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Early Childhood Education Yields Solid Economic Benefits for U.S. Economy and Society
Wednesday June 28, 11:24 am ET
- New CED Report Shows the 'Economic Promise' of Prekindergarten Programs -

American children, the United States' economy and our society can greatly benefit from improved and expanded early childhood education programs. This is the primary finding of a new report from The Committee for Economic Development (CED), a business-led public policy group. The Economic Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool: Using Early Education to Improve Economic Growth and the Fiscal Sustainability of States and the Nation reports on the measurable benefits to the U.S. economy and society from investments in high-quality prekindergarten programs. Implementing preschool programs for all students whose parents want them to participate is expected to generate significant public and private benefits, producing $2 to $4 in net present-value benefits for every dollar invested, having a positive impact on state budgets and boosting long-term economic growth. A December 2005 CED-commissioned Zogby International poll of business leaders shows that more than 80 percent agree that public funding of voluntary prekindergarten programs for all children would improve America's workforce and economic competitiveness. The positive impact from preschool programs on students' lives increases the likelihood that these students will become net economic and social contributors to society.

The report was released today at a luncheon forum at the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis that featured remarks from Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, Dr. Shirley Raines, President, University of Memphis, Daniel Rose, Chairman, Rose Associates, Inc., Ira A. Lipman, Founder and Chairman, Guardsmark, LLC, Susan Urahn, Director of State Policy Initiatives, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Charles Kolb, CED President. Mr. Rose and Mr. Lipman are CED Trustees.

Daniel Rose presented the findings of the CED report at the Memphis forum and noted, "The world's most successful economies are those with the best educated workers. If we can provide quality early education programs to all American children, we will see returns in our children, our economy, and our society, for years to come."

Preschool programs prepare students for early educational success, but investing in high-quality early education also has long-lasting effects, improving students' outcomes well into their adolescent and adult years. Economically, the long-term impacts of preschool programs translate into significant public and private benefits, with returns far exceeding the costs. Generating the expected returns requires investments in high-quality programs employing well-trained teachers that help children develop their academic, social, emotional, and physical skills.

"It is clear that prekindergarten for all American children will greatly benefit our economy and our society," said Ira A. Lipman. "This new CED report further quantifies the benefits and solidifies the argument for early education opportunities for all our children. Ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness and growth will require a highly educated and skilled workforce. Without improvements in education, demographic changes will make it difficult to cultivate the skilled workforce our country needs to compete." For the past twenty years, Ira Lipman and his wife, Barbara, have been major contributors to the Barbara K. Lipman Early Childhood School and Research Institute at the University of Memphis. Barbara K. Lipman is the Founder of the Montessori Program at the school that bears her name.

The Pew Charitable Trusts is a long-time supporter of improving early education in the United States and is a key source of funding for CED's early education research. Susan Urahn, Director, State Policy Initiatives, The Pew Charitable Trusts, said, "This nation is at a cross roads. We can either take the steps needed to keep our country competitive or cede that ground to other countries. The business community has recognized that investing in quality pre-k not only benefits young children's education, it makes smart fiscal sense for our states and our nation and contributes greatly to our communities' and our country's bottom line."

CED recommendations from The Economic Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool:

Communities, states and the nation should make access to publicly funded, high-quality
preschool programs an economic and educational priority.

• The economic benefits of preschool will be greatest when all states implement high-quality, publicly funded early education programs and make preschool
  available to all three- and four-year-old children whose parents want them to attend.
• Preschool programs should provide adequate classroom hours to ensure improvements in student learning that will translate into economic benefits.
• States should embrace diverse providers that meet quality standards and the needs of the communities they serve.
• Maximizing program access and efficiency will require federal and state
  governments to coordinate publicly funded prekindergarten, Head Start, and child-care programs.
• Business should advocate preschool programs and other complementary childhood programs and services, emphasizing the strong returns on investment and the leveraging of current expenditures.

Publicly funded preschool programs should meet the quality standards necessary to deliver their potential economic benefits.

