Last night, before turning off the lights, I read the following letter, in the latest , from Michael Silverstein, in Los Angeles:
James Surowiecki asserts that Bill de Blasio’s plan for universal pre-K education “may be good social policy, but it’s not going to create jobs,” even though the addition of pre-kindergarten has clear positive implications for job creation and for the middle class (The Financial Page, September 23rd). My children’s preschool employs two full-time administrators, nine full-time teachers, and several part-time specialists, substitutes, and after-school-care staff members. Many of these jobs could be a gateway to the middle class. Owing to free child care, New York City would likewise become a more desirable place for middle-class families to live.
Not great for inducing sleep. I was on high alert, scrambling to get to Surowiecki’s take on inequality in New York. Which I’m embarrassed to say I must have read, but had stashed away on my hard drive, distracted by all the goodies in the “Style Issue.”
In the Financial Page columnist questions de Blasio’s ability to change the calculus for the city’s struggling citizens. “Unfortunately, he wrote, “no New York mayor can do much to counter the forces that have eroded the middle class.” Surowiecki zeroes in on de Blasio’s proposal to tax the rich in order to fund universal pre-K. As Silverstein noted in his letter, his children’s preschool is an incubator for middle-class job creation (although I’d argue that don’t support this claim). And as the parent of young children, he understands the connection between access to good, affordable early education and the perpetuation of a viable middle class–present and future.
But Surowiecki will have none of that, declaring that “… universal pre-K obviously won’t have any impact on the job market for a couple of decades.”
Earlier this summer, another New Yorker writer, John Cassidy, weighed in on the , citing James Heckman, offering a , at the Brookings Institution, and emphasizing that for pre-K to work, it must be intensive and of high quality. Cassidy declares that he’s fine with de Blasio’s proposal, and concludes: “Personally, that’s not something I’d have a problem with, but it’s fair game for the other candidates. What isn’t fair is suggesting that improving and expanding pre-K education isn’t a reasonable way to tackle high inequality and low social mobility.”
Right. I’m on board. And with all due respect, Surowiecki needs to brush up on human capital creation. As I wrote in an in August:
Existing U.S. policies give short shrift to our budding innovators. They also leave families, venture capitalists for these future wealth producers, in the lurch. Americans labor more, and longer, than any other people in the world. The work-family juggling act has reached Sisyphean proportions, and stress levels are stratospheric. Parents, and other caregivers, need adequate resources, knowledge and support in the work of raising the next generation — like their peers in the global village.
