Police Chiefs, District Attorney, Attorney Generalrelease report showing that quality pre-k prevents dropouts, cuts crime
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Boston District Attorney Daniel Conley, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, police chiefs William Lansdowne of San Diego and Thomas H. Streicher of Cincinnati and Fight Crime: Invest in Kids President David Kass joined together at a special "Back to School" news conference held at the National Press Club in Washington today to address the nation's alarming dropout rates and the link between low graduation rates and violent crime and murder.
Research shows that high school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be incarcerated. Nineteen of the top 25 largest U.S. cities have school districts where 40 percent or more of students do not graduate on time. Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in our nation's prisons failed to earn a high school diploma.
The law enforcement leaders are members of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national anti-crime organization made up of over 4,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys, and violence survivors. They called on Congress and state lawmakers to expand pre-kindergarten, one of the most effective strategies to increase graduation rates.
"If kids get strong start early in life, we can cut our dropout rate and improve our communities," Lynch said. "To help more kids get that strong start, we need to fund early childhood education programs and ensure that every child that qualifies is able to enroll."
The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids members released a report called "School or the Streets," showing that increasing graduation rates by 10 percentage points will prevent 3,000 murders and 175,000 aggravated assaults in America every year.
"Too many times, I have seen young people fail or drop out of school only to end up in police custody shortly thereafter. This cycle must be stopped, here and now," said Conley, the top prosecutor in Boston, Mass. "I'm here today with my colleagues to ask Congress, state and local governments to fully fund early childhood education."
Nationally, the federally funded pre-kindergarten program Head Start serves only half of the poor three-and four-year-olds eligible for the program, while Early Head Start serves less than five percent of eligible babies and toddlers.
Long-term benefits of early childhood education and care include higher graduation rates, college enrollment and income levels, and lower crime rates. A study of Chicago's Child-Parent Center, a high-quality early education program, showed that kids left out of the program were 70 percent more likely to have been arrested for a violent crime by age 18 than those who participated in the program.
"As millions of American children prepare to head back to school, it's important to recognize that too many of them will leave our educational system without a high school diploma. Far too often, today's dropouts are tomorrow's criminals," Lansdowne said. "Focusing on early education for young children will help ensure they can look forward to graduation and a good career, not a life of crime."
The new report also estimates that if graduation rates were raised 10 percent among males nationwide, over $10 billion could be saved every year through reducing costs associated with crime.
"Research shows that children who receive quality early childhood education have a much better chance of finishing high school," Streicher said. "By earning a diploma, they're more likely to find good jobs and contribute to our economy, instead of our prison population."
Early childhood education is the most widely implemented school reform that increases graduation rates and has been proven to increase school readiness among young children and prevent dropouts.
"The bottom line here is that early education is one of the most effective ways to ensure that kids succeed early on and go on to graduate," Kass said. "And increasing the number of high school graduates will reduce the crime and violence in our communities and bolster our economy in the long run."
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is led by more than 4,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders, and violence survivors dedicated to preventing crime and violence
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