Showing Parents Paternalism

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney told The Boston Globe last week that he would sponsor a plan to help resolve the considerable disparities that are present in the state’s public education system. And while the manner in which Romney is pressing the issue is severely flawed the initiative itself is uncharacteristically promising. A key part of the governor’s nascent proposal is the implementation of full-day kindergarten in under-performing school districts, where most students currently only attend school for half of the day.

Studies have shown time and again that students whose school districts offer them full-day kindergarten are more likely to demonstrate higher achievement over the course of their educations. But as many as 214 of the state’s 372 school districts don’t yet offer kindergarten for more than the half-day minimum, splitting their students into groups that attend class before or after noon. While the investment required to guarantee full-day education for all 10 year-olds in under-performing districts—$1 billion spread over 10 years—is by no means negligible, the long-termbenefits are even more significant. The money sacrificed today to begin educating students during this critical age, setting them on a path toward their greatest potential, will yield enduring returns in the form of the higher economic productivity from a more highly educated workforce. Eliminating Romney’s tax cuts would raise state annual revenues by several hundred million dollars a year, providing more than enough money to pay for the plan.

As Romney seems to recognize on a rudimentary level, giving students more attention is a much more valuable if it is paired with parental attention to children’s learning at home. Children whose parents read to them, help teach them to read and encourage them to get the most out of school undoubtedly end up more committed to learning—and better at it.

But Romney’s paternalistic proposal would attempt to involve parents by force; under his plan, children would be excluded from the new all-day kindergartens if their parents were unwilling—or more likely, unable—to attend two days of parenting-skill training. This idea’s degeneracy is made clear by observations almost too simple to escape even Romney himself, namely that parents who live in under-performing school districts often can’t afford to sacrifice two days’ worth of wages and that compulsory presence at parenting school smacks of a remedial program targeted toward low-income parents for no other palpable reason than their low income. In place of this coercive barrier to entry, reasonable positive incentives would allow parents in under-performing school districts to attend such sessions without punishing them—signaling the Commonwealth’s commitment to providing for its poorest children without holding parents at fault for their less-than-optimal circumstances.

Massachusetts has much to gain by providing full-day kindergarten to students in under-performing districts and little to lose aside from copious tax cuts it cannot afford. Governor Romney deserves support in his initiative, but it is critical that he pursue parent involvement through the channels of motivation, not compulsion. Romney already recognizes that a good education necessitates extra attention at home and extra attention at school; he should eliminate from his plan the barriers to both.