Dustin Dwyer

  If you want to know how kids gets their ideas about something like race or gender, it’s not just a matter of asking them. They might not know where they got their ideas. And you can’t really control all the variables.

For nearly two decades, psychologist Rebecca Bigler at the University of Texas has been testing race and gender ideas using colored t-shirts in a summer school program. 

We are still a long way from gender equality in the United States. Women currently make less money than men, even when working the same job. And when it comes to getting the top jobs, women are less likely to make the climb. 

But there's one area where women have not only caught up with men, they've pulled ahead: education.

We think of scholarships as a way to help more students go to college. But there’s a new scholarship program in Michigan that has nothing to do with college. It offers scholarships to babies.

If you have a baby and you want to have a job, or you need to have a job, you have to find childcare. And childcare costs money—thousands of dollars a year.

If your income is below the federal government’s poverty line—about $24,000 a year for a family of four—the federal government will help you pay for childcare. But if you’re at, say, $28,000 a year, you’re ineligible.  

I came across this TED talk the way everyone comes across TED talks. A friend posted it on Facebook. Anyway, Dan Pallotta makes an interesting, and even emotional case, for why charities should spend more money on things we think of as "overhead." We tend to think that if a charity is trying to feed hungry kids, or give them a better education, then the donations we give to that charity should go to those things. 

I first met Keisha late in the summer, when she was 16.  It was her second day living at the Salvation Army's Teen Parent Center in Grand Rapids.

Keisha is not her real name, by the way. The staff at the Teen Parent Center asked us to change her name to protect her identity. 

So, the first time I saw her, she was sitting on a couch with another teen mom. She didn’t say much at first. When she did, she spoke quietly, admitting what it had been like for her to move in to this place.  

“I was mad," she said. "I was crying . . . I ain’t used to it yet."

 This week, the state legislature began its first hearings on Governor's Snyder's proposal to more than double preschool funding in Michigan over the next two years. Yesterday, I went to a joint House committee to get a sense of where lawmakers stand on the proposal. It was clear that many lawmakers are sincerely trying to do their job, and really investigate whether the preschool investment is worth it for taxpayers. But, some of the things I heard were pretty weird. 

Here's a list of the weirdest:

1. "It seems to me, the perverse incentive is to take the family and rip it apart."

Preschools in this country are segregated. The segregation is based not on race, but on class.

No one sat down and made a plan for segregated preschools. It just kind of happened.

You can trace it back to 1965, with the launch of Head Start. It was created to help kids in poverty. Public dollars were set aside to make sure that these three and four year-olds could get an early education. For kids from the middle class and above, there was private preschool, paid for by parents.

Nearly 48 years after Head Start launched, that's the way it is today — separate preschools for separate income levels.

But there are some exceptions, like the preschool at the YWCA in Kalamazoo.  Some of the kids here come from families who spend as much as 400 dollars a month for full-time preschool.  Some come from families that are homeless.

 The debate over federal spending cuts has made Head Start a major topic of conversation in Washington. Leaders from both parties have been warning that tens of thousands of kids will lose a chance at Head Start’s preschool program, if the across the board spending cuts are allowed to happen.

But to some critics, cutting Head Start would be a good thing. To them, the program is a failure, and not worth the money. 

To analyze the argument, first let’s meet someone who actually goes to Head Start.

 We know, and have known for some time, that not every child in America gets the same shot at a good education. We know that children with darker skin are the ones most likely to get left behind. 

For the past two years, a 27-member commission has quietly been working on a report to suggest ways for the federal government to address the problem. The group, known as the Equity and Excellence Commission, released its final report to education secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday. 

The report has recommendations in five main areas. You can read them all here. 

But what I found most surprising is that the commission attempted to actually put a dollar figure on how much educational inequality is costing our country. And the cost is measured in trillions: