Early Childhood Education

Manifesto

Education is the engine of progress and prosperity.  No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital.  The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development.  That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.     

America’s current public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:

“We reject community investment programs (implemented today by nearly all developed countries) that stress preventing the creation of at-risk children.  Instead we assume colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.” 

The results of this undocumented policy are many:

1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship.  A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life.  If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses.  Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.  

2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level.  A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society.

3. Children who read by the third grade seldom are ever involved with the criminal justice system.  Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.

4. America has over two million prison inmates, the highest rate in the world and five to ten times that of European countries.  Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities.  

5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores.   Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity. 

6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families with children.

7. Minnesota’s under funded policy to assist low-income families for out of home child care has a waiting list of over 7000 families.  This is a sham, not real policy.

When America isn’t fair, it doesn’t work.  America is cheating its children.

High quality, universally eligible early childhood education and development similar to that now in place for decades elsewhere would solve the above problems.  According to Minneapolis Federal Reserve researchers, no public sector investment of taxpayer money yields the high returns verified for early childhood education.

What are we waiting for?  

Supporting Documentation 

1. The $5 million lifetime per citizen contribution to America’s society is cited by author Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, page 504.

2. In his key-note speech at the Capitol on January 28, 2009, David Lawrence referred to young children who sense failure when unable to read like their classmates.  This is equivalent to humiliation.  Policy makers cannot pretend to be ignorant of brain development enhancing early childhood programs.  The literature is full of relevant information and it is easy to find. Mr. Lawrence is president of The Early Childhood Foundation at the University of Florida.  Prior to that he was publisher of the Miami Herald.    

3. The correlation between reading deficiency and interaction with criminal justice is provided by David Lawrence in his key-note speech cited in number 2 above.

4. Prison population report by “Pew Center on the States”, Pew Charitable Trust.

5. Several states including California and Arizona use early grade test scores to assist in forecasting required prison capacity growth.  Corrections Digest, April 12, 2002 reports Federal Prisons are 131% of design capacity.

6. Among the programs common in peer industrial countries are 1) income of full-time employment provides families above-poverty living standard, 2) universal housing for all families with children, 3) universal health care, 4) paid maternity and parental leave for both parents with guarantee of return to previous job, 5) women’s guaranteed right to breastfeed at work, 6) universal pre-school child care and development, 7) guaranteed sick leave for illness and family care, minimum of 5 to 6 weeks of paid vacation, 9) taxpayer paid college tuition for qualifying  students, 10) protection of children from predatory marketing by consumer product companies.  None of these programs exist in the United States.  

7. Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Day Care? Cut”, February 13, 2009, page 1.

8. Rolnick, Art and Grunewald, Rob.  ”Early Education’s Big Dividends”. Based on “Early Intervention on a large scale”, Education Week 26, no. 17 (January 4, 2007): 32, 34-36.   

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Instead of investing in reading for third graders (and early childhood education), California began investing in a third strike punishment model and building tens of thousands of prison beds.

Today, crime, courts, and incarceration are the largest piece of California’s state budget. The prison lobby is the largest lobby in the state, and California recidivism is above 70% (the highest in the world?)

The state now has the dubious distinction of spending more on prisons than on education and one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation

Former MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz and Marion Writght Edleman (Children’s Defense Fund Founder) have pointed out that almost all the youth in our juvenile justice system have come through chiild protection services and the vast majority of adults in the criminal justice system are graduates of our juvenile justice system.

Nationwide, about 25% of America’s youth are being tried in adult courts today. Once these youth are treated as adults in our court systems, they rarely leave the system. Juveniles are more likely to be raped and brutalized, and suicidal, than adults within the system (they are just more vulnerable).

California’s great investment in its criminal justice system has ruined tens of thousands of lives and paid very poor dividends to its citizens. It is horribly expensive, almost all the inmates recommit crimes within three years, and now they are letting the inmates out quickly because they are out of money to feed and house felons (let them rob and steal for their dinner).

The math is pretty straightforward:

X years and Y dollars of early childhood education/programs = children that can go to school and learn to read* graduate and build a meaningful life within our community. They go on to have jobs, raise normal families, and lead meaningful lives, versus

Spending those same dollars on prisons and punishment that has bought us recidivism, astronomical crime costs (1.5 to 2 trillion dollars annually) failed schools, and a persistent fear of walking home in our neighborhoods at night. What does forty years of social services and incarceration cost a community? What is the value of a healthy productive citizen?

This cycle will not be broken overnight. We will have to invest in programs that make children ready for school (it is a proven solid investment) and ready for life.

Our thirty year spree of “the floggings will continue until the Morale improves” policy making model has created more felons and mentally unhealthy people than any other nation in the world.

Are we able to change the direction of our public policies so that thirty years from now, all children will be valued as potential citizens and given access to health and education that are critical to participating in their community?

Minnesota has just experienced three consecutive years of double digit prison (investment) growth. Hennepin county arrested 44% of its black adult male population in 2001. Nationally, 13% of Black men can’t vote because they are felons. The racial disparity is clear to some of us.

After 12 active years in the County Child Protection system, I can testify that early childhood programs work as a deterent to crime and as a fiscally responsible means of running a county (or a state).

All children want to be happy creative beings. It is human nature. We can either facilitate this, and save tons of lives and money, or continue to build more crime and prisons and let our prisoners out early when we run out of money.

Support our effort to positively redefine the lives of at risk children, join our grassroots efforts and join one of the action / discussion groups you see on this website.   Make a difference in your community.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Tell us your story, comment, or perspective.  Think of someone you would like to send this to? Press the “share this” button below.

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