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First 5 LA and Early Childhood Education
Our friends at First 5 LA have been producing some great content of late, and we just want to take a moment to highlight a recent post on Early Childhood Education.
This week they report on President Obama's recent Early Education Summit, and it's worth a read to get reacquainted with the importance of caring for your child's education from the very beginning.
Learn more by checking out the article at First 5 LA.
ECEWorks! Early Childhood Systems for the 21st Century: Needs, Designs and Prototypes
"We have deep private love for our children, but our public investment in them is shallow."
Dr. Neal Halfon says he's going to change the direction of the discussion. Time for a transformation, a move to the 21st century.
New production models require new IQ levels. Back in the industrial era, the goal was a bit of IQ development and physical skills for work. Today the emphasis is on big IQ improvements, literacy, numeracy, etc.
The brain is the ultimate "use it or lose it" machine. By 16th months of age, differences in cumulative vocabulary are already clear between groups from more/less educated and income families. The differences only widen over time.
Even middle class kids don't do as well as the wealthiest and best educated quintiles, so interventions need to be universal.
The ECE system is fragmented. It's difficult to access ECE services, and what services are available are of uneven quality. The models of ECE is outmoded, focusing on treatment rather than prevention. Local communities don't have mechanisms to intervene and demand accountability.
Different sectors need to provide different services at different points in time throughout childhood: Home visitation, early care and education, family resource center, school readiness, etc. But for them to work, they have to be coordinated and interconnected. In most advanced countries, these systems are integrated and longitudinal in focus.
We need to have a common agenda and communications across the ECE, health, family support and child welfare systems. We need shared outcomes and data systems. We need collaborative improvement systems. Finally, we need funding and policy alignment to make it all happen. This is the vision for a 21st century early childhood system.
The Early Development Inventory (EDI) is one instrument for systematic data collection that could be part of achieving this vision. It tracks data in five domains and maps outcomes by neighborhood. This is being used in the TECCS initiative, partially funded by the Kellogg Foundation.
"Most funders don't have things that actually work."
Magnolia Place is one neighborhood in LA where the TECCS initiative is being implemented. Rather than build a tunnel out of Harlem, Magnolia Place is trying to transform the community. They use a data dashboard to drive improvement for children in a systemic way. The dashboard tracks progress on developmental measures, protective factors and parent activities. TECCS is a "prototype of a ECD Community Improvement System" in a way that is big, bold and transformative.
ECEWorks! The state of Early Childhood Education in California
"Early Childhood Education is workforce development."
Economist Lynn Karoly is going to tell us about her research at Rand on ECE in California.
Too many kids in California aren't scoring well on math and reading tests. Those achievement gaps show up much before kids show up in school. Even as early as nine months, disadvantaged populations (race, socio-economic status) are showing measurable differences on developmental milestones. Those differences only increase over time. We know from prior research that high quality ECE can help close the gap.
Low Birthweight, Lack of preventative healthcare, Poverty, Lags in early literacy at home have all been shown to lower school readiness.
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) vs. Woodcock-Johnson
Oklahoma is one of few states that provides preschool to all. There are very large, publicly funded preschool programs that have shown positive outcomes on PPVT and/or WJ assessments. It can be done at scale, and it can be done by the public sector.
In California, the kids who could benefit most from high quality preschool are the least likely to access it. 75% of children in California are in some kind of nonparental care by age 3. What's the quality of that care? Most kids who are in center-based care are in "good" quality care (ECERS). But children of parents with the least education are least likely in high quality center-based care.
As the economy begins to improve, California needs to reinvest in high quality ECE. California was one of the earliest states to invest in ECE in the 1960s. Recent investments in Transitional Kindergarten, First 5 investments, etc have helped. But the recession has led to cuts to child care and development funding of 25%, addition of parent fees and other ECE losses.
California is no longer a leader in ECE. We're behind Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia in the percent of children participating in preschool. This is what leads to shortfalls later in education and the workforce.
We have a golden past - will we also have a golden future?
ECEWorks! 21st Century Workforce in California
Economist Jerry Nickelsburg is about to tell us whether the 21st century California workforce is very much different from that in the 20th century. And how is the middle class doing these days?
There hasn't been much change in the distribution of income in the US since 1990. The poverty rate hasn't changed much since 1990. Income inequality is growing, though this hasn't been primarily at the expense of the middle class.
Layoffs haven't been as high during this recession compared to the recessions of the 1970s and 80s. What makes today's recession is that layoffs have become permanent. Roughly 5 million people are considered permanently displaced.
Since 1990 California has lost one third of its manufacturing jobs. Those jobs haven't been exported. We are producing at 140% of our 1990 manufacturing level today. We're replacing people with robots and computers - that's where the jobs are going.
This kind of deeply disruptive transformation of the economy is in the nature of capitalist economies.
When the US transformed from a farm economy to a manufacturing economy, we build land grant colleges, created the GI Bill and sent people to college to be retrained. Today as we transform to an information economy we are not making those kinds of investments in education. Lifetime learning and critical thinking need to be the basis of our new education system.
ECEWorks! Economic Impact of ECE: Linchpin of LA Biz Profitability & Global Competitiveness?
Robert Duggar of ReadyNation (http://www.readynation.org) is the first speaker at today's conference. Let's hear what he's got to say.
Why focus on kids at four years old, rather than waiting until they're 14? Because so much brain development is going on right now. At that age, kids are "fearless, curious, trusting and ready to go."
"We call it workforce competitiveness, but really it's social justice. Where social justice emerges, economies are more prosperous and business are more profitable."
The problem with the youth human capital sector is that it takes so long for the benefits of investment in preschool take so long to show their impact. Programs targeted at the earliest years have the greatest potential payoff.
"The prenatal-to-five portion of the youth human capital sector is about 3% of GDP." Bigger than the auto sector.
Timothy Bartik at Upjohn Institute found that ECE investments raise regional per capita income as well or better than tax breaks or infrastructure investments to lure businesses into the region.
"Social impact finance" - asking business to invest in schools and programs for kids. Top quality pre-K programs may reduce public school special ed, grade retention and English language learning costs over 10 years to fully pay for the programs and pay a performance return to "invest-in-kids bond buyers." For more, look for a paper on"Early Childhood Pay-For-Success Social Impact Finance"
"Social impact bonds" - private companies investing in social programs.
More at ReadyNation.org
FIRST5 LA - READING
Reading was one of 20 spots I did for the "Good Parenting" initiative for First 5 LA. First 5 LA is a non-profit advocacy organization that focuses on childhood development during the first five years of a child's life. Their programs are designed to educate parents and the community about the importance of healthy eating, safe play places and proper medical care for children.
The campaign was directed by Danny Trachtenberg. Danny is a filmmaker and video podcast host from the Philadelphia suburbs who currently resides in the Los Angeles metro area. He is one of the three hosts of The Totally Rad Show and a former co-host of Geekdrome. Both programs are hosted at Revision3.
FIRST5 LA - MIMIC
Mimic was one of 20 spots we did for the "good parenting" initiative for First 5 LA. First 5 LA is a non-profit advocacy organization that focuses on childhood develop during the first five years of a child's life. Their programs are designed to educate parents and the community about the importance of healthy eating, safe play places and proper medical care in the development of a child.
