Kindergarten for 4-year-olds is only part of the solution

The following op/ed was published in the Charleston Post and Courier:

Kindergarten for 4-year-olds is only part of the solution
BY WALTER R. MILLER
The recent ruling by South Carolina Circuit Judge Thomas W. Cooper on the inadequacy of state funding for early childhood intervention portends ...
Wait!
Everyone knows that a stitch in time saves nine; everyone knows that watering a plant is not complicated but is absolutely essential; everyone knows that as the twig is bent so grows the tree; and everyone knows that early intervention would be good for kids.
It is, therefore, somewhat surprising to me that people are abuzz about Judge Cooper's ruling?
Is it because money is attached to be sure? But is there really a sudden epiphany that early intervention is underfunded?
"Ahaa! Why didn't we think of that before?" some are saying.
After decades of research validating the economic and social value of early intervention, lawmakers still sigh at the paltry results, and then begrudgingly part with enough of the pie to quiet things down. Legislators know that early intervention pays. Then why isn't it happening?
Is it because many still assume teachers can solve the problem? Teachers are wonderful, but this problem is bigger than their contribution.
Is it because they buy into the common assumption that children and adults can be educated out of risk, which is patently untrue? It would be like trying to educate a person out of drug addiction.
Is it because they accept the easy way out by thinking that one service can solve a complex set of problems.? That assumes that a single service is the right thing to do, but we just haven't done it well. The logic is that we just haven't hit that square peg correctly to get it into the round hole. The fact is that more school, no matter how you do school or how early you do school, is not the answer.
Too many have succumbed to the notion that parents are not accountable for the way their children act and succeed. The state has done an excellent job convincing parents that only experts can raise their children correctly. The state says, "Give us your children earlier." Parents dutifully turn over their children to the state and say, "Grow them." And when their children are not right, they say to the state, "Fix them." And when children drop out, they say, "What's wrong with the schools?"
Here is a case in point. A parent came to me and said, "I am so mad. I don't know why my second-grader can't read. I have had her in childcare since she was 18 months old."
Judge Cooper is right about one thing: Early childhood intervention is underfunded. However, he and many others are mistaken to think funding kindergarten for 4-year-old children alone is the answer.
They are mistaken because the brain is significantly developed before the age of four. The brain begins to permanently dispose of neurons and associated synapses by the millions in the years immediately after birth if those cells are not being used. Structures in the brain that manage attachment, the accommodation of stress, focus, the ability to calm oneself, and vigilance are well established and very difficult to alter by age four. The groundwork for sharing and responding to authority (teachers' first pick for school readiness) are largely established by age four. Linguistic systems and processes are almost entirely intact by age four. The structures of the brain that process visual stimuli are almost complete by age four. (Turn off the TV!)
They are mistaken also because for children at risk of failure in school - and life - the answer is expensive, intensive, comprehensive services and not a single service. A significant misstatement in a Dec. 30 Post and Courier article was that Cooper's ruling said that the state "does not adequately fund early childhood education." The ruling states that the state does not "adequately fund early childhood interventions." This is not semantics. Kindergarten education for 4-year-olds is not the answer.
Do not let anyone persuade you that you can get results that cheaply. Do not let anyone persuade you that you can get results starting at age four. Do not let anyone persuade you that "something is better than nothing." Inadequately executed intervention has a negative impact on skills. You have to start very early helping parents of at-risk children to do their job, and it is expensive. A high-quality child development class is only a piece of the solution. But it has to be provided hand-in-hand with a home program that includes nutrition-counseling, behavior-influencing methods, exclusive parent-child time, medical care, reading to the child, talking to the child and safety development.
South Carolina needs to do this correctly. As Craig T. Ramey, Georgetown University Distinguished Professor of Health Studies and director of the Georgetown Center on Health and Education and others have demonstrated again and again, interventions must have the correct timing, the correct dosage of contact, the correct duration, the correct breadth of support and the correct content. Nothing less will do. More funds? Hurray! More half-interventions? Don't bother.
You might as well send each at-risk family a check to inch them away from poverty. Who knows, they may even buy a book, but don't look for their kids in high school.
Walter R. Miller is the evaluation chair for the South Carolina First Steps Board of Trustees.