal. It’s not the case that home care is always good and nursery always bad. But whether it is politically correct to admit this or not, there is a “hierarchy” of quality in childcare that policy is currently ignoring.

If parents want more than anything else to be with their children most of the time in the early years, and want to give them the continuity and intensity of relationship that science says they need, then surely they are the ones best placed to provide it.

Facilitating this aspiration should be a cornerstone of childcare policy. If parents don’t want to do this or cannot (and 81% of parents said financial pressures made them return to work early), the emotional and cognitive needs of their children must still be met.

This can be done by well motivated family members, well trained nursery nurses or other childcare professionals who have the time to give them enough one-to-one care. The evidence shows that, after motivated parents, family members offer an excellent childcare source.

Yet at present they are discounted by policy makers. Worryingly the commission also heard that childcare professionals are unsure if they should even hug children and that many nurseries prioritise health and safety and administrative needs, not personal childcare. Empathy doesn’t feature in the measurement of care quality, yet it is critical.

It seems that most of the public sense that policy is wrong. When asked in our poll, 82% of adults said that more should be done to help parents who wish to stay at home in those early years and some 70% felt that parents were encouraged to put their children into daycare too soon.

We need a fairer system in which the financial sacrifice of giving up work to look after a baby is offset by extra help from the tax and benefit system. The commission’s report recommends “front-loading” child benefit so a larger proportion of the child’s total entitlement would be available during the first three years when parents most want to spend time caring for children and when attachment and intensive nurture are most important.

It also recommends transferable tax allowances to reflect the fact that, if one spouse is not working outside the home, that family requires more support from the tax system. Similarly the benefits system should not penalise low-income couples who want to live together – which requires tackling the “couple penalty”. And it proposes a change in the rules to allow working parents to use childcare tax credits to pay unregistered close relatives to look after children.

With the growing demand on mental health facilities, the rising number of children in care and the peculiarly high levels of dysfunctional family behaviour, our failure to place cognitive and social development in the early years at the heart of our policy for children is already costing us dear. It is surely time to change all of that.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article4692207.ece

We had only one house rule when my daughter was born — sleep when the baby sleeps.

But as an anthropologist who has looked at parenting from an evolutionary view and across cultures, it made no sense to me at all. Human babies, I knew, are physically and emotionally entwined with their caretakers, so you might as well sleep together or there will be hell to pay.

Recent research on infant sleep and depressed mothers by Roseanne Armitage of the University of Michigan Medical School underscores the strength of that adult-baby entrainment. Armitage and colleagues asked mothers who were depressed during pregnancy, as well as mothers who had a newborn and were not depressed, to wear a wristwatch device called an actigraph which measured sleep, rest and activity. The researchers also put tiny versions of the actigraph on the mothers’ 2-week-old babies. Turns out, the babies with happy mothers often came with an inborn sense of circadian rhythm, meaning they innately distinguished between day and night, and soon adjusted the major portion of activity accordingly. But the babies of depressed mothers had no such rhythm, and their sleep and activity patterns were all over the place all the way to the end of the study eight months later.

Although the researchers were adamant that all babies should be put on a sleep schedule to “fix” any “irregularities” in circadian rhythms caused by maternal mood disorders, that suggestion misses the mark.

Human infants are born neurologically unfinished and therefore designed to be constantly attached to an adult who is attuned to their needs. The problem with depressed mothers is not so much that their babies have sleep “problems” but that the mothers, day and night, are emotionally and physically affecting their infants in ways they may not even notice.

Responding to the endless needs of a helpless baby in a culture where most of us have no experience with kids can be a shock to even the most psychologically balanced person. Just imagine being depressed about the baby, or something else, and then being faced with this screaming infant who won’t sleep when she’s “supposed” to. And then read that one “should” put that baby in a crib, alone, and let her cry it out until she sticks to a sleep schedule, by gum. It would make any parents near the edge fall over into depression.

Surely there’s a more humane approach to helping sad mothers and fussy babies that addresses both their needs,

Oh, yeah, I’ve got it: Sleep when the baby sleeps and you’ll both get enough sleep.

Source: LiveScience.com, NY
http://www.livescience.com/culture/080905-baby-sleep.html

The aim of my recent raw-nerve comment on child care was not to distress parents, it was merely to speak up for all the babies.

In most debates about child care, including this one, it’s all about the choices people have to make. It’s about the adults and their needs and their situations.

