Spend Early and Often in First 3 Years of Life

Facts are often a scarce commodity and "conventional wisdom" is regularly based on anecdotes, opinions and emotion. At The Urban Child Institute, though, we're all about facts and data-driven strategies. That's again the case with our recent research about public education spending in our community. It's a fundamental principle of business - and life - that the best action is the one taken when it delivers the best result. That's not what we're doing when it comes to investing in educating the children of our community.

Here's the Memphis challenge: Imagine two lines on a graph. One line shows the rate of growth for a baby's brain. It climbs at a remarkable angle -almost 90 degrees - from birth to 3 years old. The other line tracks the public investment in education. It essentially stays flat at zero and doesn't really begin to climb until a child is 5 years old.

In other words, at the time that we can have the greatest positive impact - while 80 percent of the core brain structure is being formed by a child's third birthday - we devote less than 2.5 percent of public educational funding on these young children. Research shows that children who enter school behind in their brain development have steep hills to climb, and most are unable to reach the top.

We're not suggesting at The Urban Child Institute that we should declare that all is lost if these children don't get a fair start. Brain development does continue and there is progress to be made; however, the smartest investment with the greatest economic impact is made in the earliest years. The research is unequivocal and is supported by Nobel Prize winner James Heckman's model, which demonstrates that high-quality early childhood programs produce a higher per-dollar return than K-12 schooling and later job training.

In addition, early childhood programs reduce the need for special education and remediation and cut juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy and dropout rates. Better brain development does more than affect the costs side of the public ledger. It also affects the revenues side by creating more taxpayers, productive workers and a competitive workforce.

The cost-benefit equation is clear: Children who attended state-funded prekindergarten classes in Tennessee gained an average of 82 percent more on early literacy and math skills than comparable children who did not attend. And yet in 2010, only about 500 of the 21,500 children 3 years and under in Shelby County eligible for Early Head Start services were served, because there isn't enough money to fully fund the program.

In other words, doing the same and hoping for different results is no longer an option for Memphis. Better results come from wiser investments of public funds in early childhood programs; the short-term costs are more than offset by social and other benefits, but more to the point, such an investment increases self-sufficiency for families.

Earlier investments in the lives of Memphis children can create a solid foundation for the money spent on older children as they move from kindergarten to high school graduation. As Heckman said: "Early experiences can translate into school readiness, academic success, and lifetime well-being. Success builds upon success. When more children in a community are ready to learn, communitywide levels of human and social capital rise."

By closing the opportunity gap for every child, we can make greater strides in closing the achievement gap for our students. In a city where over 72,000 children (40 percent) live in poverty, there can be no higher priority than adopting the "economics of human potential" as our Golden Rule - more money spent earlier makes children more likely to finish high school, have better health, avoid criminal behavior and provide for their own families in the future.

It's one time when science and conventional wisdom converge. We all know that the best investments are made when they have the highest return. For Memphis, those are investments in children younger than 3 years old.

Eugene K. Cashman Jr. is president and CEO of The Urban Child Institute.

This is one in a series of monthly guest columns on the importance of public/private investment in early childhood. For more information, call The Urban Child Institute at 901-385-4233 or visit http://theurbanchildinstitute.org.

Originally in The Commercial Appeal.