Investing in education

BYLINE: Derrick Z. Jackson

First of two parts GOVERNOR DEVAL Patrick said, "We have set a course and a destination where we want to go."

It is the beginning of either one of the biggest undertakings or biggest busts by an American governor. He has proposed $2.2 billion in education spending over the next 10 years, to provide everything from universal preschool to free community college tuition. He has proposed another $1 billion over 10 years to boost research in the life sciences, which are heavily connected to higher ed.

Patrick is a Chicago South Sider who made it to Milton Academy and Harvard. In a State House interview this week, he said he wanted to see the number of students in full-day kindergarten double or triple during his first term. He said he wanted to see a dropout reduction rate of at least 25 percent by the end of the term.

"I knew when I got my break at Milton Academy there were other kids back in the neighborhood every bit as ready," Patrick said. "I just don't accept anymore that it has to be that special and unique program.... I want to take the best ideas that come from all of those great innovations and see if we can't scale that up."

Patrick may have set a course, but he will not get far until he first pushes aside some big logs in the river, including tax-cut naysayers and the deficit handed him by Mitt Romney. "State aid right now is not enough and is unlikely to become enough in the next year or two to close the gap to meet the needs and services people say they want," he said.

Rare is the politician who stakes his or her legacy on closing the gap. The best national example is President Bush's No Child Left Behind program. Bush has badly underfunded his own initiative; now officials in both Democratic and Republican states are screaming to get out from under its mandates.

During the Romney administration, Massachusetts slipped steeply backward in prekindergarten access, according to the 2006 "State of Preschool" published by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The report indicates that the state went from spending $5,820 per child on pre-K in 2002, well above the national average, to just $3,619 last year, just above the national average. The percentage of the state's 4-year-olds in pre-K slipped from 12 percent to 10 percent and has fallen to half the national average. Meanwhile, Oklahoma has 70 percent of its 4-year-olds in pre-K. Georgia has 51 percent.

"People really looked to Massachusetts a few years ago as an example for the country," said institute director Steve Barnett. "Nobody looks at Massachusetts anymore."

The evidence is clear that investing in education has a huge payoff. According to Robert Lynch, a researcher for the liberal Economic Policy Institute, universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds would benefit the nation by a total of $779 billion by 2050 in higher earnings, tax contributions and lower crime and other social costs. In Massachusetts, the total benefits of full pre-K would amount to $13.2 billion. For the poorest 25 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds in Massachusetts, every dollar spent on universal pre-K would generate nearly $14 in benefits.

In 2003, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said that a projected $8-to-$1 return on early education should put such an investment "at the top" of the list of economic development priorities, alongside office buildings and stadiums. Sports stadiums usually fleece taxpayers. Lynch says the data tell him "that our priorities are abysmally out of whack. It is an incredible tragedy that our priorities are what they are currently."

Jamie Merisotis, president of the nonpartisan Institute for Higher Education Policy, which also has shown how college graduates contribute far more to the economy and incur far less public costs than nongraduates, said he was encouraged about Patrick's proposal for free community college tuition. "It sends a fundamental message to families that if you prepare yourself for college, there's no reason you can't go," Merisotis said.

With his proposals, Patrick has virtually assured that his defining legacy will be whether education rises to the top of state development. He said he rejects the idea that special students can only be produced by special and unique schools. He said, "My own life experience has shown me the transformative quality of education."

Transforming Massachusetts is another matter. It has yet to prove that every child is unique and special.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com