I\u2019m still mulling over Putnam\u2019s book<\/a>, especially in connection with the whole mess in Baltimore.<\/p>\n So the whole issue of daycare and universal free all-day preschool, which progressives offer as one of their first-line solutions to poverty, just strikes me as suspect: \u00a0I\u2019m just highly skeptical of claims that, if you don\u2019t provide an \u201cenriching\u201d environment to infants, toddlers, and preschool children, with 1,000 books before kindergarten (the new initiative at my local library and, I imagine, elsewhere), a caregiver constantly babbling to the child, lots of one-on-one time, and learning their colors, numbers, and ABCs as soon as possible, the kid is going to be as dumb as a bag of rocks, and irreparably so. \u00a0Yes, there are studies, for instance, announcing that middle-class infants or toddlers have twice as many words spoken to them as children of poor parents, but is there any real proof that this really boosts a kid\u2019s IQ? \u00a0After all, if we really believed this, then we\u2019d be fighting tooth and nail to keep out all those foreigners who will never be able to amount to anything, due to their faulty upbringing, and all those Manhattanites would be aghast at the idea of allowing an uneducated Dominican to raise their child.<\/p>\n OK, fine, it\u2019s an exaggeration to say that anyone is claiming\u00a0that kids\u2019ll be dumb as a bag of rocks without an Enriching Environment. \u00a0But it\u2019s nonetheless in dispute whether a home or home-like environment, or center care is the way to go, and at what age academic instruction is or isn\u2019t appropriate, and how much an impact any of this has on a child\u2019s IQ and future life chances.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s also\u00a0the case that you can take pretty much any anti-poverty, break-the-cycle-of-poverty initiative and find a dispute between Left and Right on its effectiveness. \u00a0Does increasing welfare benefits alleviate acute suffering (lack of nutritious food, warm clothing, a properly heated or cooled home, etc.) or keep this and the next generation welfare-dependent by sapping any motivation to get a job? \u00a0Are work requirements a common-sense means of moving individuals to work, or do they trap families in poverty by preventing people from accessing adequate job-training to get an above-minimum job? \u00a0Is public housing a common-sense way to provide homes to those with low or no income, or is it just another opportunity for corruption and mismanagement? \u00a0Is a restriction against criminals in public housing a common sense way to protect other residents or an injustice against the families of ex-cons? \u00a0Heck, a while back I read a book<\/a> that said that even after-school programs for high-risk kids have not been shown to have any effect, apparently because these high-risk kids are a bad influence on each other.<\/p>\n But there were two snippets in Putnam\u2019s book that I\u2019d share with you at length now, if I hadn\u2019t already had to take the book back to the library, so I\u2019ll have to instead give you the short version from memory.<\/p>\n As I said, he has a lot of stories that come out of interviews, often presented as a rich kid vs. a poor kid in a particular locality. \u00a0In one case he pairs a rich and poor black kid, in another a rich and poor Latino kid, to make a point that within racial\/ethnic groups the differences are growing, too. \u00a0In one of his profiles, the Poor Latino Kid, a girl with the deck stacked against her graduated high school and started at the local community college, but due to funding shortages, she simply wasn\u2019t able to enroll in the courses she needed, so, instead of attending full time, she was only able to enroll in one class. \u00a0In another profile, the Poor Black Kid (well, OK, there were multiple such profiles; this was one of them, really more of an in-between case, as mom had worked her way to store manager, but still struggled to keep her kids on the straight and narrow) ended up $50,000 in debt after getting a vocational-type associates\u2019 degree at a private for-profit college \u2014 the sort of course of study that should have been available for a fraction of the cost at the local community college.<\/p>\n This ought to be the low-hanging fruit: \u00a0funding community colleges sufficiently that any motivated student can enroll in courses and get a degree or a certificate in a field which will allow them to get a job that, if it isn\u2019t well-paying, is at least adequate-paying. \u00a0No, I\u2019m not talking about Free Community College<\/a> \u2014 I\u2019m taking it as a given that community college is, or should be, priced low enough that it\u2019s not a burden for the middle-class, and lower-income folk should be able to fund it with grants. \u00a0But these stories in the Putnam book are not the first time that I\u2019ve read that, depending on the area, many students or prospective students are simply not able to enroll in their chosen course of study due to lack of seats, and either don\u2019t complete their program, take longer than the two-year path, or choose a for-profit school at a substantially greater cost and, in some cases, with less benefit, when the credential they\u2019ve earned isn\u2019t accepted by prospective employers.<\/p>\n For a motivated student who wants to gain a skill, it seems like a common sense solution to ensure that community colleges provide appropriate course offerings, not just on paper \u2014 at my local community college you can learn welding, truck driving, HVAC training, nursing and related fields, paralegal skills, etc., in addition to transfer programs for 4-year colleges \u2014 but in reality. \u00a0After all, a large part of the reason why, at the high school level, calls for increases in funding feel like throwing good money after bad, is that, in poor areas, the kids are unmotivated at best, disruptive or even violent at worst \u2014 which shouldn\u2019t be an issue at the community college level, where students may be woefully unprepared but have, at any rate, presumably reached that level of maturity where they are in fact striving for self-improvement rather than just biding their time.<\/p>\n How big a problem are waitlists and access to community colleges in general? \u00a0Here\u2019s a 2010 article<\/a> suggesting that in California this is a serious problem, and a more recent article<\/a> indicating this is ongoing, but without any solid data. \u00a0 Irritatingly, I\u2019ve clicked through several pages of search results and can\u2019t find anything more, except a few further articles on California, from 2010, which either means that Putnam\u2019s case studies aside, this is an issue for a small number of students, or that this is a problem that\u2019s compounded by its invisibility.<\/p>\n But the further problem is this: \u00a0I suggested that this should be low-hanging fruit, something which Dems and the GOP, conservatives and progressives ought to be able to agree upon; after all, unlike four-year schools, community colleges don\u2019t have a reputation for frittering away their money.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s often the case that, when something appears to be low-hanging fruit, there\u2019s a good reason why it hasn\u2019t been picked, even if it\u2019s not readily apparent. \u00a0And, while funding likely varies from state to state, in terms of how much comes from the local area vs. from the state, if it is indeed, for instance, the state of California making the decision to fund a bullet train to nowhere when it could be directing more money to community colleges, then it does little good to say \u201cwe should better-fund community college to eliminate the wait lists\u201d if the \u201cwe\u201d in question live elsewhere. \u00a0The best we can do is say that \u201cwe\u201d should individually determine whether waitlists (or lack of relevant vocational programs entirely) are an issue at our own local community or technical colleges (or statewide, if the funding comes from the state), and press for more appropriate funding at that level, or at any rate revisiting funding priorities. \u00a0And, no, I\u2019m not keen on the federal government making up the difference if that means inequities between states that chose to adequately fund their community colleges and states that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n