The KnowledgeWorks foundation conducted a poll in 2006 to gauge public opinion about their concerns and opinions about education in the state of Ohio. Several of the results showed that Ohioans are willing to make an investment in their children’s future. As far as funding goes, 80% favored increased spending for education – a higher percentage than those favoring more spending for economic development, prisons, indigent health care, or increased jobs. However, Ohioans also felt that the state placed too high of a priority on the results of standardized testing, and that those results are not accurate measurements of whether or not a child will be successful in the professional world (Ohio’s Education Matters).

So how can Ohio’s schools improve in the area of helping each of their students succeed? It is clear that Ohio’s parents are willing to invest money in the education of students, and that they are looking for new ways to determine how successful their children are. One fact about education that has been confirmed time and again in national and state studies is the early age at which the achievement gap begins to appear. Children whose parents possess the means to do so enter into preschool programs designed to enrich and educate them, and so they enter kindergarten and first grade at higher achievement levels than their poorer peers. As childhood progresses, and the wealthier families keep enrolling their children in enrichment programs, the gap widens. The sorts of family difficulties that often accompany poverty can serve as a distraction to poorer children, and this distraction, combined with the growing achievement gap, can result in feeling apathy, dropping out, and making poor choices.

The Ohio Department of Education has developed an Early Learning Initiative designed to close this achievement gap, particularly before children enter elementary school. While there are humanitarian reasons to close this gap – the logic of permitting such a wide gap between groups of children of such a young age does not make sense – there are also practical ones. Children who later on drop out of education often end up needing government assistance later on in life, either in the form of welfare, or in the form of incarceration. This often costs the government more than quality childhood education initiatives. The Ohio ELI seeks to provide: More…