No one mentions the babies who are in full-time care under the age of 12 months, let alone at three weeks, for up to 60 hours a week, no one at all. How babies themselves are feeling, developing, reacting or suffering is never on the agenda.

Everyone’s too frightened to mention it.

It’s the big fat elephant in the room that no one has the bravery to acknowledge, let alone confront.

I’m aware that some parents and carers have felt attacked by my comments. I’m honestly sorry for that, but I won’t take back a single word, even though it wasn’t I who said the words child abuse in the first place.

I was simply quoting the owner of a brilliant child care facility in Queensland, who said to me last year: “Mem, when we look back at the quality of child-care for babies at this time in our history, with the terrible ratios of carers-to-children we currently have, people are going ask us how we allowed such child abuse to happen.”

I knew she was right. As an advocate for excellence in early childhood policies and as a literacy academic and consultant, I’ve found myself over the years at conferences and conventions around the world, listening to the real experts: the pediatricians, social workers, educators, speech pathologists and child psychologists speaking on the detrimental effects of full-time child care for the very young, especially in the first months of life.

So although I’m not the primary source of this information, I have heard it myself from the mouths of eminent people who have enlightened me and frightened me.

I’ve heard them speak about worldwide research over the last 50 years on parent-child bonding; and worldwide research in the last 10 years on brain development, both of which point to huge and worrisome issues for babies in full-time care.

The problem stems from an insufficient number of carers per baby, and to the fact that babies can’t even bond with their carers since the young over-worked carers themselves, who are doing their utmost, move on so often. They are undervalued by low pay.

And they feel helpless and sad about not being able to do the best for the children in their care.

So I decided, somewhat crazily as it turns out, to speak up for the babies since they cannot speak up for themselves.

Someone, somewhere, had to defend them since they are defenceless.

It was at this point that I was misunderstood.

At no time did I say a word against child care in general, let alone well-resourced, good child care; or part-time care for any child; or care by family members, or friends.

In the end, astoundingly, 98 per cent of the huge number of messages I’ve received from parents, professional organisations and child-care workers themselves have been overwhelmingly positive, full of heartfelt thanks and praise for my guts, my balls, my courage, and for saying it like it is.

I honestly thought I was going out on a limb.

Instead I’m relieved and thrilled to find myself in a forest of agreement.

One of the loveliest of these affirmations was from a Swedish pre-school teacher who told me that children in Sweden are not encouraged into long-day child care until they can toddle or walk, so that if they want to, they can literally walk away from any situation that distresses them.

Among the anti-brigade, there are a few groups who are so angry they’re planning a mass public destruction of my books in two states. I don’t mind at all, but is it fair to punish the children? Is that child care?

I understand their reaction.

It’s quite normal for us, when were threatened by an inconvenient truth, to react with rage, then denial, and then ridicule of the person who relayed the news. Eventually acceptance follows.

I have absolutely no choice but to take it all on the chin. I was the foolhardy messenger.

But please don’t shoot the messenger.

For the sake of this country’s babies — their future and ours — could we all now focus on the message instead?

I’ll be making no further comment on this issue.

Talk to the real experts next time and see what happens.

Mem Fox is an author of children’s picture books, including Possum Magic.

Source: Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24301238-5000117,00.html

Caesarean childbirth may weaken the attachment of a mother to her baby, a study has shown.

Scientists found women were more emotionally responsive to the cries of their babies if they chose to give birth naturally.
Those who had Caesarean deliveries were significantly less sensitive to the sound of their own babies crying. Parts of their brains believed to regulate emotions, motivation and habitual behaviour were not as strongly activated as they were in natural birth mothers.

Researchers believe the difference may be explained by a “bonding” hormone released in the brain during labour. Oxytocin, known as the “love hormone” or “cuddle chemical”, creates feelings of attachment in both humans and animals. It is also produced in women during breast feeding, and also sex.

Between 10% and 20% of all births in the UK are now delivered by Caesarean section. Controversially, the procedure is linked with post-natal depression.

Caesarean deliveries may be advised for health reasons, but increasingly they are being seen as a “lifestyle choice”. The “too posh to push” tag has been applied in the media to women who pay for private Caesareans. Women who delay motherhood are more likely to have the operation because child birth risks increase with age.

The new research by British and US scientists involved 12 American mothers having their first baby. Six had natural vaginal deliveries and six Caesarean sections. Two to four weeks after the births, the women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of their brains while listening to the recorded cries of their babies.