• To provide the greatest economic benefits possible, state prekindergarten
  programs and the federal Head Start program should assess their existing program standards and realign them with the factors known to contribute to improved early childhood learning and development.
• Preschool programs should adopt an age-appropriate, research-based curriculum that embraces whole-child development and is aligned with content standards in kindergarten and elementary education.
• All publicly funded preschool programs should employ high-caliber teachers with bachelor's degrees and specialized early education training.
• A national board should be created to review and report on state preschool standards. Federal, state, and local governments should consider the broad economic benefits of preschool when deciding how to allocate resources in the face of competing uses and demands.
• Funding provided for preschool programs should be commensurate with the cost of
  providing a high-quality education to fully capture the economic benefits of these programs.
• Current state prekindergarten and federal Head Start budget allocations should be reviewed and, if necessary, revised to better support the critical elements of high-quality programs.
• Business should encourage states to fully fund preschool programs through a dedicated funding source.
• Preschool funding should allow for teacher compensation that is commensurate with the compensation of public elementary school teachers.

The Economic Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool: Using Early Education to Improve Economic Growth and the Fiscal Sustainability of States and the Nation and an executive summary can be found at http://www.ced.org.

CED is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of more than 200 business leaders and university presidents. Since 1942, its research and policy programs have addressed many of the nation's most pressing economic and social issues, including education reform, workforce competitiveness, campaign finance, health care, and global trade and finance. CED promotes policies to produce increased productivity and living standards, greater and more equal opportunity for every citizen, and an improved quality of life for all.

// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 4:31 PM 0 comments

Some implications for life found in a preschool year
By Barbara Donlon

It's almost over.

The last of the play dough has been scrubbed out of the rug; the clay pigs and cotton-ball chicks are nearly dry enough to be sent home in their barns made from clementine boxes ; the tadpoles are on their way back to the New Hampshire pond whence they came.

Little evidence remains of what we have done here in the past nine months.

And we've done a lot.

The 3-year-olds who bounded in eagerly last September (as well as those who hid behind parents -- Look, it's the Four-Legged Mom!) are different now. There are new sneakers on bigger feet and spring haircuts that always seem to carve an older edge into baby faces.

But it's more than that. I see children who have learned to use scissors ``thumb-up" and create block towers of dizzying dimensions. They can wipe their own noses and wipe up their own spills, put on their boots and snow pants (well, mostly; I am still grateful I do not teach preschool in Anchorage or Irkutsk).

All of them can write some letters; most can write their names. Several are emerging readers.

These are skills that I do not mean in any way to minimize. But when lawmakers consider whether universal preschool is a cost worth considering, they invariably focus on academic preparation, when the real value of a child's first school experience is less measurable, but more profound in its life long implications.

Preschool is about learning to negotiate the social landscape using language rather than fists. It's about learning to speak up for oneself . . . or for a friend who needs help. It's about waiting one's turn, sharing scarce resources so that everyone has an opportunity to benefit, listening when you'd really rather be talking. It's about respecting others and respecting yourself.

Of course, we do not have a standardized test to measure such things; we have only to pick up the newspaper each day to see what sorts of messes are made when adults have not managed to internalize these lessons.

In my profession, it helps to keep the big picture in mind. No one goes into preschool teaching for the money. And as for prestige? Meet someone at a party and respond to the inquiry, ``And what do you do?" with: ``I'm a preschool teacher," and wait for the response:

``Oh" . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . ``How fun!"

And mostly, it is. It's also the most challenging work I've ever done, and I came to this profession after doing other things for more than 20 years. Yet I know very well that many people with preschoolers of their own don't figure that someone whose profession is teaching them has a whole lot of furniture upstairs. (I still fondly recall the young father who, upon hearing I was enrolled in a child development course, responded, ``Good for you! You'll never regret getting a college education!")

But thinking that a love of kids is all it takes to teach young ones is like believing everyone who enjoys food should open a restaurant. It's not enough to love children; a good teacher is someone who is interested in them, and possesses the tools through education and experience to unlock the puzzle that each child represents. (There is no hubris here; I learn something new from every child I teach. Every time you think you have all the permutations figured out, they humble you.)

In my business there are heart-stopping moments (a 3-year-old, having cut through a piece of paper with scissors for the first time, looks up at me, his mouth a perfect ``O" of amazement, and asks: ``Can I do that again?") and heart-breaking ones (the boy with a change in behavior we couldn't figure out, quietly announcing at story time, ``My daddy's going to live in a different house.")

