DOUBLE TAP TO ZOOM WITH PHONE OR TABLET AMERICA DISCOVERS POVERTY In that light, education is not about income at all but about the quality of life for every individual. It is of equal value to cab drivers— 15 percent of whom held college degrees in 2010 (McGuinness 2013)—baristas, bartenders, cashiers, and hotel housekeepers. Edu- cation is worthwhile to artists, writers, flight attendants, homeless people, unemployed people, and people who work for nonprofits for half of what they could make working on Wall Street. Education is a right for those who are born into poverty, for those who fell into poverty when the economy crashed in 2008, and for those who will suffer the same fate the next time it crashes. The fact that attendance in a state-approved educational insti- tution is mandatory for children in this country is clear evidence that it is the responsibility of the government that so mandates to provide it. The parents living in he failure of early childhood poverty who are unable to provide education in the United States is not that it has failed language-rich environments for to lift children out of poverty. their children and have no under- The failure of early childhood standing of the link between rich education in America is that it language and brain development has failed to educate. are therefore no more to blame for their children’s difficulty in school than the professional parents with MBAs who have no under- standing of congruent triangles and are unable to help their tenth graders with geometry homework. Parents at every income level expect that if they send their chil- dren to school, including preschool, then people who have expertise in their given fields will provide their children with a high-quality education. It became clear in the 1990s that language-rich experi- ence was the missing piece that could be provided by an effective T 15 COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL