The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics

I really enjoyed this book. As someone who does advocacy work on kids issues. It was really interesting.

David Kirp uses vivid and interesting examples to show what high quality preschool experiences can mean for students. From the fascinating Perry Preschool to classrooms and centers around the country, this book is wealth of information about what works and what does not work in preschool education for our children. Everyone from policy-makers to parents to all those who care about children should read this book.

David Kirp provides interesting and compelling evidence that one of the best gifts we can give our children is a quality preschool education. He provides examples of effective work being done in all kinds of communities with diverse economic and social conditions. We have used this book in our community to inform our local leaders about the need for quality preschool and it has been met with a very positive response. It is an important, fascinating and inspiring read.

Read The Sandbox Investment. This book chronicles the stories of the rapid expansion of prekindergarten in the U.S in recent years. It lays out what Kirp has called a perfect storm of research support for such programs - findings of long-term effects and return on investment and of how early childhood experience affects brain development. The book makes it clear that only high-quality preschool programs will have such results. It remarks at the unlikely champions of early childhood education, including economists James Heckman and Art Rolnick, actor Rob Reiner, newpaperman David Lawrence, and business leaders and police chiefs throughout the nation. It recounts the stories of open-enrollment prekindergarten in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Florida, as well as Smart Start in North Carolina and Sure Start in Great Britain. For those of us in early childhood education, these stories resonate with the stories of our lives.

This is a good history of the movement for universal preschool and an informative overview of the successful efforts in the US to move policy and funding toward providing preschool for all. You do not have to be an early care provider or a professional in education to understand the content and the writing is accessible for anyone interested in the issue.