Don't reverse success of early learning

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mimi Graham is director of Florida State University's Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy. Contact her at mgraham@cpeip.fsu.edu

About 30 years ago, an experiment began in Chapel Hill, N.C., in which poor children were randomized into either regular "day care" in the community or into a model early-education program with learning games, teachers educated in early childhood development, weekly home visits to engage parents and oversight from the university. The results were remarkable.

From age 3, children in the experimental program were 15 IQ points ahead of their counterparts! (For math experts, this is an entire standard deviation with a huge statistical difference.) Researchers continued to follow all the children, with equally amazing results. In high school, children from the model program had significantly higher IQs. Importantly, from a practical and economic perspective, they were more likely to graduate from high school and have a job.

These findings matter, since we also know that high-school dropouts are more likely to be teen parents, unemployed or incarcerated, and cost taxpayers more than $8 billion annually in public assistance programs. Dropouts from the Class of 2010 alone are estimated to cost the United States $337 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes.

Recently, the 30-year follow up was released, again showing an amazing legacy from the quality early childhood experience. The children in the model program were four times more likely to have earned college degrees, more likely to have been consistently employed and less likely to have used public assistance.

Despite these and other impressive outcomes from longitudinal studies, the compelling brain research, and Nobel Laureate economists' praise of high returns on early childhood investments, Florida's House Education Committee has gutted the School Readiness Act of all components of quality, retaining only the most basic requirements. In other words, anyone without a criminal background and over the age of 18 can open a child-care program. They need only 120 class-hours of online training, compared with the 1,200 hours required for a cosmetology license. Recommendations from a 2010 Blue Ribbon Panel on improving quality still sit on the shelf.

This proposed legislation seeks to eliminate the School Readiness Coalitions, which have successfully garnered public-private partnerships and large-scale community support, and stops the significant strides toward transforming mere "day care" into quality early childhood programs.

It also prohibits childcare programs from providing development screening, after Florida has invested in training its child-care teachers to identify problems early. when problems are most easily remediated and less costly to fix.

Using the logic that doctor's offices are better equipped to do hearing, vision and developmental screening might make sense, except that this same Legislature continues to refuse federal monies for health insurance for children. Florida now ranks as the worst state in the nation with its percentage (18.3 percent) of uninsured children. Without health insurance, children are 10 times more likely to have unmet medical needs, miss more school because of illness and perform poorly in their education. The House also cut subsidized child care for after-school children, which research says dramatically reduces neighborhood crime that occurs right after school. One of the reasons Florida was unsuccessful in the Race to the Top ($100 million for early childhood systems) was our state's lack of basic investment in early childhood. While other states have increased investments in quality child care and pre-kindergarten, Florida continues its decrease in funding and now ranks 34th among 38 states in per-pupil funding. Studies show that kindergarten test scores accurately predict lifelong success, probability of college graduation, amount of income and home ownership.

Investing in quality early childhood education is something that we all should be able to agree on - conservative or liberal, old or young. As Frederick Douglass so aptly said, "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Let's hope the Florida Legislature chooses the investment of building rather than the staggering cost of repair. When our current young children are among Florida's decision makers in 25 years, they will be best prepared to take care of us and our wonderful state.

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