I was raised in a time before ``parenting" was a common verb. My mother and father did not concern themselves with car seats, bike helmets, bovine growth hormone in the milk, salmonella on the cutting board, melanoma at the beach, peanut allergy, R-rated television, or sexual predators on the Internet. It is dizzying to consider what the moms and dads of my students have to worry about now.

While parents are still their children's first and best teachers, it seems plain that most are no longer willing or able to go it alone until kindergarten kicks in. Good preschool education can give young children the tools to do for themselves and the expectation that they will do kindly to others as well.

We can give them the gift of self-esteem that comes from real accomplishment, no matter how modest. We can let them know that they are at the center of our hearts, but at the same time citizens of the world.

Next week, I will give each of ``my" 13 children a portfolio of his or her work, a certificate with a bright foil star, and a kiss on the cheek. It will be over, and it will be just beginning.

Barbara Donlon lives in Winchester and teaches preschool in Belmont.

Why 0-5? The first five years of life are truly the miracle years – the time of greatest human development and the time when we as adults have the most profound influence on a child's future well being.

These years are pivotal in the development of a child's ability to learn and to create, to communicate, to trust and to love and to develop positive self-esteem.

A child's experiences in these years – good or bad – lay the foundation for all that comes later. How we care for our children in these years has a lasting impact on who they will be as adults.The years before five last the rest of their lives™.

What is the Need? Most children enjoy emotional, social and intellectual health. However, Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth found nearly 30% of children aged 0-6 have an identifiable social, emotional or learning problem which can significantly impact their future well-being. These children can be found across our society from top to bottom and many of their problems are related to a lack of positive parenting.

Invest in Kids’ National Survey of Parents of Young Children found that while 92% of parents believe being a good parent is the most important thing they can do, most have limited knowledge about how children grow and develop, they are anxious, concerned and not confident of their parenting skills and they don’t feel supported in their role as parents. These findings are evident across all parents, regardless of age, income, education, marital status, gender or working status.

Editorial: Preschool, the day after
Voters want targeted improvements

Published 12:01 am PDT Thursday, June 8, 2006

In their 61 percent to 39 percent drubbing of Proposition 82, voters showed they want to see evidence that something works before they commit huge resources to it. They're also wary -- and weary -- of attempts to dedicate funding to programs through constitutional amendments rather than the legislative budget.

Yet opponents and proponents of the initiative that sought to establish voluntary preschool for all 4-year-olds agreed on two important points that can serve as a basis for future action:

First, access to preschool in California remains unequal. In the highest-earning families, more than 80 percent of children attend preschool. Yet in lower-income and lower-middle-income families, only about half of the children attend. Publicly funded programs have waiting lists. Blue-collar and working-class families find it especially difficult to find affordable preschool.

Eligibility for publicly funded preschool and child care programs hasn't been raised since 2000. That guideline should be fixed, pronto. The current cutoff is $39,000 for a family of four. Annual rent and utilities cost about $18,000; car $4,000; groceries, $8,500; clothing, $5,000. What's left for preschool? Statewide, the average part-time private preschool or child care program costs $4,022.

Second, counties and local First 5 commissions are launching innovative programs that aim at high-quality voluntary preschool for all 4-year-olds. They're beginning their efforts in communities surrounding low-performing elementary schools, mostly in poor communities. Of nine pilot counties, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Mateo are furthest along. The pilot sites are funded mostly from Proposition 10 funds, a 50-cent tax on cigarettes voters approved in 1998. They also mine foundation, local and federal Title I funds.

In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included $50 million in his revised May budget as part of a three-year plan to offer half-day preschool to 43,000 4-year-olds who live near low-performing schools. The Assembly and Senate zeroed out this funding, but Schwarzenegger is asking them to reconsider after the defeat of Proposition 82. They should do it.

It took three-quarters of a century for Californians to warm up to the idea of kindergarten for all children -- from model kindergartens in the 1870s, to a state constitutional amendment in 1920 allowing state funding, to another constitutional amendment in 1946 mandating state funding for kindergarten.

It shouldn't take California nearly a century to figure out how to get children in working families access to high-quality preschool.

