Sexton on Early Childhood Investments

Better for the Economy Than New Stadiums

By Robert F. Sexton,

Executive DirectorPrichard Committee for Academic Excellence

Arthur Rolnick is an economist and senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Not a bleeding heart liberal, I’ll bet.

His background made it particularly noteworthy – and he got people’s attention – when he said he’s “quite certain that investing in early childhood education is more likely to create a vibrant economy than using public funds to lure sports teams by building a new stadium or to attract an automaker by providing tax breaks.” The “high returns on investment in early childhood education are extraordinary,” he says, compared to tax breaks and incentives that states use now to attract new companies and create jobs.

He’s in line with another economist, Nobel Laureate James Heckman, who says that “the best evidence suggests that learning begets learning and early investments in learning are effective. …Cost-effective returns are highest for the young.”

Closer to home, a team of University of Kentucky economists recently concluded their study of the results of Kentucky’s economic development investments over the past seven years. Their central finding: “Kentucky has long been one of the poorest states in the nation, primarily because of Kentuckians’ low level of education. …If we do not also address the much larger issue of our education gap, sustained economic growth, no matter what incentives we offer businesses, will never be realized in Kentucky.”

We believe the fundamental first step toward eliminating this roadblock to our future is high quality preschool for three- or four-year olds and strong early childhood support for all Kentucky kids from birth to five years old.

This continuum of early care and education – quality child care for infants and toddlers as well as strong preschool experiences for three- and four-year-olds – is the foundation of all that follows. Everything known about the early years, when successful development in language, motor skills, adaptive behaviors and social and emotional functioning must occur, shows that early success makes it much more likely that a child will succeed in school—and in life.

Preschool experience is most powerful, researchers say, for children whose home lives limit their chances for strong early development. By the age of three, for instance, the children of poor families have one-half the vocabularies of children from more educated families. One report shows that while a four-year-old from a working-class family has heard 26 million spoken words, and a from a professional family 45 million, a four-year-old from a low-income family has heard 13 million words.

The financial returns that economist Rolnick applauds are documented in numerous long-term cost-benefit studies that show that the return for each dollar we invest in early care and education ranges from $3 to $17. A high-quality preschool experience for at-risk children results in a reduced need for special education, fewer repeated grades, higher high school graduation rates, fewer arrests, higher employment rates, higher earnings and lower welfare dependency.

Increased high school graduation is another tangible payoff. Children who attend preschool programs, one study shows, are 29 percent more likely to graduate from high school. In Kentucky 17,173 potential members of the class of 2006 (in other words, those who were 8th graders in 2002) failed to graduate. The Alliance for Excellence in Education estimates that those dropouts will result in a loss of $4.5 billion in Kentucky wages over their lifetimes, plus a comparable loss in tax revenues and increases for health care and related costs.

“Poor and minority students stand to benefit the most from quality preschool programs,” reports Education Week, so preschool is a critical weapon in the fight to reduce the achievement gap, something that is particularly important in a state like Kentucky, with a large number of poor children.

In fact, quality preschool for every child is the smartest investment a high-poverty state like Kentucky can make. We took good steps forward in incorporating pre-k into our educational system in 1990, and Governors Paul Patton and Ernie Fletcher moved early childhood programs even further. But far too many children are still left far behind.

Last year, about 39,000 (36%) of Kentucky’s three- and four-year-old children were served by Kentucky’s preschool program and Head Start. Of families living at twice the poverty level (a little less than $40,000 for a family of four), 16,000 children are still in need of high quality preschool and don’t have it.

The Prichard Committee, in concert with other child advocates and business leaders, wants to increase access to high quality pre-k programs for all of Kentucky’s children. This is not a new priority for us. Our original recommendations (1984) for improving Kentucky education emphasized the importance of preschool and improved conditions in the early years. Our recent five-year plan selected expanded preschool as one of the key next steps for Kentucky. We’re now working on a statewide campaign (www.StrongStartKy.org) with the support of Pre-K Now, a national organization pushing for higher quality programs across the country.

We will publish a wide-ranging set of recommendations soon, when a coalition of children’s advocacy groups agree upon a comprehensive program to improve the care and education of children from birth to age five. But some key needs are apparent right now:
Kentucky should make voluntary, high-quality preschool available to all three- and four-year-olds from families that cannot afford it.

We need to build on the KIDS NOW program to put teeth in its quality enhancing measures and programs that stimulate healthy growth and development before children enter preschool, including the STARS quality rating system for child care programs, scholarships for child care providers, and the HANDS voluntary home visitation program for new parents.

Sometimes the smartest investments are hard to find, but this one is right under our noses.