City councilors this week asked local leaders in education what Tulsa can do to help bolster public education.
CAP Tulsa Executive Director Steven Dow told them data CAP collected shows kids in the city’s poorest families are less prepared for kindergarten, setting the stage for academic struggle later.
"And so, as a community, when we think about investing our limited resources, investing those during the earliest years and in those children who are coming from the lowest-income households is where we're going to get the greatest return for our dollar," Dow said.
CAP data says one in five Tulsa kindergartners aren’t ready for school, which is higher than a national sample.
School superintendents and leaders of two local education groups agreed early childhood education is vital for producing a workforce ready to fill highly technical jobs in the future. Dow said investing in today’s pre-kindergartners will prepare them for post-secondary education.
"We won't be able to measure it for 15 or 20 years, but those are the right, smart investments for us to be making," he said.
Representatives of Impact Tulsa said a pre-K readiness gap translated into a two-year reading proficiency difference between students who get reduced lunch and those who don’t.
Former mayor Kathy Taylor is the CEO of Impact Tulsa. She said kids in low-income families are entering school with a significant vocabulary deficiency, "putting them behind from the very start."
"So we have to help educate parents. They don't give us a lot of education when we have kids, so it's up to this community to help educate each other as to how we can help our kids learn."
Taylor said while pre-K is helpful, campaigns that teach parents the importance of interacting with their young children are also important.
