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Parents as Teachers needs more support, not less money
(by Kara Krekeler - March 17, 2010)
Like many other states, Missouri is facing a budget crisis.
Granted, the state’s not in as bad a shape as California (which last year held what amounted to state-sponsored yard sales to increase revenue), but with no end in sight to the declining tax revenue, the Missouri legislature is looking for ways to slash hundreds of millions from the state budget.
One of the proposed cuts being thrown around is to Parents as Teachers, a free program that combines home visits, group meetings and developmental screenings to help new parents educate their children and prepare them for school. Legislators may soon approve a $4.1 million cut to the program, which, when combined with other cuts that have occurred in the last year or two, would mean a nearly 25 percent budget cut from its original $34 million budget.
Such a drastic measure could mean scaling back screenings for 3- to 5-year-olds or charging middle- and high-income families for visits; it would almost certainly mean fewer families participating in the program.
While any educational program facing a cut like that pains me, I find it particularly harsh, considering the role Missouri has played in Parents as Teachers’ history, and the role Parents as Teachers plays in my own house.
According to the national Parents as Teachers website, the concept for the program started in the 1970s in Missouri, when educators noticed their kindergartners showing up to school with varying degrees of readiness. In 1981, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Danforth Foundation began funding Parents as Teachers as a pilot program in select districts.
Four years later, the state began funding programs in all Missouri school districts; today, Parents as Teachers is in all 50 states (although Missouri remains the only one to support the program in all districts) and several foreign countries, serving over 300,000 kids each year.
Since December, my son has been one of those kids. And I’ve got to say we love it.
One could make the argument that we don’t need to participate in Parents as Teachers. Like a lot of proud parents, my husband and I are convinced we have the smartest kid around, and I could bore you into a drooling stupor explaining all of Logan’s “advanced” achievements (but as someone who knows how annoying that is, I won’t). Between my mom — a retired elementary school and preschool teacher — taking care of Logan during the day and my husband and I reading to him every night, I know he’s on the right track to be mentally ready for kindergarten when that day comes.
But Logan’s an only child, and an only grandchild, so he doesn’t get many opportunities to interact with kids his age. Parents as Teachers gives us those chances, with regular open gym and play group events. Plus, for a chronic worrier like me, it’s really nice to have a certified early childhood education specialist around to answer my questions about everything from discipline to potty training to whether or not Logan will catch the bad words that occasionally pop up in songs on our stereo (not yet, thankfully).
But whatever our personal reasons, I think probably the best reason for people like us to be involved in Parents as Teachers is so that it can continue to help others.
The Maplewood-Richmond Heights Parents as Teachers program — the one in which we participate — was one of the original Missouri pilot programs. According to MRH Parents as Teachers coordinator Christy Kramlich, there are currently 205 families involved in the MRH program, about half of whom are classified as “high needs,” which can mean anything from low income to low education levels to having a parent who is incarcerated. Of that 50 percent, about a quarter were referred to the program by the court system.
A lot of people who don’t participate in Parents as Teachers mistakenly believe that it’s only for those high-needs families; in fact, anyone, at any income or education level, can participate. And I think that because anyone can be involved, it helps remove the stigma that would be there if the program was solely for high-needs families.
I get the feeling that if these proposed cuts go through that stigma might appear if middle-income families — forced to tighten their own budgets and cut out non-essential expenses — stop taking part because they’ll be charged for it. Because, as much as we’d all like to say that we’d pay for the program — and maybe some of us would — if it came down to choosing between optional education programs and groceries, there’d be no contest.
College scholarships and other educational programs are already facing plenty of budget cuts. So why don’t we do our kids a favor and leave Parents as Teachers untouched?
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