The leaders of the 2021 legislative session, both Gov. Tim Walz and the DFL House and Republican Senate, were collectively guilty of legislative child neglect.
There is no more powerful tool for achieving true equity for all of our children than to give all of them equal access to quality early learning. Given the right start, every child has huge potential to succeed in school and in life.
With a billion-dollar-plus surplus, the governor and the Legislature made virtually no additional investment of state funds in early learning scholarships, our most potent tool to enable low-income children to get a quality start in school and in life. Research shows that such scholarships provide the highest return of any public expenditure.
There are an estimated 35,000 low-income children who desperately need access to quality early learning, whether in child care settings, or Head Start or school-based programs. Failing to invest adequately in early learning scholarships will set too many of those children on a path to school failure, with all the dire consequences that ensue. That is not an exaggeration.
One program, Way to Grow, serves very low-income children and through the use of scholarships is able to send more than 90 percent of those children to kindergarten ready for school success, far above the state school readiness average.
This is, and has been, a bipartisan issue, but it needs leadership.
[image_credit]MinnPost file photo by Bill Kelley[/image_credit][image_caption]Art Rolnick[/image_caption]
At the end of one interview about early learning Ramstad said, “This could be the next Minnesota Miracle!” How right he was.
Then-Sen. Walter Mondale understood the value of early learning and he passed a significant bill 50 years ago that would have moved the nation forward on this issue. Sadly, it was vetoed by then-President Richard Nixon. Former Gov. Mark Dayton, working with then-House Speaker Kurt Daudt, led strongly and effectively for increased investment in early learning scholarships.
[image_caption]Todd Otis[/image_caption]
Currently the state spends $70 million a year on early learning scholarships — which, when blended with other funding for child care or Head Start, enables 15,000 children to be served.
At the very least we should spend another $70 million in order to serve an additional 15,000 low-income children. Minnesota should phase in additional investment such that by the end of the decade every low-income child can get quality early care and education.
Thousands of children ages birth to 5 do not need pretty words and promises. They need strong leadership from the governor. This is not a time for excuses or more study. It is time for action. We know what works; now it is time to bring it to scale.
Walz and the Legislature should move forward in 2022 and do something that will have lasting value to our beloved state. That leadership can build a strong foundation for all of education in Minnesota, which will immeasurably help our common civic and economic life. Our leaders need to propose a bold increase in early learning scholarships for our most vulnerable children.
The window of opportunity for children birth to 5 is short. We sincerely hope that our state leaders will give them the chance to start strong and become ready for success, in school and in life. Our children need it and the governor and Legislature have it in their power to provide it.
Little children cannot wait!
Art Rolnick, Ph.D., former director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, is on the board of Way to Grow, Think Small, and the Northside Achievement Zone. Todd Otis is a former Minnesota state representative, former chair of the state DFL Party, and past president of Ready4K, an early childhood advocacy group that merged with Think Small.
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I absolutely agree, and there’s no excuse for either Republicans or Democrats to avoid their responsibilities to the children of the state. They should combine forces to boost funding for preschool and universal, all-day kindergarten, to whatever level it ought to be. There’s now a fair-sized mountain of research to show that this provides absolutely the most bang for the taxpayer buck, and failure to do so will inhibit, socially and intellectually, far, far too many kids of yet another generation.
I spent 30 years in a public high school classroom, and was well aware that I was building on the work of those in whose care or classroom each kid in my classes had spent significant time. In recent years as a retiree, I watched carefully – partly from self-interest, partly just out of curiosity, since I’d never observed it as an adult – my grandchildren’s journey through preschool, kindergarten and the primary grades. Particularly for children whose homes cannot provide an optimum social and intellectual environment, for whatever reason, a good preschool makes a huge difference in a child’s readiness for academic learning and the social skills needed to succeed in society from an early age. A skilled kindergarten teacher and equally-skilled primary faculty can then build on that foundation to send capable children on to secondary schools and beyond.
Early childhood education represents a genuine, vital, and necessary investment in the human capital of the whole state, an investment, I’d argue, that we ought to make every year to keep our society functioning and healthy. We all benefit from an educated populace in virtually every area of life.
I totally agree with Rolnick, Otis and Schoch. The return on investment is too great to ignore. The earlier the programs start the better. One of the best evidenced-based programs is the Nurse-Family Partnership, which begins at pregnancy for high-risk women and provides public health services to the mother and child until the child is 2 years old. https://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/locations/minnesota/
There is no more effective way to address inequities that plague our society than to invest in this crucial support in children and their primary caregivers.
As a personal beneficiary of early childhood education, i completely agree with Rolnick, Otis, Shoch and Pattersdon!
Here we go again…. Kindergartner in early 60’s, was going to be the tool for a better education for everyone. Prior to Kindergarten, the public schools only had 12 years to teach our children how to read, write, do math and problem solve. Just wait until we get them for 13 years, miracles would happen…. Nope, no miracles happened. Now the same group of “intellectuals “ are telling us 14 or 15 years of public funded schooling will bring about the miracles previously promised.
Old adage, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
You’re absolutely right, Joe. Have them working in the fields as soon as they can walk. No more of this mollycoddling. Let the little blighters pull their weight.
And what’s the point of child labor laws, anyway? A few years in the mines or the mills are good for kids, if they survive.
RB, not sure how you straw manned your way to child labor laws but the point was if 13 years of public education is not enough I’m certain 14 or 15 won’t do it either. With our public education system in a state of disrepair, no amount of years could educate our kids. Things must change and giving public schools two more years of access to our children is definitely not the answer!
Joe, I think you need to look at the facts before you rant about, well, anything.
Kindergarten was not a creation of the 60s, unless you mean the 1860s and not the decade that unleashed the hippies and sent the country to hell in a basket. It was meant to prepare children for school by giving them basic numeracy and literacy.
There are a lot of factors that go into making children succeed. Schools are only one part of the equation.
RB, I hate to correct you again, but facts do matter. In 1967 if you enrolled in a school district with elementary education you had to send your child to Kindergarten. Up until then it wasn’t mandatory, legislation made it official in 1967. The reason behind legislation making Kindergarten mandatory, in 1967, was billed as a equalizer for early learning. You would see the results in 3rd -4th grade…. Never happened. That shows it truly doesn’t work because back then teachers were actually teaching math, reading and writing plus problem solving.
Dennis Tester showed the Obama report on Head Start, another study showing early education sounds great but doesn’t work. 13 years of public school education should be enough.
You don’t suppose we’ve learned anything about early childhood education in the ensuing years, do you? What would the outcomes have been if children had not been sent to kindergarten since 1967?
Perhaps one of the big reasons public education is “failing” is that the schools have been turned into ground zero for the fruitless, divisive culture wars in this country. Or because Americans have come to devalue learning unless the monetization of the education is immediately apparent? Or because teachers have been demonized and devalued
“Dennis Tester showed the Obama report on Head Start, another study showing early education sounds great but doesn’t work.”
You know the report was commissioned by the Bush administration, don’t you? And that Head Start is targeted at disadvantaged students who can normally be expected to have a hard time in school? And that the study showed some additional, non-academic benefits?
RB, then have the reports read that 2-3 more years of public schools won’t help academically but will help in some non academic ways. Why are they selling this as an academic plan for better students? As I stated it is the 60’s again with intellectuals telling taxpayers what is best for their children.
You don’t suppose those “intellectuals” have spent a lot of time studying and thinking about these issues, do you?
And I’ve seen some pretty boneheaded parents out there. Most of them are taxpayers.
Incidentally, Joe, here’s a report funded in part by the Trump NIH showing that early childhood education improves outcomes regarding special education placement, grade retention, and high school graduation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107077/
“Given the high costs that special education placement, grade retention, and dropout place on both individuals and taxpayers, our results suggest that further investments in ECE programming may be one avenue for reducing educational and economic burdens and inequities.”
People seem to forget that a study by Obama’s HHS showed that Head Start doesn’t work. “It found that, by the end of the first grade, children who attended Head Start are essentially indistinguishable from a control group of students who didn’t.”
“When the researchers gave both groups of students 44 different academic tests at the end of the first grade, only two seemed to show even marginally significant advantages for the Head Start group. And even those apparent advantages vanished after standard statistical controls were applied.”
It’s just another feel-good program designed to employ more teachers and enable politicians to say they’re “doing something” to solve the illiteracy problem in this country.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/head-start-tragic-waste-money