The scans revealed a range of brain regions that were more highly activated in natural birth women while hearing the sound of their babies crying. These were parts of the brain that dealt with emotions, empathy, motivation, reward-seeking and habit.
The findings were published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Research leader Dr James Swain, from the Child Study Centre at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, said: “Our results support the theory that variations in delivery conditions such as with Caesarean section, which alters the neuro-hormonal experiences of childbirth, might decrease the responsiveness of the human maternal brain in the early postpartum.”

Source: The Press Association
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iew4M7SadUR3mNgT69KHn2WSyA_A

Parents spend a lot of money on their children’s care, education and extracurricular activities to help them reach their potential and to give them the best possible start to their lives.

If an infant’s relationship with their carers is inconsistent or unstable, they won’t get the ongoing, responsive interactions required for the healthy development of these capacities. If you have a less attentive care - when an infant is rarely noticed, touched or talked to - you lessen their ability to withstand stress, to learn, to control emotions and develop into healthy adults.

Knowing this, we should welcome the recent comments by the children’s author Mem Fox about the importance of good care for our babies and infants. The responses to her comments show the community is justifiably concerned about how we provide the quality of care young children need for optimal development.

At a time when the nation is deciding the best model for a national paid maternity leave scheme, it is timely that the needs of the child become the central focus in any decisions that are made around care. Yes, some parents will always have to return to work early. However, a well-supported paid parental leave scheme of at least 12 months would make this an exception rather than the rule it may become.

If we continue to abandon our parents to find their own unsatisfactory way out of the dilemma of working and having a family, then premature return to work will occur.

The more time parents spend with their children, the more they learn how to be better parents. The repeated interactions parents have with their children help them to become better at responding to their baby’s needs and identifying problems. When parents are in prolonged employment during their children’s early years of life, the opportunities to learn these parenting skills can be affected.

We need to find better ways to allow parents to stay at home during the first year of their child’s life, to provide these continuous one-on-one interactions that infants need with their parents for healthy brain development.

However, parents will only take leave from work to spend time with their infants during these critical first few years if they can afford it. We now need a system that supports parents in their role as carers as well as their role as workers.

It is much more cost effective and developmentally advantageous to provide parents with paid leave for at least 12 months so they can foster that important one-to-one relationship and nurturing environment that will optimise their baby’s chances during a crucial stage of their early development.

Gillian Calvert is the NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People and Marie Coleman is the spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Australian Women.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/5aljat

QUESTION: What does research actually say about the impact of men in children’s lives?

ANSWER: Fathers often do not have the same parenting styles as mothers. There is a difference in the way men get their kids ready for the outside world. For instance, fathers tend to give their children more freedom in the park, letting kids befriend a new dog or climb the jungle gym alone. Mothers tend to ask the children to stay close. Dr. Kyle Pruett, a child psychiatrist, researcher and author of The Nurturing Father: Journey Toward the Complete Man, found that a dad’s style of letting kids figure things out for themselves can teach them not to get so upset when they make mistakes and to try again.

Fathers may be the greatest untapped resource in the lives of their children. That goes for grandfathers and uncles as well. When men are involved, children have a tendency to have better problem-solving skills. They also tend to do better both socially and in school.

So, men, think about how you spend time with the kids in your life. Get involved, get more involved, or stay involved. Carve out a special time in your day to be with your kids. Decide how you’re going to spend that time together: shooting baskets, playing a duet, building a model, or sitting quietly and talking about how the day went for both of you. If you’re too tired to get down on the floor to play with your younger kids, cuddle on the couch together for a story. Make a connection with your children’s school. Drop them off or pick them up when you can. Get to know the teachers, go to school conferences, participate in school activities, chaperone a school event or field trip. Introduce your kids to your daily routine. Make a trip to your workplace together. Make sure your kids, or grandkids, know that you have a current picture of them at your job or in your wallet.

Sadly, the average amount of time a father spends with his child per day, other than giving directions or reprimands, is less than 10 minutes. For the sake of your child, and ultimately the community, be determined to find the time to talk and laugh and eat with your child every day. (…)

Source: Albert Lea Tribune, MN
http://www.albertleatribune.com/news/2008/aug/31/dads-talk-laugh-eat-your-child-each-day/

A new Father’s Day poll shows nearly 75 per cent of Australian dads learned their most valuable and important life skills from their own fathers.

Top among those skills was how to drive a car, how to ride a bike, changing a tyre, changing a light bulb, building a fire and knotting a tie.

According to parenting expert and author Michael Grose, the findings of the Braun Series 7 Father’s Day Poll reinforced the importance of the father and son relationship in a child’s development.

“We know from previous scientific research that boys who have active and involved fathers are more likely to do better academically, socially and emotionally,” he said in a statement.

“Given that many dads of today credit their father as being their most important teacher of life skills underscores just how important male role models can be for young boys.”

The survey was conducted online by Galaxy Research this month among 410 fathers, ahead of Father’s Day next Sunday.

Mr Grose said the reason why dads were number one when it came to teaching their sons life skills was because activities were at the centre the father-son relationship.

“The language of fathering is all about doing things - sometimes it’s kicking a football around, other times it might be helping to tinker around with the car,” he said.

The survey also found the quality most admired by sons in their fathers was their hard working approach, followed by honesty, supportiveness, loyalty, strength and kindness.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://news.smh.com.au/national/sons-get-vital-life-skills-from-dads-20080831-46b0.html

For years, new parents have been hearing that “breast is best,” and each decade, more and more women choose lactation as the primary food source for their newborns. It appears that breastfeeding may now produce a generation of smarter, happier babies. Studies have shown that babies need touching and nurturing to develop and survive and breastfeeding supplies both needs on a regular basis.

Breastfed babies followed from birth to 6 years had higher IQ scores than formula-fed babies. This is not a new finding. Past research has shown that mothers from more affluent backgrounds were more likely to breastfeed. Consideration was given to the fact that improved mental abilities may have been related to family circumstance as much as breastfeeding.

Researchers from Canada’s McGill University attempted to overcome the possible influence of family economics by evaluating children born in hospitals in Belarus. The group studied over 13,000 breastfed babies born in 31 maternity hospitals. Some of these hospitals ran breastfeeding promotions to boost rates across all groups. Some provided nursing training and provided support for breastfeeding mothers. The mothers who received the training and continuing support were more likely to nurse for a longer period of time.

The children were divided into groups for evaluation depending on whether their mothers were given nursing training or not. Babies who were exclusively breastfed for the first three months scored 5.9% higher on IQ tests in childhood. Tests indicated that the longer the babies were breastfed the more significant the intelligence difference.

When these children began school teachers also gave them significantly higher academic ratings in both reading and writing than children in control groups. The Archives of General Psychiatry lead researcher Professor Michael Kramer said, “Long-term, exclusive breastfeeding appears to improve children’s cognitive development.” Professor Kramer also said that it was not known if the increased intellectual development was due to some nutritive value of breast milk, or related to the physical and social interactions of breastfeeding.

There are several reasons that breastfeeding may improve the mental development of babies:

* Breast milk contains fatty acids and other nutrients that are necessary for the development of babies.
* Physical and emotional aspects of breastfeeding may lead to permanent improvements in brain development.
* Breastfeeding may increase verbal interaction between mother and child which could aid development.

Though the exact mechanism of improved intelligence as a result of breast feeding is not known there are also other reasons for breastfeeding; children who are breastfed generally have fewer gastrointestinal problems and they have better protection against obesity, diabetes and cancer. Women who breastfeed have a quicker recovery from childbirth and breastfeeding reduces a women’s risk of developing breast cancer.

Breastfeeding is natural and good for the baby and the mother. A pregnant woman who wants to breastfeed but isn’t sure how to began can ask her physician or midwife for a referral to a professional, or any of the many groups who advocate breastfeeding.

Source: HealthNews, CA
http://tinyurl.com/6lvajn

Reporters can be a tad obnoxious at dinner parties. We’re experts on everything for about five minutes. But parenting good students? I won’t even begin to pretend. So I turn to those in the know: teachers.

Helena Van Rooyen recently retired from academe after 40 years, most spent at the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District. But she isn’t done helping students, as she is working on a project for the district, helping at-risk second- through fifth-graders improve their math skills.

Melinda Anaya is a well-loved kindergarten teacher at Holy Angels School in Arcadia, where she’s taught for eight years. My two nieces, ages 13 and 10, adore her and remember how fun her classroom was. My own 6-year-old cried on the last day of school because he said he’ll miss her. (Don’t show this to him when he’s 16, please.)

I posed this question to them: What should parents of young children be doing now in the run-up to school? And what we can do throughout the year to help our kids succeed?

Van Rooyen stated it simply: “Just be a parent.”

“That means, get involved in your child’s learning, teach (and live) consistency, respect for authority and for peers, the meaning of the word `no,’ fairness and that there are choices,” she said.

And not to put undue pressure on you, but what we’re doing with our kinders now will echo through the years.

