The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [21]
If a meaningful public school voucher system were instituted, the U.S. housing market would change forever. These changes might dampen, and perhaps even depress, housing prices in some of today’s most competitive neighborhoods. But these losses would be offset by other gains. Owners of older homes in urban centers might find more willing buyers, and the urge to flee the cities might abate. Urban sprawl might slow down as families recalculate the costs of living so far from work. At any rate, the change would cause a one-time readjustment. The housing market would normalize, with supply and demand more balanced and families freed from ruinous mortgages.
The Price of Education
Even with that perfect house in a swanky school district, parents still are not covered when it comes to educating their kids—not by a long shot. The notion that taxpayers foot the bill for educating middle-class children has become a myth in yet another way. The two ends of the spectrum—everything that happens before a child shows up for his first day of kindergarten and after he is handed his high-school diploma—fall directly on the parents. Preschool and college, which now account for one-third (or more) of the years a typical middle-class kid spends in school, are paid for almost exclusively by the child’s family.
Preschool has always been a privately funded affair, at least for most middle-class families. What has changed is its role for middle-class children. Over the past generation, the image of preschool has transformed from an optional stopover for little kids to a “prerequisite” for elementary school. Parents have been barraged with articles telling them that early education is important for everything from “pre-reading” skills to social development. As one expert in early childhood education observes, “In many communities around the country, kindergarten is no longer aimed at the entry level. And the only way Mom and Dad feel they can get their child prepared is through a pre-kindergarten program.”66
Middle-class parents have stepped into line with the experts’ recommendations. Today, nearly two-thirds of America’s three- and four-year-olds attend preschool, compared with just 4 percent in the mid- 1960s.67 This isn’t just the by-product of more mothers entering the workforce; nearly half of all stay-at-home moms now send their kids to a prekindergarten program.68 As Newsweek put it, “The science says it all: preschool programs are neither a luxury nor a fad, but a real necessity.”69
As demand has heated up, many families have found it increasingly difficult to find a prekindergarten program with an empty slot. Author Vicki Iovine describes the struggle she experienced trying to get her children into preschool in southern California:
Just trying to get an application to any old preschool can be met with more attitude than the maitre d’ at Le Cirque. If you should be naïve enough to ask if there will be openings in the next session, you may be reminded that there are always more applicants than openings, or the person might just laugh at you and hang up.70
Ms. Iovine’s remarks are tongue-in-cheek, and pundits love to mock the parent who subscribes to the theory that “if little Susie doesn’t get into the right preschool she’ll never make it into the right medical school.” But the shortage of quality preschool programs is very real. Child development experts have rated day-care centers, and the news is not good. The majority are lumped in the “poor to mediocre” range.71 Not surprisingly, preschools with strong reputations often have long waiting lists.72
Once again,