OAKLAND, Calif., June 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a statement from Preschool California President Catherine Atkin:

"The loss of Prop. 82 is also a loss for hundreds of thousands of California children each year who still have no access to quality preschool programs that would help them get ready to succeed in school. The people who came together to fight for Prop. 82 are not giving up or going away. We remain committed to improving preschool quality and expanding access to all California children."

"Our victory is that preschool is now high on the California radar. Many more people now understand that preschool has the power to open doors and change lives. There will never be another serious conversation in this state about school reform that does not include preschool."

"Preschool California will continue to work with others to make sure that no California
children are denied the proven benefits that quality preschool provides."

Preschool California is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization working to establish quality, publicly-funded preschool opportunity for all 4-year-olds in California

Prop. 82 Defeat a Loss for California's Children; Nationally Other States Move Forward
6/7/2006 2:42:00 PM

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., June 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The defeat of Proposition 82 means that hundreds of thousands of California children lose the opportunity to secure the good educational foundation they need and deserve, but nationally the movement toward making good preschool education available for all children is alive and vigorous, said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). "Our research shows that state- funded preschool grew 20 percent over the past five years and that momentum continues across the nation. The governors of Illinois or Virginia aren't waiting for California to get on board to make pre-K available to all children," said Barnett.

Barnett said California still must tackle its early education crisis with a serious preschool education plan for all children, pointing out that when it comes to 4th grade reading, California is tied for last in the nation with states like Mississippi and Nevada. "The roots of this problem really do reach back to inadequate education prior to kindergarten and the fact that few California children have access to high-quality preschool education."

Barnett suggested that policy makers heed lessons borne out by research and experience in other states. "High-quality voluntary programs for all can dramatically improve school readiness for children of all backgrounds. Adequate teacher pay and qualifications are essential to highly effective preschool education. Ensure quality before quantity. Proposition 82 was not perfect, but it had a lot of this right. Policy makers should learn from that plan too, when -- not if -- they go back to the pre-K drawing board."

Steve Barnett is a professor of Education Economics and Public Policy at Rutgers University. His research includes the long-term effects of preschool programs on children's learning and development, the educational opportunities and experiences of young children, and benefit-cost analyses of preschool programs and their long-term effects.

Supporters of improved school readiness throughout Minnesota are surprised and very disappointed in Governor Pawlenty’s veto of legislation that would have created a quality improvement and rating system (QIRS).

The concept of a QIRS is being adopted throughout the United States as a parent-friendly way to identify quality early care and education, and to improve the skills of early childhood professionals and others who care for young children.

The Governor’s veto sends a very negative message to parents, those who care for children, and those who were excited to see Minnesota take this step forward to embed early education in child care. It represents a regrettably short-sighted reaction to a measure that passed with bi-partisan support in the 2006 session of the Minnesota legislature.

Business and community leaders also see the value of a QIRS. The elements that go into a highly rated early childhood program are central to assuring children are ready to succeed in kindergarten, in the workplace, and in life. Business leaders understand that these young children are their future employees, and that quality early care and education helps assure good outcomes for children.

As public support grows for a quality improvement and rating system, Minnesota needs to catch up with the rest of the United States. We sincerely hope that the legislature and the Governor will support this strategically important concept in 2007.

“The appropriation for the NorthStar Quality Improvement and Rating System has been line-item vetoed. This system considers input driven indicators, rather than measuring meaningful outcomes. For the past ten years, the state has been moving to an accountability system that measures results and outcomes in K-12 public schools. If the objective for quality child care is to ensure that young children are ready for kindergarten, then a child care rating system should be aligned with the K-12 accountability system. An input-driven rating system is not the best way to provide parents with meaningful results regarding the quality of the child care facility.“Therefore, I am directing the Departments of Education and Human Services to collectively review the concept of a Quality Rating System, and to make recommendations on what would be the necessary components to better align kindergarten readiness of a child to the rating of a child care facility,” Governor Pawlenty said.

The Governor’s statement is incorrect. The QIRS is completely aligned with the MN Department of Education’s Early Childhood Indicators of Progress, which are aligned with the K-12 standards. This is confirmed in a March 2005 report from the Minnesota Department of Education, Alignment of Minnesota K-12 Kindergarten Academic Standards with the Early Childhood Indicators of Progress. The report is available here: