Imagine yourself as a parent living in poverty with a five year old child. Your child doesn’t attend preschool and goes straight into kindergarten. They begin to struggle in school and lack basic math skills, pre-reading skills, and social skills. Over time, the lack of these skills builds up. By the time your child gets to high school and makes decisions about college, it’s too late. They are not “college level material.” Unfortunately, this is the scenario for many children in low income families. But what if having your child attend preschool made the difference between being prepared for college or not? What if preschool was available to all low-income families? The Annie E. Casey Foundation states, “Only three out of 10 Washington children, ages 3 and 4, were enrolled in preschool programs that met the minimum state standards last year.” Their point is that this is a wide early education gap! Seventy percent of children are not enrolled in preschool programs that meet state standards. As well, as results in a Georgia State University study, indicated that preschool significantly decreases the achievement gap. Children began preschool well behind the national norms on three of four skill assessments (receptive language, cognition, letter/word recognition, and expressive language) and finished preschool well above the national norms after the program (Henry, et al, 7). This is why the government should redirect our resources to include universal preschool in the Yakima Valley. This will enable future generations to become curious, self-motivated, and improve the education gap, therefore competing in the new flat world. There is a correlation between the world, education, and jobs. According to Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat, the world is dramatically becoming “flattened.” Meaning that through the convergence of advanced technologies, the rapid introduction of millions of young Indian and Chinese professionals into the world economy, and new ways of doing business, other countries can now compete for global knowledge work. Friedman says that because of this, we need to ensure that our children are ready to compete and succeed in this new flat world through education. This is why implementing universal preschool is important. As the education gap increases between socioeconomic status, Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, two professors and scientists, decide to look at what exactly was happening to children at home in the beginning of their vocabulary growth to understand this education gap. Hart and Risley spent over three years observing forty two families. They video-taped the parents’ interactions with their one or two year-olds, transcribed the tapes, and then counted the words. Hart and Risley noted that, “In four years, an average child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family 26 million, and an average child in a welfare family 13 million words” (8). Hart and Risley’s point is that there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and the number of words a child hears, and that there is a thirty million word gap! This gap appears of having a huge impact and importance on the child’s development, because Hart and Risley write, “So much is happening to children during their first three years at home, at a time when they are especially malleable and uniquely dependent on the family for virtually all their experience, that by age three, an intervention must address not just a lack of knowledge or skill, but an entire general approach to experience” (9). Basically, the authors are warning that if adults do not have a significant amount of interaction with children from birth to the age of three, this will lead to low literacy and verbal skills in a child, causing poor performance in school. This is why having resources for children from low-income families is important. Preschool programs and interventions can help decrease the education gap between socioeconomic statuses.
For small children, preschool is all about having fun and gaining social skills, not achieving academic milestones. They learn best through doing activities they find interesting, like building blocks, coloring, or story-time. These activities instill curiosity and passion in children, two qualities Friedman believes are advantages. Friedman himself writes, “When the world is flat, curiosity and passion for a job, for success, for a subject area or even a hobby are so much more important than they once were. Because in the flat world you have so many more tools to take you and your curiosity so much farther and so much deeper” (313). He is basically saying there is no limit to what someone can do when they have curiosity and passion because of increasing resources, such as the internet. Friedman then adds, “Give me a kid with a passion to learn and a curiosity to discover and I will take him or her over a less passionate kid with a high IQ every day of the week. Curious, passionate kids are self-educators and self-motivators” (314). These are the skills that will help preschoolers grow to become exceptional students, which can lead to productivity, and increase the rate of college admission in the U.S, thus competing with other countries for jobs in the “flat world.”
Over the years, many people have argued that Washington State has more pressing needs that should come first, like fixing K-12 schools first before creating a new education bureaucracy. This is exactly why we are in need of universal preschool. It can help improve the K-12 schools. According to the website school digger, the Yakima School District ranks 185th of 206 school districts in the state of Washington based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing. Why? One of the most important reasons is they aren’t preparing children to enter school ready to learn. High quality early childhood programs will assist in that.
Furthermore, Friedman describes the education gap at the top of America’s dirty little secrets that we need to acknowledge. He proclaims, “We simply are not educating, or even interesting enough of our own young people in advanced math, science, and engineering” (349). Teachers can emphasize these subjects in universal preschool since the number of jobs in the U.S. that require science and engineering training will grow. Friedman then gives an example of the difference in math levels between America and other countries, saying, “44 percent of eighth-graders in Singapore scored at the most advanced level in math, as did 38 percent in Taiwan. Only 7 percent in the United States” (351). Friedman’s point is that the public school systems are not doing a good job in teaching students the right skills to excel. As a current high school student in science club, we have focused on engaging and encouraging young children in science through themed “Science Camps.” Most recently we had a Star Wars themed science camp, where high school students dressed as Star Wars characters, taught elementary students about constellations, and walked them through several small science experiments like finding the mass of a comet (ball of ice) before and after it orbits the sun (melts). There are even four and five year-olds present at the day camps! After these children attend the science camps, they are motivated and interested in pursuing science. Now, communities don’t have to have science camps everywhere, but they can use certain activities or parts of what we do in these camps and add them to the curriculum of preschool programs. This will boost children's curiosity and self-motivation to improve the education gap at the top. Ultimately, supporting universal preschool needs to be a priority for the Yakima Valley, but more importantly the United States. Preschool is the perfect time to intervene with a child’s education because that is when they absorb the most information. Also, statistics have shown that an investment in early childhood education can secure benefits and help them succeed academically. Universal preschool will enable future generations to become curious, self-motivated, and improve the education gap. It is the key to success in the globalized world.

Works Cited
Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (further Updated and Expanded). New York: Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 24 July 2007. Print.
Hart, Betty, and Todd R. Ridley. “The Early Catastrophe.” American Federation of Teachers Apr. 2003: 4–9. Print.
Henry, Gary T, et al. The Georgia Early Childhood Study: Findings from 2001-2004. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies: Georgia State University, 2005. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.
Seattle Times. “Targeting education: Washington state legislative priorities for 2014.” Opinion. The Seattle Times, 4 Jan. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.