“I do think that the primary grades are the most important,” Anaya said. “This is when they begin to develop their work habits and everything is a new learning experience.”

The good habits we help instill in our pre-K and kindergarteners are the foundation to that perfect SAT score later on. (OK, just a 2,300.)

So herewith, homework for us parents on how to grow good students:

Forget the preaching. Instill a love for learning by providing kids with a model. Don’t just tell kids to read when you never read or to be nice and not fight when all you do is scream.

Play learning games, even simple ones like name everything in the room that’s green, and provide kids with a variety of experiences beyond video games and TV.

Consider volunteering in your child’s classroom

Both teachers’ No. 1 activity is reading. Read to kids and later with them when they’re old enough to read to you. It can be hard with everything else we have to do, but it makes a difference.

“Talk up” school and all that can be learned there plus the new friends they’ll make.

Recognize learning and reward it.

Right about now, start waking the kids up early and getting back into the routine. Observe a wise bedtime. Have a daily schedule kids can count on.

Your Mama said it to you too: eat a healthy breakfast.

To help with first-day tears, it’s best for parents to say goodbye, kiss their child and leave. Two minutes after you leave, your kid is fine. We feel terrible all day.

After school, let them snack and indulge in a half-hour of active play (PlayStation doesn’t count, Anaya points out.) Then they can tackle homework.

Give students their own work space free of distraction. Give them all the materials they need.

Kids are apt to get sick when around other kids so keep them home when they are sick, and serve chicken soup (really.)

And lastly, both teachers remind us to love our kids, listen to them and spend time with them.

“Bottom line, learning requires attention and just plain old hard work,” Van Rooyen said.

Just like parenting.

Source: Whittier Daily News, CA
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_10294073

Barack Obama says he believes in universal preschool and if he’s elected president he’ll pump “billions of dollars into early childhood education.” Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. Democratic governors across the country — including in Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia — have made a major push to fund universal preschool in their states.

But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them? Not according to available evidence.

“Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes,” says James Heckman, a University of Chicago Noble laureate in economics whose work Mr. Obama and preschool activists routinely cite. “But the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations.”

Mr. Obama asserted in the Las Vegas debate on Jan. 15 that every dollar spent on preschool will produce a 10-fold return by improving academic performance, which will supposedly lower juvenile delinquency and welfare use — and raise wages and tax contributions. Such claims are wildly exaggerated at best.

In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the nation’s report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.

Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now — two major organizations pushing universal preschool — refuse to take this evidence seriously. The private preschool market, they insist, is just glorified day care. Not so with quality, government-funded preschools with credentialed teachers and standardized curriculum. But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia — both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago — paint an equally dismal picture.

A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP. Oklahoma, in fact, lost ground after it embraced universal preschool: In 1992 its fourth and eighth graders tested one point above the national average in math. Now they are several points below. Ditto for reading. Georgia’s universal preschool program has made virtually no difference to its fourth-grade reading scores. And a study of Tennessee’s preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus nonpreschool kids on any subject after the first grade.

What about Head Start, the 40-year-old, federal preschool program for low-income kids? Studies by the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly found that although Head Start kids post initial gains on IQ and other cognitive measures, in later years they become indistinguishable from non-Head Start kids.

If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids. A 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., a 1970s program in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a 1980s program in Chicago, Ill., all report a net positive effect on adult crime, earnings, wealth and welfare dependence for participants. But the kids in the Michigan program had low IQs and all came from very poor families, often with parents who were drug addicts and neglectful.

Even so, the economic gains of these programs are grossly exaggerated. For instance, Prof. Heckman calculated that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent — not even remotely close to the $10 return that Mr. Obama and his fellow advocates bandy about.

Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents — the vast majority — might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.

Yet that is precisely what Mr. Obama would do. His “Zero-to-Five” plan would increase federal outlays for early education by $10 billion — about 50% of total government spending on preschool — and hand block grants to states to implement universal preschool. This will make the government the dominant source of funding in the early education marketplace, vastly outpacing private spending.

If Mr. Obama is serious about helping children, he should begin by fixing what is clearly broken: the K-12 system. The best way of doing that is by building on programs with a proven record of success. Many of these involve giving parents control over their own education dollars so that they have options other than dysfunctional public schools. The Obamas send their daughters to a private school whose annual fee in middle school runs around $20,000. Other parents deserve such choices too — not promises of subsidized preschool that they may not want and that may be bad for their kids.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936615766562189.html?mod=googlenews_wsj