Brownell – program example

There’s lots of education research out there that says that one of the reasons that low SES kids do more poorly is–they do pretty well throughout the school year and then the go on holiday and all that learning, well not all that learning, but they sort of slide backwards whereas the kids from higher SES families, they’re going on interesting vacations, they’re interacting with their parents a lot. So their learning stays level or goes up a bit. So when they come back to school, there’s an even bigger gap.   

And so to try and reduce some of that summer learning loss, this program operates in low income areas and they  provide enriching experiences for these low-income kids. So that’s one program that came from, you know, I guess the impetus was, you know, “Look at all these high school students. We’re losing them”.   

You can have the best program in the world, doesn’t mean that those who really need it will come to it. And I think they found the same in Quebec when they offered the universal child care—I think it’s $7.00 a day. What happened was the high income families were really mobilized to go, and they found out where the best day cares were, how to get their kids into them, and the families that are experiencing challenges, the ones who really need the good day cares, just don’t have the resources to be able to go out and do that and get their kids into the best child care. 

So, you know, it’s one thing to have the programs, it’s another thing to make sure you’re reaching all those hard to reach and challenged families. So I think that’s one big challenge. But the other thing is, you know, we definitely need more resources put into those early years. I mean, we should have a very comprehensive early childhood program—including child care—but including other things besides child care.