Backed by a new report from his Council of Economic Advisers, President Barack Obama is framing his push for universal preschool and early education as an economic issue that will yield extraordinary financial benefits not only to children and parents, but to the nation as a whole.
The council projects an increase in the Gross Domestic Product by nearly half a percentage point, with the potential to generate tens of billions of dollars annually into the national economy.
For years, a range of economists – most notably University of Chicago professor and Nobel Prize winner James Heckman – have made similar arguments. Other presidents – most notably President Lyndon Johnson in his push for Head Start and President Bill Clinton in promoting expanded support for daycare – have made early education a major theme of their administration’s, but return on investment has not been as central a part of their rationale as President Obama has made it in his domestic policy agenda.
[For more of this story, written by Louis Freedburg, go to http://edsource.org/2014/obama...t/71633#.VJDc1CvF-5U]
Comments (0)