Blog Layout

Early Childhood Education for All

Josefina Cespedes • Dec 08, 2019

Early Childhood Education is not a Privilege is a Need

In our Nation, 40% of our children Start School 1 – 3 Year Behind. That is a long life impact for a four-year-old child from a low-income family.

he or she will have about haft of the vocabularies and have heard 30 million words less than a child from high-income families has.

Do you know that?

Every child who starts kindergarten will fall into one of the following categories concerning language and literacy skills.

  • Two children will start two to three years below grade level
  • Two children will start one year below grade level
  • Two children will begin at the grade level
  • Two children will start one year above grade level
  • Two children will start two years above grade level

These children will be academically permanently labeled, and these labels will follow them practically the whole life.

 75% of the children who start behind will never catch-up with their peers.


The child left behind will have to archive his or her current year grade level, additionally to one to three years grade levels to reach their classmates. That is extremely difficult or almost impossible for a child. A more realistic expectation is that the child will grow one-grade level each year as same as his or her peers do. That reality will keep the child always one to three years behind the grade level.

For every child left behind due to a lack of early childhood education opportunities, there is a massive and devastating consequence for the child and society.

  • Many years of studies show the results, 55% of every child who starts kindergarten behind will drop high school, and only 2% will attend college.
  • While only 10% of children who enter kindergarten at the grade level will drop school, and 25% of them will make to college.
  • Only 7% of the children who start kindergarten above level will drop school and 44% to 81% of them will graduate from college
The District of Columbia’s Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced the bill H.R.4213 – Universal Prekindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 2019.

In our Nation, 40% of our children Start School 1 – 3 Year Behind. These children are low-income families who cannot afford early childhood education for their children.
That is a long life impact for a four-year-old child from a low-income family who will have about haft of the vocabularies and have heard 30 million words less than a child from high-income families has.

That enormous gap will follow the kindergarten children for five years for the rest of their life for many of them. Some states use this data to determine if our children would end in prison right in third grade, just using the elementary reading level.

Supporting early childhood education for every child is a win-win for all, our child, our family, our community, and our Nation.

The long-term benefits will be invaluable, includes lower the rate of dropping school, high rate of children attending and graduating from college, communities with lower criminal records, strong local and national economy.

Therefore, considering that what a child learns during the first five years, his life will have a lifelong impact on him. Early childhood education must be a priority on the United States’ budgets.

About the author. Josefina Cespedes has more than16 years of experience working with families and children. She is currently a master’s student at the Nyack College School of Social Work. Beside study at Nyack, Josefina is an early childhood educator and the director at Kinder Crayons. She is also a former Parent educator at Childcare Learning Center at Stamford, CT. Josefina is the founder and director of Mujer Virtuosa Ministries, providing services for children and families for more than 16 years.

My Grandma's Farm

By Josefina Cespedes • 08 Dec, 2019
It is the happy time of my life, infinity green of land for outdoor play, to run, jump and sliding down the hills, again and again; eating all kinds of fresh and exotic fruits ripped from trees. It has been the happy times of my life, abundant green land to run, jump and slide down the hills, again and again; eating all kinds of fresh and exotic fruits ripped from trees. I have three brothers, and a lot of cousins and friends to play together, hide and seek, you cannot touch me, stories' time with my grandpa or uncles, and much more. Yes, we had to work too, like getting water from the stream, bring the cows to drink water, milk the goat, and other things according to our age. But even those it was fun to me.
More Posts
Share by: