TKW Consulting

Advocate calls for pre-school education for all
Address made Tuesday to 250 area
leaders
Charles A. Slocum
Budgeteer News Last Updated: Friday,
April 07th, 2006 09:37:24 AM

Speaking to 250 community leaders from northeastern Minnesota in Duluth, the former publisher of the Miami Herald, David J. Lawrence said Tuesday that “all children need the basics. American fairness tells us that all parents want kindergarten for their young children, they want it now and they want high quality.” Lawrence spoke at a “Key Leaders Summit on Early Care and Education” sponsored by the Northland Foundation and SMDC Health System. He has been engaged on a full time basis in advancing early childhood development and school readiness in Florida since 1999.

Lawrence, as the keynote speaker, conducted homework linking and comparing the economies and ethnicities of northeastern Minnesota with Florida. He called for common purpose in supporting the school readiness of young children. He said, “I came to believe that we must, community by community, build a movement for everyone’s child — poor, rich and in-between.”

Speaking of Minnesota, he said, “A place and people of such character ought to insist on being in the front ranks of ‘school readiness’ in America. You build from a base that is better than some. I note your impressive high school graduation rate and your declining unemployment rate. “And while I note your impressive efforts to attract more jobs, I also see a region with too many low-paying jobs, a growing-older labor force, pockets of great poverty, the thousands of your children who do not get the proper mental-health attention, the 18 percent of your third graders who are not at minimum reading proficiency and a college graduation rate that underperforms the national averages. And every bit of this ties in directly with school readiness and high-quality early development, care and education.”

The last decade of activity in Florida has revealed the following:

• Too often, K-12 school professionals have given more “lip service” than real support. “Too many superintendents seem so squeezed by the challenges of the K-12 system, so squeezed by the lack of dollars,” he said, “that they see the early childhood years as an ‘add-on,’ something good to do, but not important enough for real focus and real investment.”
• A public will has been created to move forward primarily by building parental awareness. “The wisest of … school teachers will quickly tell you that the truly crucial variable is how good a shape — socially, emotionally, cognitively, physically — their children arrive in the classroom,” he said. “One piece of national research underscores the case: If 50 children leave first grade as poor readers, 44 of them will remain poor readers after the fourth grade.”
• Prenatal to age three are the most critical times for learning and young children. “Children can be mighty far behind by the time they get to a quality age-4 program,” he said. • There is now a recognition that only one-in-five of the existing childcare centers are effective in meeting the highest early learning standards.
• The local communities with parental involvement in partnership with public schools works best.
• Aligning the curriculum for pre-K through grade 3 is one successful strategy being implemented. “In a nation where more than two-thirds of mothers of children birth to 5 work outside the home,” he said, “child care is the feeder pattern for most children who go to elementary school. The wisest superintendents will be eager to build meaningful relationships with those places that will send children to their schools.”
• Passage of a statewide constitutional amendment (59-41 percent) to make available a free, high-quality early learning experience for all Florida 4-year-olds has been accomplished and is being funded and implemented.
• Passage of the Miami-Dade Early Learning Amendment to provide high quality early childhood programs in support of “everyone’s child” has provided an additional $80 million in taxpayer support.

“Seize the opportunity. It is yours, ours and America’s opportunity,” said Lawrence. “Investing upfront is the best answer. The window is wide open in a way that it will never be again,” he concluded.

A political independent, Lawrence has undertaken community leadership roles at the request of the two most recent Florida governors — Democrat Lawton Chiles and Republican Jeb Bush. A father of five, Lawrence’s career honors include 11 honorary doctoral degrees and being named “Father of the Year.” He is currently president of the Miami-based Early Childhood Initiative Foundation.

Charles A. Slocum is president of the Williston Group, which does management consulting and helped found the Minnesota Business for Early Learning organization.