By Chris Meyer, Catherine Pozniak and Gwen Hamilton

From Common Core to school choice, education is rife with controversial and divisive issues. But preschool is not among them. A 2013 survey showed 74% of adults in Louisiana support “a proposal for state government to provide funding so that all 4-year-olds can attend a high-quality pre-kindergarten program if their parents want them to.”Despite overwhelming public support, Louisiana has stopped short of offering preschool to every child. In Louisiana, only about half of 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool. The children that aren’t in preschool are disproportionately minorities from low-income households.There is compelling evidence demonstrating the value of preschool, not just to the children but also to the larger community. More than any other education or training program, preschool provides the highest return in education. Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child found that high-quality early childhood programs produce $4 to $9 for each invested dollar. What’s more, the earlier the investment, the greater the return.Why is preschool so beneficial? Most simply, skills beget skills. A child who can count to 20 and knows her alphabet heading into kindergarten will be practicing more complex tasks than a child who still needs to learn those basics.Preschool does more than just give kids a running start, though. The adage “use it or lose it” is real when it comes to cognitive development. Think of the brain as a large electrical panel with the capacity to hold many circuits. We are born prewired for endless possibilities. Because our brain is highly efficient, however, it performs “synaptic pruning” to divert resources from the circuits we are not using. This is why young children learn at rates unparalleled later in life: They actually have more potential pathways to process information. It is also why skill gaps open up early and stay large for those children who do not maximize their learning capacity from a very young age.Early childhood also is prime time for developing executive function, otherwise known as the “CEO” of our brains. Executive function is our management system; it lets us plan, remember, focus, prioritize and practice self-control. Command of these functions allows children to become healthy and productive citizens and community members, and it may be why children who attend preschool earn higher wages and have a lower likelihood of becoming teenage parents.Our inattention to pre-K has led to wide-ranging quality among preschool programs, low standards for preschool teacher qualifications and low wages for teachers. Pre-K teachers are paid half what their peers earn teaching K-12.We think we can do better as a parish. It’s in our collective best interest to increase high-quality preschool options if we want to live in a community that is safe, prosperous and healthy.It’s time to recalibrate our priorities. Here are five ideas to put Baton Rouge on a path to universal preschool in the next five years:

• Fund only pre-K through 11th-grade education. OK, it’s unlikely that we end up defunding grade 12, but thinking along these lines could be the jolt that generates creative solutions. Instead of positioning this as four-year-olds versus twelfth-graders, imagine if we shifted late-stage high schooling to higher education. For example, TOPS dollars could allow high schoolers to gain earlier entry in and credits toward a culminating technical, associate or college degree, saving time and money to bring preschool education fully into the realm of traditional publicly funded schooling.
• Flip the funding model and make bigger investments early on. What would happen if greater investments were made earlier to ensure students are prepared for high school and beyond? Getting students on the right track early in their schools careers is important. Last year’s state test scores show that 38% of third graders in Louisiana public schools were not able to read on grade level, a critical time when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. As kids continue to advance through school, the gap continues to grow. In 2014, it was estimated that more than 60% of Louisiana high school graduates required some form of remediation to pursue a certificate or degree. Districts like Washington, D.C., allocate more per-pupil funding in preschool and elementary school than high school to ensure students have a strong foundation early. In Baton Rouge, $4,667 is available per preschool student compared to $10,300 per K-12 student. This discourages schools from adding preschool classrooms even though doing so would be beneficial to both students and schools in the long run. The National Institute for Early Education Research estimates that if preschool expanded to children from families within 200% of the poverty line, the cost savings to Louisiana’s K-12 system would be nearly $250 million by 2030.
• Fund pre-K through vouchers underwritten by tax credits and/or by consolidating existing funding streams. Louisiana has endorsed taxpayer-funded scholarships or vouchers for children in low-income households to escape low-performing schools and attend private institutions of their choice for K-12 education, so long as the schools meet minimum standards. The same can be true for preschool. Currently, more than $400 million in state and federal dollars are provided for at-risk Louisiana four-year-olds to attend preschool, but regulations often tie this money to buildings and programs instead of students. Under a voucher system, all types of approved early learning centers could compete for private-paying and voucher-funded students to attend. The state could set kindergarten readiness performance standards for centers to remain eligible, and students and families would experience an increase in the number of options available to them, regardless of income level.
• Create Social Impact Bonds. Here’s how it would work: Private investors give to a social project such as a city-based universal preschool initiative and are paid back by government if the program is successful. Chicago Public Schools experimented with these bonds in partnership with Goldman Sachs and the Pritzker Family Foundation. While the results were mixed because organizers failed to account for quality and accountability, the concept is a worthwhile one. Investors win if school operators save money when more kids are kindergarten-ready, fewer students require special education services (which increases the costs of education), and literacy scores demonstrate kids are on track through 3rd grade. The city wins by having more of its students on track for a successful life.
• Establish an endowment. The Community Foundation serving Boulder County has established an endowment to permanently fund pre-K education. We could do the same in Baton Rouge.

Our proposals are not for the faint of heart. We believe achieving universal pre-K requires bold, out-of-the-box thinking. Baton Rouge can become the first city in Louisiana and among a handful across the country to offer universal preschool. To start, we have to take this priority off our long list of nice-to-haves. Every day, we pay the cost of underinvesting in early childhood education through the rising costs and diminishing returns of remedial education services, welfare and other social interventions. Providing every child in Baton Rouge a high-quality preschool option is the smartest investment we can make for our people, especially for the children.

Chris Meyer is CEO and president of New Schools for Baton Rouge, a nonprofit started by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. New Schools recruits and supports top charter schools to operate in the parish.Catherine Pozniak is a candidate in the Doctor of Education Leadership Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is co-founder and the former chief operating officer of New Schools for Baton Rouge.Gwen Hamilton is a native of Baton Rouge and currently leads community affairs for New Schools for Baton Rouge. She previously served as the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services.

This was originally published in the Baton Rouge Area Foundation's Currents Magazine (Quarter 4, 2015).