[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-217
INVESTING IN YOUNG CHILDREN PAYS DIVIDENDS: THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR EARLY
CARE AND EDUCATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 27, 2007
__________
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JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress]
SENATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Charles E. Schumer, New York, Carolyn B. Maloney, New York, Vice
Chairman Chair
Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Maurice D. Hinchey, New York
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Baron P. Hill, Indiana
Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Loretta Sanchez, California
Robert P. Casey, Jr., Pennsylvania Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland
Jim Webb, Virginia Lloyd Doggett, Texas
Sam Brownback, Kansas Jim Saxton, New Jersey, Ranking
John E. Sununu, New Hampshire Minority
Jim DeMint, South Carolina Kevin Brady, Texas
Robert F. Bennett, Utah Phil English, Pennsylvania
Ron Paul, Texas
Nan Gibson, Deputy Staff Director
Christopher J. Frenze, Republican Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Opening Statement of Members
Statement of Hon. Robert P. Casey, Jr., a U.S. Senator from
Pennsylvania................................................... 1
Statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Vice Chair, a U.S.
Representative from New York................................... 4
Statement of Hon. Lloyd Doggett, a U.S. Representative from Texas 6
Statement of Hon. Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota... 6
Statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings, a U.S. Representative from
Maryland....................................................... 7
Witnesses
Statement of Dr. James J. Heckman, recipient of the 2000 Nobel
Prize in Economic Sciences and the Henry Schultz Distinguished
Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.......... 9
Statement of Hon. Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of the State of
Kansas......................................................... 13
Statement of Harriet Dichter, deputy secretary, Pennsylvania
Office of Child Development and Early Learning................. 16
Statement of Douglas J. Besharov, director, Social and Individual
Responsibility Project, American Enterprise Institute.......... 20
Submissions for the Record
Prepared statement of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Chairman....... 47
Prepared statement of Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr................ 48
Prepared statement of Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Vice
Chair.......................................................... 50
Prepared statement of Dr. James J. Heckman, recipient of the 2000
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and the Henry Schultz
Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of
Chicago, American Bar Foundation............................... 51
Prepared statement of Senator Sam Brownback, Senior Republican
Senator........................................................ 56
Prepared statement of Hon. Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of the
State of Kansas................................................ 56
Prepared statement of Harriet Dichter, deputy secretary, Office
of Child Development and Early Learning, Pennsylvania
Departments of Education and Public Welfare.................... 59
Prepared statement of Douglas J. Besharov, American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research........................... 62
INVESTING IN YOUNG CHILDREN PAYS DIVIDENDS: THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR EARLY
CARE AND EDUCATION
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2007
Congress of the United States,
Joint Economic Committee,
Washington, DC
The Committee met at 11:00 a.m. in room 216 of the Hart
Senate Office Building, the Honorable Robert P. Casey, Jr., and
Vice Chair Carolyn B. Maloney, presiding.
Senators present: Brownback, Casey, and Klobuchar.
Representatives present: Cummings, Doggett, and Maloney.
Staff present: Christina Baumgardner, Judd Cramer,
Christina FitzPatrick, Chris Frenze, Nan Gibson, Rachel
Greszler, Colleen Healy, Aaron Kabaker, Robert O'Quinn, Almas
Sayeed, Jeff Schlagenhauf, Robert Weingart, and Andrew Wilson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., A U.S. SENATOR
FROM PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Casey [presiding]. Good morning. This hearing will
come to order. I want to welcome all those who are with us
today for this Joint Economic Committee hearing, Investing in
Young Children Pays Dividends: The Economic Case for Early Care
and Education.
I want to thank all of the witnesses who are with us today,
and I also want to especially thank Senator Schumer for his
leadership of this Committee and for his work on this hearing,
and his staff and the Joint Economic Committee staff.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Charles E. Schumer
appears in the Submissions to the Record on page 47.]
I also want to thank Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who is
with us, our Vice Chair, who has worked on this issue for many
years and is helping us on this legislation, and also for the
privilege that I have today of co-chairing this hearing.
Congresswoman Maloney knows that in Washington it takes a
long time to become a Chairman or Chairwoman, and I'm honored
to do that today. If I make any mistakes she has all the
authority in the world to correct me, but I'm honored to be
with her today.
And I also want to thank her for working in a focused way
on our legislation which is the Prepare All Kids Act of 2007
which she introduced in the House. We had introduced it in the
Senate already.
So I look forward to working with her and her colleagues
and our colleagues in the United States Senate on this issue
and so many others who are with us.
I also want to say that today we have an opportunity, I
think, to explore a number of issues including prekindergarten
education which is the main focus of our legislation.
But we're also fortunate today to have an outstanding
panel, and I know Governor Sebelius will be here shortly, but I
wanted to thank the witnesses for their appearance but also for
their expertise, their insight, and their labor over many years
on these issues.
I want to thank each of you for taking the time out of what
I know are very full schedules to be with us today.
And I want to say, as a United States Senator but also as a
father and a citizen, that it's an honor to chair this hearing
to focus on the well-being of our children.
This morning we're here to evaluate and examine the value
of early childhood investments, and I believe that we'll find
that there's no smarter investment that we can make than this.
I have long been an advocate for investing in children, in
State government, for a decade as auditor general and State
treasurer, working on childcare affordability and other issues
that pertain to our children, so it's a privilege to continue
this work in the United States Senate.
The Prepare All Kids Act of 2007, which I introduced last
month and which Representative Maloney has introduced in the
House along with Representatives Allyson Schwartz and Maurice
Hinchey, has a very simple goal: It helps our States provide
high-quality prekindergarten programs that will prepare
children and, particularly, low-income children for a
successful transition to kindergarten and elementary school.
Too many children and, frankly, too many economically-
disadvantaged children are entering school behind their more
privileged peers. And many times these lags persist into
adulthood and are never reversed, and we can all do something
about that.
So why should we invest in high-quality childhood
development in education? Well, I think we're all here because
we think it's the right thing to do--that's obvious--for
children and for families, but decades of research tell us that
it also makes sense from a lot of different angles.
If you just look at it from a purely financial or monetary
or revenue investment, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the
economic value of investing in high-quality early education.
According to one study, which I know our witnesses know
well, we save $17 for every 1 dollar invested. Dr. Heckman, who
is with us today, is a Nobel Laureate in economics, and he's
been a great leader in this field, and he's done a lot of the
tremendous work on the benefits of early childhood investments,
so I look forward to his testimony today, about why it's so
important and cost-effective to invest in children,
particularly economically-disadvantaged children, as early as
possible.
Just a few brief highlights on a number of matters before
this hearing today: High-quality early education and
development programs significantly improve children's outcomes.
We know that.
They are more likely to graduate from high school; less
likely--it's very important to say what happens that's less
likely--to be in special education classes, to become pregnant
at an early age; less likely to engage in criminal activity as
teenagers, or pursue other risky behaviors like smoking and
drug use.
Research from landmark studies in the Chicago Child-Parent
Center and the Perry Preschool Study, have documented these
findings.
High-quality early education programs have a positive
impact on State and Federal budgets. I don't need to review
that; we know what that means.
High-quality early education strengthens the economy
because, in the long term, we're not just talking about
cognitive development but also non-cognitive gains that
children have in qualities like perseverance and motivation,
things that we often have difficulty measuring, but we know how
important that is to a future employee here in America.
Investing in high-quality childcare assistance, as well as
pre-K, also strengthens the economy. The importance of high-
quality, affordable childcare, we know, is important for
promoting female labor force participation, increasing parent
productivity, and keeping parents in the workforce. We know all
of this is well-documented.
So this morning we'll hear about the programs that are most
helpful to children and early childhood.
One of these is prekindergarten education. Most States have
either begun or are on their way to developing such programs.
One of our witnesses, Governor Kathleen Sebelius, will talk
about the tremendous work her State is doing in the State of
Kansas, in this area, to develop a system to improve the
education and early care of children.
In Pennsylvania, we have a great example of that. Governor
Rendell is working on the Pre-K Counts Initiative which will
provide 11,000 3- and 4-year-olds with voluntary, high-quality
prekindergarten that is targeted to reach children most at risk
of academic failure.
Harriet Dichter is with us today--someone I have known for
a long time--who's now and has been, for many years, working
with the Governor on this to streamline and coordinate services
for at-risk children, and we'll hear more about that in a
couple of moments.
So if we really want to focus on helping our children and
helping our families, I think it's critically important that we
focus on these important initiatives and programs today.
Now, we hear, when we bring up these issues, talk about
money and finances and revenues, and we hear that a lot in
Washington. But I think when you think of some of the cuts that
this Administration has made in Head Start and subsidized
childcare, that's particularly a disgrace.
We also will hear about the cost of this in the context of
other breaks we're giving in the budget. We hear that these
programs, because some of them require new investments, deserve
some kind of a challenge, some kind of a debate, and that's
important.
But I would challenge anyone, and I would debate anyone who
claims that we can't afford to invest more in early childhood
education programs.
Clearly, when you have an Administration which, over many
years now, has provided tax cuts for millionaires and
multimillionaires and billionaires, I think we can find a
little bit of money here and there for children and for these
important programs.
It's worth noting that in 2008 alone, the value of tax cuts
for households with incomes exceeding $200,000 a year is
projected to be $100 billion, just 1 year for a small sector of
our population.
They're doing pretty well. They've had a lot of help from
the Government, year after year. I think it's about time we
focused a little bit of time and a significant amount of
resources on our children.
So this bill, Prepare All Kids Act, calls for an initial
investment of $5 billion in 2008, which grows to $9 billion--
one billion a year--until 2012.
So we really don't have a money problem, when you consider
those numbers; we've got a priorities problem, and we've got to
cure that.
The States across the country are doing their part. I
talked about Governor Sebelius's programs, Pennsylvania's, and
others which are doing good work, and we need to support them.
And I want to shorten my statement so we can get right to
our Vice Chair so she can offer her opening statement, but I
think that when you get right down to this, it's plain common
sense.
We can pay now or pay later, and if we pay later, we're
going to pay a lot more, and it's not just going to be money
that we're going to be paying; we're going to be paying a human
cost as well.
And I really believe that every child is born with a light
in them, and I think it's critically important and essential
that all of us who have the opportunity and the power to do
something about this do everything possible to keep that bright
light in a child burning ever brightly.
This legislation and the initiatives that surround this,
whether it's prekindergarten education, quality childcare,
early education, and care, are critical to keeping that bright
light burning ever brightly for that child, and I think,
eventually for our economy and for our Nation.
With that, I turn to our Vice Chair, Congresswoman Maloney,
and thank her for her help on this.
[The prepared statement of Senator Casey appears in the
Submissions to the Record on page 48.]
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY, VICE CHAIR, A
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you, thank you, thank you very
much. Good morning.
I would like to thank Chairman Schumer and Chairman Casey
and Congressman Doggett for encouraging us to hold this hearing
to examine the economic benefits of investing in high-quality
care and education for the children of our Nation.
This is the second in a series of hearings that the Joint
Economic Committee will hold, as Democrats in Congress work to
develop policies for the 21st Century, that help families
balance the competing demands of work and family
responsibilities.
I am honored to co-chair this hearing with Senator Casey
who has provided leadership on this issue for many years in his
home State of Pennsylvania and now in the U.S. Senate, and I am
pleased to be the lead sponsor in the House of Representatives
of his Prepare All Children Act of 2007 which is designed to
help States expand their pre-K programs and childcare services,
a goal that we both believe is critically important to our
Nation.
I really want to just say that I'm deeply appreciative to
all of our panelists for their lifetime commitment
professionally to helping our Nation's children and for being
here today.
More than a quarter of a million 4-year-olds in New York
State would be eligible for the program created through this
bill, including 100,000 children who would qualify for free
pre-K.
At Speaker Pelosi's National Summit on America's Children
last month, a compelling body of research was presented that
makes clear that early intervention improves children's lives
and eases the burden on public resources.
With the limited public resources we currently have, we get
the biggest bang for the money we spend by investing in our
children before they even go to school.
Estimates show that the return on investing in early care
and education is between 7 to 18 percent annually. If this were
a stock, all of Wall Street would be buying.
Children are our most precious resource, and the success of
our Nation depends on their ability to achieve their full
potential. Early care and education fosters higher labor force
participation and earnings, increases future productivity and
economic growth, and helps maintain our ability to compete in
the global economy.
Quality childcare can help businesses' bottom lines by
improving worker productivity, reducing absenteeism, and
lowering turnover.
Estimates show that employee absences due to childcare
breakdowns cost U.S. businesses $3 billion annually. But there
is a shortage of affordable childcare around the country and
especially in the city I represent.
More than half of all women with preschool-aged children in
my District are in the workforce and desperately need help
finding childcare.
Many childcare providers in low- and moderate-income areas
operate out of their homes. In the House of Representatives we
passed a bill which included an amendment I authored called
KiddyMac. KiddyMac encourages lenders to offer mortgages on
low- and moderate-income housing with licensed childcare
facilities in order to help increase the supply of daycare
facilities.
The Federal Government can also play a role in ensuring
quality childcare by establishing minimum standards. Children
need to be in safe environments that promote healthy
development and lay the foundation for future success in
schools.
Children in quality care are found to have better language
and math skills, and have fewer disciplinary problems, but many
States do not set adequate standards for childcare quality,
including mandating low child-teacher ratios or requiring
teachers to have training in early childcare education.
I really, truly, want to thank our distinguished panel of
witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to their
testimony about setting our children on a path for success
early in life.
I do want to mention that Dr. Heckman testified earlier at
the Summit on Children that was organized by the Congressional
Democrats, and gave a very compelling case, and we truly worked
hard and appealed to him to come back and be part of this
effort to follow up on the vision that he and others brought to
that Summit, so that the ideas put forward can be put into the
reality of a law that will hopefully pass and be part of
helping our children in America.
So I thank all of our panelists for being here, and we look
forward to your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Representative Maloney appears
in the Submissions to the Record on page 50.]
Senator Casey. Thank you, Congresswoman. Next, we have
Representative Doggett from the State of Texas. Thank you for
being here.
STATEMENT OF HON. LLOYD DOGGETT, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
TEXAS
Representative Doggett. Thank you very much, and thank you
very much for your leadership on this important piece of
legislation and that of Congresswoman Maloney, who has been
such a long-time advocate for children in the House.
I think that the hope of some further change here in
Washington will clearly bring us a Federal role in encouraging
the States to continue what is already happening, to upgrade
the quality and the coverage of early childhood education.
One of the questions that we get to explore this morning is
how broad that commitment can be, and where we can be most
effective.
I'm appreciative of the fact that you have assembled such
an impressive panel of people who are already taking leadership
in your home State of Pennsylvania and certainly in Kansas
which joined my home State of Texas recently in extending
benefits to military families with the Early Childhood
Education Programs.
Dr. Heckman's testimony, of course, was impressive to our
Summit, and I look forward to hearing you again. You've been so
important with your studies in engaging the business community
and building the understanding and the coalitions necessary to
make legislation like you've offered a reality. Thank you.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Representative Doggett. And we're
doing this in order of appearance, and the next one to appear
is Senator Klobuchar, my colleague in the Senate. Thank you,
Senator.
STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Klobuchar. Well, thank you very much Senator Casey,
and thank you for holding this important hearing.
It's great to see you chairing a hearing, and we look
forward to your leadership on this Committee. Thank you also
for sponsoring the legislation, as well as you, Vice Chair
Maloney.
I come from Minnesota where we've done a lot of good
studying of this issue. I wish we'd done a little more
investing in addition to the studying, but we actually had a
landmark study coming out of Minnesota with Art Rolnick, who is
with the Federal Reserve.
He is the Vice President and Research Head of the Federal
Reserve, and a friend of mine. He calculated that the annual
return on investing in early childhood development programs can
be as high as 16 percent, with 75 percent of the benefit going
to taxpayers in the form of decreased expenditures on special
education, welfare, and crime.
To put that number in perspective, the long-term inflation-
adjusted return on U.S. stocks is about 7 percent. So I think
we need to also start talking about this in terms of the
benefit that we're all going to see if we are smart about
investing.
As a former prosecutor, I got involved in the group, Fight
Crime: Invest in Kids. I remember going to some of the national
meetings with all of these burly sheriffs and wondering how
they came to this group.
After I was a prosecutor for awhile, I saw the huge
correlation between school enrollment and staying in school,
and how that leads to not getting involved in crime. In fact,
the first year I was D.A., we had eight murders that were
committed by juveniles. These were young men 16 years and
under.
We looked back at the records, and all of these men came
from troubled families and had issues, but one of the things
that they all had in common was that their trouble with the law
started when they started to miss school.
It's not that hard to make the connection between their
truancy and their disconnection to their schools. Because most
of them had no early childhood training, as they entered their
classrooms, they felt they did not know anything compared to
the other kids.
This isn't to excuse their behavior or to say that we
didn't put them in prison; we did. It is just to say that we
are spending money in ways that we may not have to if we were
smarter about early childhood education.
So I thank our witnesses and I look forward to hearing from
you today.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator. Representative Cummings
is next. Thank you, Congressman, for being here with us today.
STATEMENT OF HON. ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE
FROM MARYLAND
Representative Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It is certainly and quite an appropriate hearing, and I want to
thank you for calling it.
As one who lives in the inner city in Baltimore, and one
who has seen many children, sadly, who have fallen by the
wayside, it certainly is--I think it is very important that we
put the spotlight on our children and things that we can do for
them early in their lives.
In Maryland, we just had the case of Damonte Driver, a 12-
year-old boy who needed some dental care, about $80 worth, and
did not get it. He was on Medicaid, had problems finding a
Medicaid doctor--dentist to treat him. He didn't get treated,
and he died--12 years old.
And then when it comes to education, I have often said that
while I am concerned about the terrorists overseas, I am--and I
know that they are a threat to our national security, the
greatest threat to our national security is our failure to
properly bring up and educate our children. That is a major
threat.
As the Senator spoke a moment ago, I could not help just
think about all the children that I see when I go to elementary
schools in my district in the inner city, and I look at them
and I ask the question, where will they be 20 years from now?
Will they be in a prison? Will they be in college?
And I am convinced that when children are conceived that
they already have gifts already in them. I believe that; I just
believe it.
The question is, what will we, as adults, do to bring those
gifts out, to nurture them and help them to be all that God has
meant for them to be.
And so I applaud what is being done here today. I look
forward to hearing the testimony.
I have said it before, but our children are the living
messages we send to a future we will never see. The question
becomes: What kind of message are we sending if we don't allow
them and do the things that are necessary for them to grow up,
develop, and be assets to our society?
And so, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Congressman. What we'll do is
we're going to go in an order that I think makes some sense in
terms of timing and in terms of our witnesses.
I know that Governor Sebelius is not here yet, but we'll
await her, but prior to that, I thought we would start with Dr.
Heckman, and I think what we'll try to do is keep statements
around 8 minutes, if that's possible, and keep our questions to
5 minutes, and maybe get a couple of rounds.
I wanted to introduce our witnesses right before they give
testimony instead of introducing them all at once like is
sometimes done here in Washington, but I think it's better to--
--
Senator Klobuchar. Rebel.
[Laughter.]
Senator Casey [continuing]. Go one at a time. So I want to,
first of all, introduce Dr. Heckman. Dr. Heckman is the Henry
Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the
University of Chicago.
He is also the Year 2000 winner of the Nobel Prize for
Economic Sciences. His research deals with such issues as
evaluation of social programs, econometric models of discrete
choice, and longitudinal data; the economics of the labor
market; and alternative models of the distribution of income.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Professor Heckman has
received numerous awards for his work, including the John Bates
Clark Award of the American Economic Association in 1983; the
2005 Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor
Economics; the 2005 University College, Dublin Ulysses Medal;
and the 2005 Aignar Award for the Journal of Econometrics.
He's the author of several publications and books
including: Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital
Policy?
On a personal note, Dr. Heckman's research has been very
instrumental to me and to my staff and, I know, to the staff of
many here on Capitol Hill. Also, we appreciate the expertise
that he brings to this issue and the value he places on early
childhood investments.
So Dr. Heckman, we're honored to have you here today, and
we're honored by your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES J. HECKMAN, RECIPIENT OF THE 2000 NOBEL
PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES AND THE HENRY SCHULTZ DISTINGUISHED
SERVICE PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Dr. Heckman. Thank you very much. Senator Casey,
Representative Maloney, and other distinguished Members of the
panel, it's a great honor to be invited here today and to
participate in today's hearing.
As has already been stated and will be stated again, the
issues addressed here today are of basic importance to the
country, and they concern the well-being of our children and
the future of American society.
I want to summarize, in the short time allotted me, a large
and convincing body of research in psychology, economics, and
neuroscience that's come together and that points to the
importance of the early years in producing successful outcomes
for the advantaged and in accounting for social pathologies
found among the disadvantaged.
This research, taken as a body, should cause us to rethink
policies focused on human development. We have come to
understand that the accident of birth is the greatest source of
inequality in American society and that public policy should
recognize this.
If you consider the problem of rising inequality in
America, which is hotly debated on Capitol Hill and in many
other parts of the country, it's a problem that has its roots
in disadvantage in early childhood.
Unnoticed in the recent discussions of inequality is the
growth in the percent of American youth who are high school
dropouts. If you actually measure it correctly, the high school
dropout rate is increasing.
At the same time, there are more genuine high school
graduates who are attending college. So what you're getting is
a phenomenon where you're finding a divergence, a growing
polarization in American society, where the percentage of
people who graduate from college is growing and so is the
percentage of people who drop out of high school, and this is
producing a shrinking middle class and a polarized society
Gaps in educational attainment have increased between
majority and minority youth. A large body of research
establishes that investing in disadvantaged young children
improves the productivity of the economy and, at the same time,
reduces social and economic inequality.
In the world of Washington, where I'm sure many times
before this panel you've heard about tradeoffs, a policy of
investing in disadvantaged young children is rare because
there's no tradeoff between equity and efficiency, between
fairness and economic productivity for these policies.
How is it possible to avoid an equity-efficiency tradeoff
that is so common, for example, if you look at tax cuts and
many other aspects of American social policy? And it comes
simply from what we understand about the early years exerting a
powerful influence over the rest of the life of a child.
I'm talking about the years 0 to 3, as well as the later
preschool years, 4 to 5. Children raised in disadvantaged
environments are much less likely to succeed in schools and in
an economic and social life, and are much less likely to be
healthy adults.
The good news, I think--and there is good news in this body
of evidence--is that there's a strong case that early
environments can be enriched and that we can offset, at least
in part, the powerful consequences of the accident of birth.
Let me just summarize briefly some main points, and
hopefully, in the discussion, we can return to these points.
First of all, many major economic and social problems--such
as crime, teenage pregnancy, dropping out of high school,
adverse health conditions--can be traced to low levels of skill
and ability in the population.
A second point is that ability gaps between the advantaged
and the disadvantaged open up very early in the life of
children. And what we've learned and come to understand, in the
context of a large body of research in economics, in
neuroscience, and in psychology--is that life cycle skill
formation is dynamic in nature: Skill begets skill; motivation
begets motivation.
If a child is not motivated and stimulated to learn and
engaged early on in life, the more likely it is that when the
child becomes an adult, it will fail in social and economic
life.
The longer we wait to intervene in the life cycle of the
child or the young adult or the adult, the more costly it is to
remediate, and the costs are staggeringly high.
I would argue that many of the programs we currently have
in place fail because they're not sufficiently well-funded--
adult job training programs, literacy programs, criminal
rehabilitation programs. If we actually calibrate and
understand the full cost of these interventions and what it
will take, if we wait to remediate to put people at the same
level of well-being, we would find a staggering gap between the
costs of true remediation and the costs of early investment.
In understanding these policies and understanding policies
toward early childhood, it's very important that we should
recognize the multiplicity of abilities.
A lot of public policy discussion focuses on promoting and
measuring cognitive abilities, IQ, in particular, as some
measure of an achievement test. For example, the No Child Left
Behind legislation focuses primarily on achievement test scores
in the fourth grade, not looking at a range of other factors
that promote success in school and in life.
We know that cognitive abilities are important.
What we've come to learn is that social-emotional skills,
physical and mental health, perseverance, attention,
motivation, self confidence, things that are sometimes called
soft skills--and Senator Casey was referring in his remarks,
may be not so well-measured--have been actually much bigger
impacts.
And when they are studied, they turn out to be equally
important in their effects on social life as cognitive skills
that receive so much attention.
Motivation, perseverance, and tenacity feed into
performance in society at large and even have been shown to
affect scores on the very achievement tests that actually
receive so much public policy attention.
Early environments are major predictors of cognitive and
social-emotional abilities that are important in life as well
as crime, health, and obesity.
This is a serious concern because family environments in
the United States--and for that matter, many other countries--
have deteriorated in the last 40 years so that, in fact, a
larger fraction of the workforce, the future American
workforce, will come from families who are relatively more
disadvantaged and that, by itself, will have substantial
effects on productivity growth.
The estimated slowdown in the growth of education is
expected to cut substantially in half, the contribution that
education has traditionally played in producing growth in
aggregate economic productivity.
Experiments support a large body of non-experimental
evidence that adverse family environments promote adult
failure.
If society intervenes early enough, it can affect cognitive
and social-emotional abilities and the health of disadvantaged
children. Early interventions promote schooling, reduce crime,
promote workforce productivity, and reduce teenage pregnancy.
And as has already been stated, these interventions are
estimated to have benefit-cost ratios.
Early interventions have much higher returns, as we've
studied them, much higher returns than later interventions that
have received so much attention, for example, reduced pupil-
teacher ratios, public job-training programs, convict
rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies, or expenditure on
police.
A major refocus of policy is required to understand the
life cycle of skill and health formation and the importance of
the early years.
So in summary, I would just refer to this figure, which I
have used before, that I think should hopefully guide the
discussions in today's session and in the future discussion
over this bill and related legislation.
If we look at what the rate of return to human capital
that's already been put in evidence--Art Rolnick's study was
mentioned--if we look at the rate of return to human capital
investment at different ages, and we look at various aspects of
where, if we spend a dollar, where in the life cycle we get the
highest return for the first dollar, it's in the earliest
years, the prenatal years, the early years of 0 to 3, and it
continues to fall off.
This does not mean that there isn't some return to
following up. In fact, early investment makes later investment
easier and reduces their cost. That's part of the reason why
the return to early investment is so high, that it improves the
capability of the child and makes the child economically much
more viable and socially much more viable so that later
remediation, which we know is very expensive if successfully
executed, will not have to be undertaken. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Heckman appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 51.]
Senator Casey. Thank you, doctor. I appreciate your
testimony. I know you condensed that, but you did a great job
of condensing, and we'll be able to further amplify and explore
some of these as we do questions.
We're joined by Senator Brownback. We want to thank Senator
Brownback for joining us. Do you have a statement that you want
to present now?
Senator Brownback. No, I don't, Mr. Chairman. I do have one
that I'd like to put into the record, and because I grabbed the
mike, I want to say a welcome to the Governor of Kansas who is
here and going to be testifying.
Governor Sebelius is in her second term as Governor of the
State, and has pushed a number of these issues aggressively,
has been a very vocal and outspoken advocate, and I want to
welcome her to the Committee, and look forward to her
testimony, and I hope you all listen very carefully to what she
has to say.
[The prepared statement of Senator Brownback appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 56.]
Senator Casey. Welcome, Governor, and thank you, Senator.
Governor, you're next. I wanted to make sure that you had a
little bit of an opportunity to catch your breath. We're
honored by your presence here today.
I wanted to--as you may have missed this when I was
introducing--read biographical information right before you
give testimony, instead of doing them all at once.
I probably violated some rules, but they'll get over it.
[Laughter.]
Senator Casey. But I wanted to just briefly summarize some
of your biographical information.
Governor Sebelius was sworn in as the 44th Governor of
Kansas in January of 2003, and just under 3 years later, Time
Magazine named her one of the Nation's top five Governors,
citing her work to cut waste in government and bridge the
partisan divide.
Governor Sebelius was reelected to a second term, as the
Senator mentioned, in 2006, and under her vision and
stewardship, programs and services for young children have
increased dramatically.
Last year the Governor proposed an increase in State
funding for early childhood education, including the creation
of prekindergarten pilot projects, which the Kansas Legislature
approved.
The Governor was elected chair of the Democratic Governors
Association in 2006, and she also chairs the Education
Commission of the States. She also serves on the National
Governors Association Executive Committee, and I especially
want to thank the Governor for her presence here today, but
also for placing top priority on children's health insurance,
something we're debating here with the S-CHIP reauthorization
this year as part of your comprehensive plan, early care and
education. It's an honor to have you here with us, Governor,
and we'd be honored to have your testimony.
STATEMENT OF HON. KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF
KANSAS
Governor Sebelius. Well, thank you, Senator Casey and
Representative Maloney, for inviting me here today. Thank you,
Senator Brownback, for those nice comments. I got a personal
greeting out in the hall, and I appreciate that.
It's nice to join these illustrious colleagues. Ms. Dichter
from Pennsylvania and I have worked together on this issue with
our fellow Governors, so I'm pleased that you brought your
fellow Pennsylvanian here. She has a great story to tell about
what's happening in Pennsylvania.
I'm just, first of all, pleased that this is on the radar
of Congress. I think that you've heard some eloquent testimony
from Dr. Heckman about the early investment paying large
dividends, and I think that has been demonstrated over and over
and over again.
If this were a hedge fund, I'd say put your money down
right away because it will yield enormous returns. We are not
as advanced as some States, in Kansas, but I would say we are
on the road to a recognition that providing universal access to
early quality childhood education is a very important
investment for us to make.
Kansas, right now, dedicates about 65 percent of our State
budget to education, and the citizens, as Senator Brownback
well knows, have a high value in education. They are willing to
put that kind of money forward, they demand excellence, and our
kids do pretty well, compared to children often around the
country.
Having said that, one of the things that we did recently
was a study conducted by the Department of Education of 5-year-
olds--first time ever, tested 5,000 5-year-olds in Kansas--to
see if they were school-ready when they hit school.
Now, we have a relatively homogeneous population; we don't
have some of the challenges that other Governors are dealing
with so I think Kansas is an interesting benchmark. The kids
test among the top ten in the country, wherever you go.
Fifty percent of the 5-year-olds in Kansas are not school-
ready when they hit school, and that's a series of cognitive
and social skills that make them ready to learn. So, if you
figure that's the snapshot on Kansas, it's probably a benchmark
that is potentially one of the highwater marks.
I would suggest that I was fairly stunned with that result
and what it tells me, as a Governor who is interested in
education and understands that having an educated workforce is
the key to our prosperity in the future; we are really not
spending our money as wisely as we could and we're not
currently preparing enough children to be ready to learn when
they hit schools.
So we spend millions of dollars once they hit school,
trying to catch kids up, and a lot of them will never catch up.
A lot of them are behind enough by the time they reach
kindergarten, that they will never be as successful as some of
their peers.
Kansas has done a series of interesting things at the State
level, starting with the tobacco settlement in 1999, where the
Kansas Legislature dedicated 100 percent of those resources to
children and then put together a working group who said it
shouldn't just be children's programs, new children's programs,
not replacement programs, but new children's programs, but it
really should go to 0 to 5 and focus on investing in our
youngest citizens, a series of healthcare and education
initiatives.
That work has been underway. We have the Smart Start Model,
copied after North Carolina's very successful program, which
looks at health and educationally-based early childhood
programs and has initiatives going all over the State.
When I became Governor in 2003, one of the things I
confronted--and I would suggest that this is happening around
the country, except in States ahead of us, like Pennsylvania
which has solved this situation--is that the silos of early
childhood education and childcare workers don't talk to one
another and often are somewhat at war with one another which
isn't very helpful.
In Kansas, at least, 80 percent of our 4-year-olds are in
out-of-home placement. If you go down to infancy, it's 55
percent, so most children are not in their homes right now, and
they are in a variety of settings.
They are in home-based daycare, church-based daycare,
school-based daycare, Head Start programs, early childhood
education programs, an array of options, some of which are very
good, very high quality; others are little more than, you know,
advanced babysitting, and everything in between.
So there is now a collaborative effort in Kansas to look at
some standard-setting for all of those programs, and an
agreement, whether the home-based child provider--we have them
at the table, school-based programs at the table.
Everybody is pretty much in agreement that we need
curriculum-based opportunities for children, before they hit
school, building readiness skills for school and getting kids
ready, particularly to read and learn math.
There needs to be a significant enhancement of training and
pay for childcare workers, childcare providers, early education
teachers. It's somewhat ironic to me that often we pay
professors who are teaching Ph.D. candidates, six times as much
as we pay someone who is dealing with a 3-year-old, but the 3-
year-old is going to be forming a lifetime brain capacity and
the Ph.D. candidate, arguably, could be self-taught, probably,
by that point.
So, if you look at the sort of payment scale, we probably
have it reversed in terms of the way we reward and acknowledge
and pay educators.
Enhanced training is a piece of the puzzle. People who deal
with very young children, need additional skills, additional
training.
Another piece of the puzzle that's so very important is
some quality-rating system so whether a parent is putting--
trying to choose a home-based center or a child-based center,
they need a way to evaluate.
Parents want to be thoughtful and have their children in
the best possible opportunity, the best possible opportunity
they can afford, but having some standardized evaluation
system, I think, is enormously helpful.
Again, I know that Harriet may speak about the Pennsylvania
Stars Program, but that's in place.
And I would just suggest that you look at early childhood.
Those are components for a system.
This isn't a one-size-fits-all. I think we need to have an
array of programs. There will be some children who will be in
out-of-home placement, a couple of hours a day, before they hit
kindergarten; others need 12 hours a day, all-day services.
Some will be in family settings; others will be in larger
school settings, but there's no reason at all that there can't
be some curriculum introduction, some quality rating, some
opportunities for parents to be involved and really become part
of those systems in the whole array of programs.
We have significantly enhanced our investment in early
childhood education, and my hope is that within the next 2
years, we will have universal access.
The most significant group at the table demanding an
investment in this area is the business community. This is, I
would suggest to you, a segment of the education system that
business leaders have, at least in our state--I think
Pennsylvania is the same; every place I look, it seems to be
the same--have embraced and understand that investment in the
youngest children, investment in giving skills so that these
children are ready to learn when they hit school, and can
actually keep up with their peers, and don't lose those skills
over the summer, is significant.
So we have a lot of programs that have leveraged private
business dollars, and they're eager to step up to the table and
invest, and I think that, again, that's a component you may
want to look at as you look at some enhanced funding for early
childhood education.
A piece of this, I would say, also needs to have a
healthcare component. If children are not healthy at 2 or 3 or
4, they're not going to learn. If they are not healthy at 5 or
6 or 7, they're not going to learn, but having an opportunity
to do early checks--we have a very aggressive early system that
identifies developmental disabilities and wraps services around
kids.
So, often, a 2-year-old who is identified as needing
services is up to peer level by the time he or she reaches
kindergarten. Not making that investment early on, I think,
again, is a huge mistake because often that will save huge
dollars in the long run and huge quality-of-life issues.
Finally, I would just echo what Dr. Heckman has already
said about the consequences of not acting. There are huge
societal costs, everything from teen pregnancy to drug use, to
dropout rates.
Economists now say there is a million-dollar difference
between a high school graduate and a college graduate, over the
lifetime of a worker, and if we assume that having early
childhood education, which proven in study after study,
prepares one to go on in school, that's a huge benefit to not
only each and every State, but the country to have that kind of
economic generation over a period of time.
We know that we will spend millions of dollars less in K
through 12 school in remedial education if we have children who
are actually ready to learn once they hit kindergarten. So not
only is the dollar saved in societal costs, but I think they're
saved in education costs that don't have to spent at a later
date, trying to catch kids up, keeping kids out of being tagged
as special ed kids or disruptive kids, or dropping out of
school altogether at some point too early in their lives.
So I'm pleased that I had a chance to take a brief look at
Senator Casey's bill, and teaching 3- and 4-year-olds, and the
kind of investment that you're suggesting we make. I think
that's right on track.
I would just suggest that having Congress look at investing
in this early area--29 Governors this year proposed
enhancements of pre-K programs. It's not Democrats and not just
Republicans, but people in States across the country, are
understanding that if we are going to have a successful
competitive workforce, if we're going to have education systems
that actually work well, we have to start at an earlier date.
Children are already out of the house; they should be
learning something and being prepared for school. Thank you for
allowing me to join you and I'd be pleased, at the end, to
answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Governor Kathleen Sebelius
appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 56.]
Senator Casey. Thank you, Governor. We appreciate your
leadership on these issues.
Next, Harriet Dichter has been someone I have known for a
long time. She went to law school at one point, but decided to
dedicate her life to children.
Right now, in our home State of Pennsylvania, she's deputy
secretary for the Office of Child Development and Early
Learning, covering two different departments, the Department of
Public Welfare and the Department of Education.
In this role she leads Pennsylvania's efforts to raise the
priority level for early learning, a cause to which she has
dedicated most of her professional career.
Through appointments in the public, philanthropic, and
nonprofit sectors, Harriet Dichter has focused on maternal and
child health, early learning, and youth development programs
and health insurance coverage for all children, and has been a
leader in successful efforts to improve service systems in all
of these areas.
She currently serves on the Pew Trust National Task Force
on Assessment and Accountability in Early Childhood, and also
on the Council on Accreditation for the National Association
for the Education of Young Children.
And I've known her for many years and I've learned a lot
from her, and I'm grateful for her presence here today and for
her commitment to children. Thank you, Harriet.
STATEMENT OF HARRIET DICHTER, DEPUTY SECRETARY, PENNSYLVANIA
OFFICE OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND EARLY LEARNING
Ms. Dichter. Thank you very much, Senator Casey. That was a
very gracious introduction, and thank you to the other Members
of the Committee for having me today.
Based on our experiences in Pennsylvania, there are really
three points that I would like to share with the Committee:
The first is that there really is no one silver bullet, not
just one investment or program that works, and what matters, no
matter what the program, is a common framework, high standards,
high accountability, and sufficient investment to make a
difference.
Second, at least from where I sit at the State level, the
Federal Government has not yet been sufficiently proactive in
this area and has left too much for the States to do,
particularly in areas of financing.
Third, we need to have some continued focus on appropriate
public-sector governance, in order to get good outcomes and
efficient use of the resources we have.
Now, first, let me say that we can no longer afford to
consider childcare as only a way to get our parents working or
that the quality of our children's learning experiences before
they reach kindergarten or first grade is not a public
responsibility.
To advance the early childhood agenda, we do need a
continuum of services--Professor Heckman referred to that--that
assures the educational and economic benefits from early
childhood investment.
I think this is as true for early childhood as it is for
any other system that we value like higher education or
healthcare. This means that we can and should expect to make
investments in programs with different names and labels--
childcare and prekindergarten are two that come to mind--and
that we should expect to make our investments in children each
and every year up to their entrance into school, and of course,
continuing investment in them in the school years.
In Pennsylvania, in fact, we do not focus on just one type
of early childhood program. We do insist now that all of our
programs get organized with certain commonalities: high
standards, accountability, sufficient financial and other
supports.
For example, we recognize that childcare reaches the
largest number of young children in our State. To that end, we
have created a systematic approach to voluntarily improving
quality. We call this Keystone Stars, and Governor Sebelius was
kind enough to mention that, and that integrates research-based
standards, improvement strategies, financial resources, and
public ratings of our programs.
Now, we recently had an independent evaluation of Keystone
Stars, and what it has actually showed us is that we have
reversed a 10-year decline in Pennsylvania in childcare
quality.
Part of how we've done that is we have managed to entice 60
percent of our childcare centers into participating in this
program.
But again, childcare alone is not enough. This year we are
seeking, in the State, to develop a new additional high-quality
program for at-risk 3- and 4-year-old children called Pre-K
Counts.
This will be a targeted, highly-focused investment and will
have immediate payoffs, we believe, in our school system, and
of course, future payoffs in the academic and career
achievement which will benefit children and the broader
community.
For exceptionally at-risk, very young children of very
impoverished mothers, we have continued to expand our Nurse/
Family Partnership Program. What these programs have in common
is a similar framework--high standards and expectations,
accountability for results, and sufficient financial support
for early childhood issues in different settings.
So we cannot, again, afford a silver-bullet approach to
early childhood development where you focus only upon one
program, one financing stream, but we do have to have a common
framework across these programs for our public investment.
This common framework, I believe, does make a meaningful
difference to children, and in fact, I believe it builds
confidence from business and from parents all around the
Commonwealth.
In Pennsylvania we have a framework we have developed.
There's a copy in my testimony, but let me just point out that
the first element of this framework, again, is high standards
and expectations for program quality, articulated for people in
plain English; based on research and on experience; focused on
the bottom line--good outcomes for kids.
Secondly, there is the professional preparation and
development and ongoing education of the teachers and
administrators to whom we are delegating the responsibility for
delivering these programs, in short, investment in accountable
methods for assuring that the people and the programs are of
good enough quality.
It is not enough to tell our staff in these programs to
achieve high standards; they need assistance in order to
achieve them and to maintain them. This is part of the
framework.
Third, there is accountability for results, in a practical
way, to help those people whose work is far outside of the
early childhood field to see and understand the results that we
are able to achieve for children.
And lastly, in the structure that we use is financial
supports that are linked directly and clearly to our standards
that we articulate and that are made available at sufficient
levels to get the job done.
Now, the second point I'd like to make is the importance of
shared and responsible public investment in these programs.
Professor Heckman has made the case for improved investment.
In Pennsylvania we have been working hard to improve our
State investment in these programs to give people a feel for
it. The Governor's current budget proposal, which is being
actively debated as we speak, calls for an increase of about
$200 million of investment in programs in my office, between
our appropriations in education and public welfare.
Now, when I take a look each year, as we start to build the
State budget request, I continue to have a pretty high level of
disappointment at the lack of improvement in our Federal
financial streams for the early childhood programs.
The established and dedicated funding streams in areas such
as the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start,
are simply not keeping pace. Pennsylvania is using State
resources, for example, to close the gap between those eligible
for Head Start and funded at the Federal level, and those we
have remaining in the State.
This year we will invest $40 million of State money to
serve Head Start eligibles in Pennsylvania. Additionally, of
course, we continue to invest significant resources to really
supplement and go beyond what's available to us through the
Child Care and Development Block Grant, both for helping our
working families with childcare subsidy and to build up
Keystone Stars.
In addition, our broad-based educational streams that can
be used on a discretionary basis to support some of the early
childhood programs such as those under No Child Left Behind are
also not keeping pace.
So while Pennsylvania has moved from what we estimate were
20 percent of our young children in the Commonwealth with an
opportunity to participate in a good quality program in 2003 to
just over 30 percent today, this is possible only because the
State commitment and the growth of our State dollars.
And that simply is not right. All of us reap a benefit--
you've heard that from all the testifiers so far--when we
invest in quality early childhood education that makes it
possible for children to achieve in school and throughout their
lives.
We need to see progress made at the Federal level in
improving our investment. This means we should stand by the
established programs and also that smart proposals, such as the
one that Senator Casey has advanced for preschool, should move
out of the idea stage and into a funded reality.
So, the Federal role is to help with financing at a level
that makes a meaningful difference, to insist that States have
meaningful standards and accountability based on nationally
acceptable minimums, and to facilitate coherence across the
Federal programs.
When we crafted Keystone Stars and the proposed Pre-K
Counts Initiative, we did turn to research-based evidence and
we turned to other States' experience to learn what standards,
accountability, and supports would produce quality results for
our children.
It is possible, I believe, to have a national baseline that
does not interfere with the sensitive implementation of our
State programs.
This brings me to my third and final point which is the
importance of organizing the programs and resources so that
they genuinely make sense.
Historically, public responsibility for early childhood
education programs has been scattered and divided amongst
different agencies and revenue streams, both at the Federal and
State levels.
I know that our families do not care what we call the
programs that we offer to them. It does matter if the program
is called Keystone Stars, Head Start, Pre-K Counts, or
something else. As parents and, I believe, as taxpayers, people
want to have confidence in the responsiveness and the quality
of the services for their children, and they want to know that
their public investments are made efficiently, and they do want
them to be well leveraged.
So in our State, we have chosen to take on some of these
issues through our governance structure. My office is fairly
unique in State government. We are part of both the Departments
of Education and the Department of Public Welfare.
Governor Rendell created this office in order to have
efficiencies, to unify and integrate the early childhood
programs of both agencies. The office does cover the waterfront
for early childhood.
We encompass school-based programs, community-based
programs for children from birth through our full-day
kindergarten initiatives. We have found that working across the
two agencies does allow us to take advantage of the assets of
both our human services frameworks and appropriations, and our
educational systems and frameworks and appropriations there.
At the same time--and I do have to stress this--we have a
single staff and, as I described earlier, a very consistent
framework that we use to systematically advance the work.
So I think we have recognized and organized our resources
in a new way and a creative way, fairly non-bureaucratic for
State government, and our governance structure actually has
tried to take into account, basically, the prior history where
people split care and split education, and for us, we really
have gone about trying to seek an alternative pathway to early
learning that kind of recognizes the best of each of these
value systems.
We do have to be prudent public stewards. I'm acutely aware
of that each and every day at work, but this approach to
government does allow us an ongoing commitment to both
excellence in terms of program quality and delivery, and to
efficiency.
So again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to
present today and especially Senator Casey for the bill that
you've introduced. We in Pennsylvania were very thrilled to
read it because, of course, it represented so much of the
history that you brought from your work in Pennsylvania, really
seeking to be sensitive to the needs of working families and to
recognize the tremendous benefits in quality for young children
from early childhood investment. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Harriet Dichter appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 59.]
Senator Casey. Thank you, Harriet, and I want to thank you
and the Governor for your leadership on this. We were with him
on Monday for a rally on the State Children's Health Insurance
Program which is another major priority that we won't be able
to address directly today.
Finally, our fourth witness today is Douglas Besharov, and
Mr. Besharov is the director of the Social and Individual
Responsibility Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
He is also the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar in
Social Welfare Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He
is a member of the faculty of the University of Maryland's
School of Public Policy, teaching courses on family policy,
welfare reform, evaluation and the implementation of social
policy, while also serving as the project director of the
University's Welfare Reform Academy.
From 1975 to 1979, Mr. Besharov was the first Director of
the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. Before
this, he served as Executive Director of the New York State
Assembly's Select Committee on Child Abuse, and he's authored
or co-authored several books and articles, and he contributes
to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the
American Enterprise Magazine.
Mr. Besharov, thank you for being with us today, and we're
honored to have your testimony as well.
STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS J. BESHAROV, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL AND
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY PROJECT
Mr. Besharov. Senator Casey, thank you very much. Madam
Chair?
Vice Chair Maloney. Vice Chair.
Mr. Besharov. Vice Chair, and Mr. Doggett, thank you very
much.
Well, I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly
delighted, given the comments of the last three speakers,
because it encourages me to emphasize a point that I make
towards the end of my testimony.
First, let me say, to get it over with, I think the
rhetoric about early childhood interventions is a little bit
like hedge-fund rhetoric.
Some hedge funds bring in a lot of money; some hedge funds
go belly up. A key lesson is to give the States the ability to
make their investments wisely by not directing their
investments from Washington. This is a very important point
which I'll return to in a minute.
We talk about the successful returns on investment, but
many early childhood programs are, at best, neutral to the
future of children, and some are harmful, according to the
literature, so we do have to be careful.
Having said that, let me emphasize the structural issues
because I think structure is important. Senator Casey, you used
what we used to call a $50 phrase, ``high-quality.''
The question is, how do we get there? And I'd like to
emphasize structure because this is the Congress, not the
States.
I was struck by Secretary Dichter's program which I did not
know about. Let me take the liberty of deconstructing what she
said. She said we took the Federal money, which comes to us in
different pieces with different rules, and bring it together at
the State level, right?
That's what we do, and we have to do that because of the
separate funding streams that are very difficult to coordinate.
So, I hope that in your legislation, as it works through
the process, includes enough State flexibility and parental
choice so that the States can achieve the kinds of quality
goals that you want.
Let me draw your attention to page 11 of my testimony. I
think you have it.
The story of the last 10 years is a dramatic increase in
pre-K and preschool programs all over the country. There are
now more children in pre-K programs in this country than in
Head Start.
In just a few years there will be more low-income children
in pre-K programs than in Head Start. Now, that leads me to
say, where is Head Start in this process?
Take a look at Table 1, and you can see we've laid out the
percentage of poor children in Head Start and other selected
arrangements. The numbers change as you go up in income.
About 48 percent of all poor 4-year-olds are in Head Start,
but now there are almost 30 percent, 29 percent in pre-K
programs and another 7 percent are in full-time childcare.
I think that's why it's so important to coordinate or allow
the States to have some coordination at the local level.
Many of those mothers with children in Head Start are
working; many are working full-time; many of the mothers whose
children are in pre-K programs are working full-time. Often,
they're working at night or at odd hours.
So, a program that's going to meet their needs has to allow
the States to build a comprehensive package around them, not
say to the parents, okay, we'll give you this, now you go run
around to the neighbor or whatever, and find something else.
That's a giant challenge for the Congress, and I won't hold
it against you if you can't address it because there are
different committees.
Fifteen years ago--I think it was 15 years ago, the
Congress decided there should be childcare legislation. It
seems sort of relevant that the legislation should come from
the committees that had jurisdiction over children and
childcare, but the Finance and Ways and Means Committees
thought they should have some childcare legislation as well.
And so for a number of years, the States and localities had
the burden of four childcare funding streams serving
essentially the same children. This is a giant challenge.
Maybe you can't deal with it this year, maybe you can't
deal with it next year, but if you have your choice in this
legislation, the more flexibility you can give the States to
work with these funding streams, the better.
I'd like to make two other points: It is a tremendously
complicated world out there. Some parents, especially Latino
parents, do not particularly like centers. Some parents have
needs for irregular hours. Some parents like neighborhood or
family-based childcare; others want center-based care.
Preferences seem to change between the time when a child is
1, 2, and 3, and when a child is 4 and 5. Almost all parents
seem to prefer center-based care for 4- and 5-year-olds, but
for younger children, family-based care is preferred.
Giving parents that freedom of choice--and I'll use that
word, ``choice''--means that the framework of the Child Care
Development Block Grant, which encourages parental choice
through vouchers, is an important component of any flexible
system.
So, my first point is let the States have as much
flexibility as you can give them, and let the parents have as
much choice as they can be given.
My last point is about this question of high quality and
what goes in the black box, or what's in the hedge fund.
There's a tendency to ignore the fact that within the field
there are raging arguments about what are the best curricula.
And the main reason, I think, why we've had so much success
in the preschool pre-K movement is because there hasn't been a
one-size-fits-all approach; it is because the States have been
allowed to experiment with different curricula.
Now, partly, I would therefore say that that has something
to do with State flexibility, but the other part of this is, in
this bill, and in all your efforts, I hope you will encourage a
strong commitment to research and testing the best curricula
and the best approaches to providing this care.
In my testimony, I mention that the Department of
Education, for the No Child Left Behind bill, has $200 million
for research; Head Start has $20 million, and there's only a
couple of million more for the rest of childcare.
As we move forward, whether it is a universal system or a
means-tested system, whatever it is--again, because not all
hedge funds are created equal because testing different
curricula is tremendously important, and because States have to
know which curricula seem to work better than others--I would
encourage you to make sure that there is sufficient funding for
research and demonstration so that we can improve the quality
of these programs and not just rely on the happenstance of
whether one particular State or another comes up with the best
curriculum.
Senator Casey. I am going to interrupt for one second only
because I was just told there is a vote underway, and it is
about 5 minutes into it. I have to go, and I have no control
over when the votes are so I have to leave. I will be back.
The real chair, the Vice Chair, will be taking over until I
come back, but I did not want to interrupt you. You still have
time on your testimony, and my comments will not detract from
that.
I will be back--and also before I go I want to apologize. I
think I was emphasizing the second syllable in your name. Would
you pronounce it for the record so we get it right?
Mr. Besharov. Oh sure, but it really does not matter. I am
quite used to it. It took me a number of years to learn how to
pronounce it myself.
[Laughter.]
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Mr. Besharov. Bes-shar-ov.
Senator Casey. Besharov, thank you, sir. And I apologize,
but I will return. Thank you.
Vice Chair Maloney [presiding]. Please continue with your
testimony.
Mr. Besharov. I am actually happy to go to questions and
answers.
Vice Chair Maloney. Well, I want to thank all of the
panelists for their contributions today.
I would like to ask Dr. Heckman a question. Your research
is so important in this field. It is cited in news articles and
other studies, and as I said earlier, you did a fantastic job
at our conference.
I would like to return to the chart that you talked about
and you referred to in your testimony showing that the dollars
you invest in the early years pay off dramatically in preparing
our young people to compete and win in our global economy in
the future.
Yet, we lag behind other industrialized countries in
publicly-supported preschool programs and childcare and,
really, family support in every way.
So I would like to ask Dr. Heckman, will the U.S. be able
to remain competitive in a global economy if we do not make
these investments in early childhood?
Dr. Heckman. There is a lot of evidence. If you look at the
slowdown in the rate of growth of college attendance, for
example, that suggests that we are falling behind, and certain
measures of workforce quality, we are finding--actually not
``we,'' but a lot of surveys have found that, in fact, 20
percent of the U.S. workforce is at so-called Level I, which is
a level of illiteracy and innumeracy which makes people
incapable of even reading or understanding the medication on a
bottle of pills given by a doctor.
If you go to Level II, which is not a high level of
competence, we are close to 40 to 50 percent of the workforce.
I think what is happening is that, of course, certain areas
of the U.S. are highly competitive. Our country has a lot of
incentives built in that keep it competitive. And we import
people from other countries. We are a magnet for migration.
On the other hand, the fact that we have this slowdown in
the growth of the college attendance rate and a growth in the
high school dropout rate, if you properly count it, means then
that we are actually slowing down the rate of growth of the
labor force quality which is a huge component in terms of a
determinant of economic growth.
The contribution of educational quality historically has
been about .35 percent per year. The estimates are that if the
slowdown continues--and it has been slowing down the last few
decades, the last decade or so in particular--that we will cut
that rate in half.
So the rate of growth will actually be decelerated. So what
will happen will be that we have a two-tier society. I mean,
the society will have more uneducated people, more people less
skilled, less able to cope, and then a companion highly-
educated society that will be integrated into the world economy
but segregated from the rest of society.
Now there are other ways to compensate for the high dropout
rate, but I think it will affect our economic performance.
Already we have heard stories from businessmen. Local
businessmen will tell you how difficult it is to hire skilled
workers, to get workers who are able to function as an ordinary
high school graduate used to function.
I think that impairs business productivity. So I think,
yes, you could compensate for our slow rate in production of
skill in various ways.
Now what has to be shown--and I think this gets back to a
point that many people have already made but I think we should
emphasize it again--is that in many of these areas of public
policy we take a very fragmented point of view.
We look at early childhood in isolation from other
policies. We look at different policies in isolation. What is
happening is the dots are being filled in. We are understanding
the connections.
We are really understanding that a major determinant of why
children are not going to college, for example, in the
testimony entered in the record, a big concern is minorities
are not going to college at the same rate as majorities.
The gap, if anything, is widening somewhat. And you ask:
Well, what is the major cause of this? Is it higher tuition
costs? Tuition costs have gone up. That has contributed some
role to college attendance.
But the real factor is the gap in abilities of children at
16, 17, and 18. And those gaps in abilities are opening up at
very early years. And what, if anything, we are seeing is what
demographers have called ``the great divide.'' That the
``haves'' are actually investing more in their children. More
educated women, even though they are working more, are spending
more time in child development.
They are having children later. They are having higher
resources and investing in their children.
The less-advantaged children--the children from less-
advantaged families are finding their mothers are also
increasing the labor force participation, not as much, but
certainly not the same growth in investment in those children
and the resources spent on them as for advantaged children.
So what will happen, I think, if we continue this
trajectory, is that you will have a very competitive half of
the economy or so and a very unproductive lower half which will
be a source of social and economic problems we can compensate.
But it seems like a very unwise strategy not to consider
this source of inequality and its later real effects on the
economic growth.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Besharov appears in the
Submissions for the Record on page 62.]
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you so much. That is a huge
concern I would say to the Democratic Congress because the gap
between the ``haves'' and the ``have-nots'' is growing. Under
President Clinton it had come together a little more, and it is
a huge matter of debate in conversation. We were talking about
it yesterday at our Caucus meeting.
Very briefly, what other strategies are out there to
increase productivity and economic growth? And how do
investments in early care and education compare to these other
strategies?
What other strategies are out there to help us achieve
this, and how do they compare to investing in early education?
Dr. Heckman. Well, for example, an emphasis that I would
share, I think with many people, the other witnesses at this
hearing, is that we should really take a unified approach to
understanding how to develop human beings.
If we do that, we then start doing a cost-benefit analysis,
an evaluation analysis, of various other programs targeted at
different stages of the life cycle.
So for example, if we look at a very commonly considered
program--increasing school quality, you know, reducing the
pupil-teacher ratio--that's been studied, if you actually look
at what the economic benefits are of just cutting the pupil-
teacher ratio by a significant amount, by the way, you will see
real effects on the earnings of the kids. But if you count the
costs, you actually get a negative rate of return as opposed to
the very high rates of return that have been estimated by the
premiere early child programs.
If you look, for example, to job-training programs as they
are currently funded, not as they could be funded, but if you
look at as they are currently funded, for example, the Job
Corps, which has received a lot of attention, the Job Corps, as
a remediation effort to try to compensate for adverse early
environments, basically had no return.
A Labor Department study a couple of years ago done by
randomized trial evaluations found that the Job Corps was
actually not significantly producing any real benefit for the
individuals. It wasn't harming them, but it was not helping
them. And so that is disappointing, suggesting we have to spend
more to really compensate for this kind of disadvantage.
So if we look at an array of programs that are
traditionally embodied in public policy, and we carefully do
the cost-benefit rate of return analysis, what we find is that
at current levels of funding, whether it is illiteracy programs
for adults, convict rehabilitation programs, a number of other
programs of that type, we find substantially lower returns than
we do for early childhood investment.
The reason I keep emphasizing, and others have emphasized,
is this percolating quality: What economists like to call a
multiplier. If you build the base, it becomes much easier to
build later and to actually foster investment. So you can get
very high rates of return to people who are very highly
educated in early years, and we know, for example, that people
who have high levels of ability, high levels of education, will
continue learning much into later life.
Those people who are less able receive less education, less
early childhood stimulation, less stimulation in the early
years; are much more likely to quit learning and to dissipate,
and be much less likely to keep up.
So in terms of other policies, though, policies directed
toward disadvantaged children have much higher rates of return
than returns on capital and other items. High quality
investments have those high returns.
Vice Chair Maloney. My time has expired and I recognize
Congressman Doggett.
Representative Doggett. Thank you very much. Thanks for all
the testimony.
Governor, I think the progress and the leadership reflected
in your testimony, along with the recent very productive
service of our colleague, Nancy Boyda, confirmed what my friend
Dennis Moore has been saying, that there is really nothing the
matter with Kansas.
[Laughter.]
Representative Doggett. I appreciate what you are----
Governor Sebelius. I appreciate that.
Representative Doggett [continuing]. What you have to say.
And I realize that traditionally, the Federal role in education
has focused on addressing some of the gaps that Dr. Heckman
talked about. We have seen perhaps the biggest payoffs when we
focused on Title I Schools or the mixed results on Head Start
at addressing our most disadvantaged Americans.
But I note that the title of the legislation you have filed
is ``Prepare All Kids Act.'' We know that the benefits of
quality early childhood education are significant for all
children. I would like to proceed on the assumption that after
a few more roadblocks are out of the way there will be
something like the pioneering work that Congresswoman Maloney
has done, and ask you to also focus on the challenges that our
middle class children face.
Usually these young children are the children of young
parents who find that the cost of getting in a quality
prekindergarten program may be as much as in-State college
tuition would be, but they have not had the time to start a 529
account or the other kinds of saving plans to get ready for
that expense.
We know that prekindergarten education would be significant
to them. We also are aware of research that the learning and
social gap between middle-income children and upper-income
children is greater than the learning and social gap between
middle-income and lower-income children.
Lower-income children have access to a variety of programs
through childcare vouchers and Head Start, and the various
funding streams that are a problem that you referred to as well
as targeted pre-K in 38 States. However, middle-income families
often do not have access to anything unless they can put out
the kind of money that I referred to.
I would just like you to react to what we might do, any of
our witnesses, to ease the burden on middle class families and
assure more access to quality programs for our middle-income
children.
Governor Sebelius. Well, Congressman, I might take a quick
shot at that, and then I have to apologize. I do have to leave,
and I will leave this discussion to my learned colleagues.
I think you are absolutely right that this is not about
poor children only catching up. As I said, in the testing that
we did of 5-year-olds in Kansas, 50 percent of the kids are not
ready for school. Those are not 50 percent of the poor kids; it
is 50 percent of all the children who live in our State, who
for a variety of reasons, are not school ready which I think
raises the issue then of making the investment at a much
earlier time and actually having a more universal investment.
What that does not mean is that every program, as Harriet
has said and Mr. Besharov has said, has to look alike. I mean,
we need an array of choices. We need an array of programs. But
I think they need to have some common components, some
curriculum-based, research-based studies; training and
education for the professionals who are there with the kids;
and really look at school readiness opportunities.
There is no question at all that a lot of parents are
struggling with affording quality childcare. I would just echo
what Harriet has already said: States are really trying to fill
the gap.
The Federal commitment in this area has lagged
significantly behind where the needs are. And so a lot of
States around the country are not only looking at challenges of
funding K 0912, but really accelerating that look to a much
earlier child and trying to spread that throughout programs.
And, fill in gaps.
We put a lot of State resources this year, as Pennsylvania
did, into early Head Start, and into Head Start, and into
trying to--into pilot projects for pre-K, and to having parent
rating systems.
So we are trying to make it a much more universal system.
But I do not think there is any question that all of our
children are ready to learn. They are just not often in
situations where they can be learning at that early age.
Representative Doggett. Thank you very much, and thank you
for coming here today to testify.
Governor Sebelius. Thank you for having me.
Representative Doggett. Before asking the other panelists
to comment, I guess beginning with Ms. Dichter, I would just
draw your attention to a study that you are probably familiar
with, ``Enriching Children: Enriching The Nation,'' by
columnist Robert Lynch at the Economic Policy Institute.
It is the first study that I have seen that tries to look
at the advantages of, as your bill suggests, preparing all kids
with a quality prekindergarten education versus a targeted
approach.
His projection maintains that after a few decades of
operation, we would generate--since this is the Joint Economic
Committee--hundreds of billions of dollars in increased
earnings by providing quality prekindergarten education,
whether the Federal Government has a role or not. It could be
provided through the States and other ways over a targeted
approach.
We would see almost $100 billion more each year as a result
of a universal program over a targeted program as well as
decreased criminal behavior, and other social benefits of that
type.
Given the way we calculate the economics of other
interventions financed by the Federal Government, do you
believe that the benefits justify the costs of implementing
more than a targeted program for prekindergarten?
Do you want to lead off on that, and then we can call on
the economists?
Ms. Dichter. Sure. I will start.
I agree with the analysis that you have put forward, and it
is actually that assumption and set of principles that has
actually formed the basis for our efforts in Pennsylvania where
we have tried to create a framework that can really lead us
towards investment for all children.
We do believe and agree that the data shows both--in the
short term, actually, in issues of children at risk of school
failure--that that issue is not confined to low-income
children; that there are plenty of middle class children
basically who, in fact, need early supports, basically, and
will benefit from them in the near term, in terms of their
schooling as well as this whole framework we have been talking
about around economic competitiveness, which really drives us
to say that ultimately where we have to get is opportunities
for all children--basically, parents making choices for them,
of course, about what they wish to do with them and the
settings they wish to have them with. But really, the core of
our work across the board has been to be smart at present
around the limitations in the financial funding streams that we
have and to understand that we may have to give some initial
preferences, as we are developing our programs, to kids on the
basis of economic issues but to create the programming and the
framework so that we can really build towards this issue that
we have been talking about which is all the children in the
community.
And again, you know, we see this very much in the context
of the things that Dr. Heckman has talked about here in terms
of our competitiveness, both at the State level and actually at
the level of the country as a whole in the global economy.
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you----
Mr. Besharov. If I may?
Vice Chair Maloney. Sure. Certainly.
Mr. Besharov. I do not do politics, and I know it is quite
difficult for the Congress to do something just for poor
people.
We have a model that was developed with funding from
private foundations and HHS that prices out different options.
Fully funding just the childcare Developmental Block Grant
costs about $75 billion at the cost of a pre-K program. And
that is about a half or a third of the total cost of covering
all 0- to 5-year-olds, and children in after-school programs.
You could be talking here about a universal program for all
preschoolers that would cost between $20- to $50 billion.
Notice it is a very big range.
My concern would be the following:
We have a Student Loan Program that started out as a
program intended for the most disadvantaged. I think most
people who look at that program think the middle class is
getting too much of the dollars, if you combine the tax
dollars, the Pell grant dollars, and so forth.
So I fully understand the rhetoric about universal access.
I hope the process is very carefully designed to help the
people in greatest need first, at least to give them the
biggest bite of the apple as you are adding money.
Otherwise, we could leave the poor out of this as we so
often do.
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Dichter, you suggest in
your testimony that the Federal Government--and actually
Governor Sebelius made the same point--that the Federal
Government can lend support in two key areas: creating a stable
funding stream for investments by the States, and secondly by
establishing quality standards.
Can you elaborate? And Mr. Besharov, and Dr. Heckman, you
can join in if you would like, but Ms. Dichter if you would
begin, can you elaborate on what you think the appropriate
Federal role is for supporting early childhood investments in
these two areas?
Ms. Dichter. Sure. Let me say on the overall financing side
that we would very much like to see, we have some existing
funding streams. I think people have talked some about them and
the fact that we experience them at least at the State level as
not having sufficient investment in them yet, leading us to
make decisions under the Governor's leadership to really
advance State level investment.
Additionally, the bill that you and Senator Casey have
proposed is very consistent actually with our thinking and our
understanding of how we continue to grow investment strategies,
and I think would work very well with existing funding streams.
In terms of some of these questions around expectations for
quality--in other words, where is it that we would wish to see
basically some Federal emphasis and expectation to be able to
support sound implementation--let me again say that I actually
think in the context of the bill that has been proposed that
bill does a really good job of identifying basically core
components where we want to make sure that States are basically
on track.
But to reiterate, as I think people here know, from our
point of view when we are talking about good enough to
basically serve our children well and serve our economies well,
we want to have a focus on who is the teacher in the classroom.
That adult in the classroom with the children makes a
significant difference. And her qualifications. And very
importantly, her ongoing continuing professional development
and education. Of course, the compensation for that all
matters.
I think people here have talked about the importance of
curriculum. We have seen that actually in our independent
studies that we have done of our own State-funded programs: The
importance of basically having people to understand that they
are going to make local choices around curriculum issues. That
is a very big issue in our home State.
We, as a State, would never tell anyone what curriculum to
use, but people do feel and agree that it is our place to
articulate clear standards basically and to show people how
curriculum choices align against the standards.
I believe there is an expectation basically in the
legislation that you have put forward that people will make
appropriate choices and will implement them.
A broad perspective on child development. Again, I think
that people here have spoken some about that. We understand
that we have a lot to do for young children in terms of their
language and their cognitive development, but in a broader
context of their social and other development. Those things are
consequential to their school achievement and to their lifelong
achievement as well.
So we would hope for an expectation at the Federal level
basically that we would treat children in this age cohort and
this age grouping basically as a whole child.
Other are these kinds of expectations: ratios. Alright--it
does matter, again, the quality of that interaction between the
adults, basically, with very young children.
Part of being able to understand this with this age cohort
of kids, of course, has to do with keeping the grouping small
enough basically and those ratios good enough.
Then other issues I would just mention would be linkages,
basically, to the rest of our human service system. People have
talked about health care quite a bit today, and I know that is
a big interest of everyone who is here to make sure that we are
not building isolated early childhood programming, and that we
are helping our families basically and the practitioners in
those systems to understand the linkages and to be adept,
actually, at promoting those.
Because again, we need to be focused on the whole of the
child's needs.
Three other issues I would mention very quickly would be
sufficient resources to be able to make a difference in terms
of quality.
Good transparency on accountability, which I do believe we
can get to without sacrificing our big interests on child
development.
And finally, actually, the other area that I think is just
very important that we do not talk about enough in terms of
expectations for good outcomes for children is to understand we
can have great program ideas. We can do all the things I just
said around money and around establishing expectations, and
create enough flexibility, but we have to pay attention to
implementation and monitoring.
Some of these issues that I have talked about are around
building the capacity of excellence for the programs and the
practitioners, and understanding that there is an interactive
role, basically, on the funding side for how it is we go about
monitoring and doing our implementation work so that we really
end up, again, with excellence in terms of the program delivery
and the outcomes for the families and the children.
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you. Would anyone else like to
make a comment on the Federal role? Yes, Dr. Heckman.
Dr. Heckman. I would just add--and I think I would not
disagree and may be making a point that Doug Besharov already
made in part--and that is that I think that the Federal role
can be very powerful in the sense of trying to unify the
various components that are now currently scattered around.
I think it is intrinsic to various academic fields the way
that knowledge is built up is to segment the life of the child,
the life of the person, into different cabinet agencies and
different groups. It is important to have unified policies to
have some kind of unified agency--even call it a Human Capital
Agency--some initiative that would simply put together the full
life: Understanding from the early years into the adult life,
to understand that integration.
Then also--and to repeat a point that Doug made--I think
the Federal role can also be very powerful in the sense of
encouraging fostering evaluation of the State experiments.
I am sympathetic to what he said earlier about the fact
that we really want to allow these States to experiment, and I
think you are in agreement, and I think everybody is in
agreement with that because here if a hundred flowers bloom, or
a thousand flowers bloom, we will probably finally find the
best model. And I think we want to have that evolutionary
process going.
So the Federal Government can play a very powerful role in
pulling the pieces together.
Vice Chair Maloney. Thank you. Since you have been quoted,
you can speak for yourself.
Mr. Besharov. At the risk of sounding obnoxious, I would
like to say something about what you might do if this bill gets
to Conference, and people are grousing about Federal
requirements.
I hate to say I am so old, but I am so old that I used to
work at HHS when it was HEW, when HEW was assigned the job by
the Congress of coming up with Federal childcare Standards.
Twice a week this group of people, heads hung low, would
walk into this windowless office and argue about whether it
should be 19 children and 1 teacher, or 11 children, or
whatever, and so forth. And of course, it was a programmatic
and political catastrophe.
You will have to do it. Besides everything else, you are
Democrats. I understand. But my two cents here is, while you
are doing that, remember that most of the States are ready to
run with this ball. They can be trusted. What they need is the
tools.
They need the research tools. Listen to how we have been
talking. We have been comparing notes about research findings.
They talk to each other more than they talk to the Federal
Government.
When it comes to a little bit of a compromise about that,
sure, let the standards get a little weaker or whatever, but
just make sure the research and the knowledge development is
there so that the States can pick and choose, and so that we
can improve the programs over the years without that kind of
artificial straitjacket.
Vice Chair Maloney. My time has expired. My colleague,
Congressman Doggett.
Representative Doggett. Well, I agree with your conclusion
about not tying the States' hands. I think one of the main
reasons that the States have made progress here is that for the
last decade the Federal Government has sat on its hands and
done nothing in this area.
One of the issues that you raised, Ms. Dichter, that I was
interested in is the idea of how we can better inform parents
about what choices that they have.
Is there any role that the Federal Government should play
in encouraging the States, some of which are in the forefront
like Pennsylvania and some of which are almost nowhere like a
few of our States, to provide information on quality and set up
those kinds of systems to give parents more informed
information about the choices that they have?
Ms. Dichter. Thank you. That is a very good question and, I
think, important. I also, in answering that--because I think
some of this leads to a framework that can be offered to the
States basically through improved Federal leadership in these
areas--I do want to say that I mentioned the issue of
standards.
Every State has been left on its own to build its early
childhood program standards. We were one of the last in the
country to build ours, so that we were able to take great
advantage of what other States had been able to do.
But as we were working on them, I really kept wishing that,
in fact, there had been some models set forward basically from
the Federal Government that would have made--our work was made
easier by all those other States that were first.
But the fact is I really wish that there had been some
effort to basically build some of those models and to show us
what some of that work would be.
We did the same thing as we went to build our Infant-
Toddler Standards. So I think some of that principle actually
can also apply in this very important issue that you raise
around how it is we are really seeking to educate parents.
As we all know, parents actually--for their young
children--they want to do what is best. And as I think we also
understand, parents are actually pretty lousy assessors of the
quality of the early child environments in which they are
enrolling their children.
There is a lot of emotion there. It is very difficult for
people to see this stuff. And as we have all talked about this,
actually, there is a lot of professional expertise involved in
delivering these programs. We cannot really expect the parents
to have, in fact, absorbed all of that professional expertise.
So I am on that question of sorting what the Federal
Government might be able to do to make that easier. One would
be one of the issues that have been raised around the research
side: To sort of help us validate and to understand the pluses
and the minuses of some of the systems' building we have been
doing at the State level basically to try to produce better
information and better connections with our parents.
The other, I think, would be to understand, with the
funding streams that we currently have, the Child Care and
Development Block Grant, the way that Head Start is
structured--again, what we are allowed to use off of the
Elementary and Secondary Education money for the efforts in the
preschool years.
How it is we could actually achieve better flexibility
basically in those pools so that we would be able to do some of
this kind of integration that we have been able to achieve in
Pennsylvania to make it easier for people to do--show people a
firmer pathway basically for that.
I think the other, again, is as we work towards--and
obviously I am an endorser of us achieving new Federal funding
streams in these areas--I think they would be a great benefit
to try to create them, again with sensitivity, that they are
going to leverage off of existing investments and not make them
so categorical and so hidebound actually that we are not able
to achieve some of these integration pieces that we are talking
about.
So I think there is actually a lot there that can be done
basically in terms of the parent outreach process and these
kind of building supports for making it more transparent to the
families what we are offering to them and making more of it
actually available that, again, is good enough for them to feel
comfortable with the enrollment of the children in the
programs.
Dr. Heckman. But just to add to that, there is a lot of
evidence that parenting programs, per se, are quite effective.
So for example, in the Nurse-Family Partnership Act, which
teaches young girls who are mostly high school drop-outs, there
is a direct involvement with a parent.
See, this is the notion of a comprehensive approach.
Understand that if you offer these programs and say we are
going to provide this information, many people will sign up.
You know, there is no shortage of applicants. In fact, there is
a great desire.
So simply making them available and understanding that part
of the process of building the child is also developing the
parenting skills which I think really do differ greatly among
different elements of society.
So the Federal role could really emphasize this as an
ingredient of a successful program, the more comprehensive
notion.
Ms. Dichter. Yes. I just want to--I did not emphasize that
sufficiently. As I have said, we are actually attempting to get
the Nurse-Family Partnership to really be a statewide
initiative in Pennsylvania.
Now again that is actually a very highly targeted program.
It is at a very high-risk population level, and we actually now
are up to about half of our counties being able to field the
program. We would like to get that to all of our programming.
We have tried to build in--again, this is my point around
kind of a common framework for the work--regardless of what the
setting is, or the pieces, we do think there is an essential
connection in terms of good program design around the
connectedness of an early childhood program to the parents.
And so, some may be these highly targeted efforts, as
Professor Heckman talks about, and we feel, in Nurse-Family,
some may be classroom-based programs where, again from our
point of view, all the adults in the children's life are
contributing. They are making a huge difference.
We think the data and the evidence is pretty clear around
the power of the program-based interventions, but we in fact
obviously do not want to have program-based interventions where
the adults do not see themselves as partners, teachers, and
practitioners together with the parents.
So it is pretty essential how it is then that we educate
parents and work with parents, and actually really have them
engaged in the models.
If we look more carefully at our work, again I think you
will see that we have sought to embed that across all of our
programming.
Dr. Heckman. Let me just add to that. I think this comes
back full circle to a question that was raised earlier. That is
the issue of universality.
The one thing we have learned is that there are huge gaps
in the amount of parental involvement between highly-educated
women and less-educated women. This affects the case for
universality.
You were citing the Lynch Study and so forth. I think there
is really evidence that, if anything--and what the demographers
have found very convincing--is that there has probably been a
greater emphasis placed by both educated mothers and educated
fathers in trying to enhance the well-being of the children.
Understanding that early years are important, they read.
That is an argument, I think, that works against
universality in some sense, or at least says go to where the
needs are the greatest, because where the great divide is
occurring is among the less-educated women, the less-educated
families, the ones with fewer resources that are not embodying
these practices as much on a voluntary basis.
So I would say that, in some sense, telling an educated
mother the importance of reading to the child is redundant. It
would be a waste of money. So you get real dead weight in the
public expenditure.
Whereas, going to the Nurse-Family Partnership Program and
various other programs that are targeting disadvantaged people
will have a very high return. There is always the other point
which is that if you make a program universal, and you
recognize that the middle class and upper-middle class kids,
anything you give them--they will add to--could actually widen
the inequality rather than shrink it.
So I mean, you have to be very careful in thinking about
the universality issue in this context; that, in fact, it could
actually reverberate in the wrong direction.
Vice Chair Maloney. That is a very, very important point.
As a follow-up to my colleague's questioning of you, you have
focused on the importance of really building systems and
working together and really reforming the way we are putting
these funds out to the States.
But can you tell us in your experiences about the
impediments that you have encountered to integrate early
childcare education and health initiatives in your States or in
your research.
You talk about such an important need, but what is stopping
us from going forward and making that happen in a more unified
way that you have spoken about? Any impediments?
Ms. Dichter. Sure. I will take a stab at that.
A significant impediment continues to be in this work
resource issues. I have mentioned this before. Finance and
resources are fairly significant.
I think, as you have heard from all the panelists today, in
fact, while this work is complex, it is not altogether
difficult to build a good framework that is sensitive to all
the issues that we have been talking about in terms of meeting
the needs of children, meeting the needs of parents, meeting
community needs, and business needs. So that is a very viable
piece.
So one big issue really, I think, remains basically the
need to actually get more resources on the table to be able to
reach more children, and to reach them more effectively. That,
perhaps, may be our No. 1 impediment.
In my experiences, at least at the State level, I have
found that it is possible within the State structures to
organize the resource in a creative way.
As I have mentioned, there are barriers, in terms of our
Federal funding streams, from time to time that they do not
work as successfully together as I would like to see them work,
but I think we have shown that you can be persistent,
basically, managing a bit around that.
So I think what I would say about the big picture here is
that one of the most consistent challenges, basically, that we
have now is actually acquiring sufficient resources to have the
reach that we believe the data tells that we should have around
reaching young children and their families and their
communities.
Vice Chair Maloney. I would like to invite all of the
panelists to send us in writing what the specific barriers in
Federal funding streams are so that we can work on that as we
go forward.
We certainly want to help and support the work that all of
you are doing.
Mr. Besharov, and then my time has expired.
Mr. Besharov. Well, I will just quickly direct your
attention to page 12 of my written testimony, Table 2, where,
using that model I told you about, we estimate the costs of
these different programs.
This is slightly controversial work so feel free to put
plus or minus 10 or 20 percent confidence intervals around
these costs, but other than that, I stand behind them ``1,000
percent.''
The problem, I would say, Congresswoman, is that some of
these programs cost loads more than other programs. And it is
quite difficult to integrate them without knowing how you are
going to do so.
Making Head Start full-time, full-year are some programs
that would cost almost $21,000 per child a year. That is the
national number.
Subsidized childcare for essentially the same mothers and
the same children costs about $8600 a year. And that is for the
same number of hours.
And our estimate of the cost of pre-K, full-time, full-
year, is around $13,500 per child.
So when you try to mesh these three programs, you find
yourself saying, well, we will do Head Start in the morning,
which is very expensive, and we will try to find some less
expensive childcare in the afternoon. How are we going to do
this? Are we going to bus the children from one program to
another? Their structures are different. Head Start gets its
money directly from the Federal Government. The CCDF gets its
money largely through a voucher system but not entirely.
The pre-K world is a little bit more mixed with, I think,
three-quarters of the dollars going through public schools.
That is why it was so impressive to hear Secretary Dichter's
organizational way of cutting through this. But here you have
some other really concrete problems.
Now, one answer is to make subsidized childcare as rich or
as expensive as Head Start. Another way is to figure out why
Head Start is costing so much, and decide which parts of that
you want to universalize, which parts you want to make just for
the most needful children.
In my testimony, by the way, I point out the following: If
present trends continue, pre-K programs are growing. They are
winning a market test in the State and local area. The fact
that you are holding this hearing says these programs are very
attractive to parents.
I have been criticized, but on this point, I think the
evidence is clear. Parents are choosing pre-K programs over
Head Start. Head Start's enrollment of 4-year-olds is going
down. We have an opportunity to look at the future of Head
Start and use Head Start for the kinds of things that Jim and
Harriet were talking about which is focusing on the most
needful children.
You and I have been at meetings about teen mothers. In my
testimony, I say we are beginning to see Head Start taking on
ever younger children because it is losing the competition for
4-year-olds. Let's take that as being inevitable, and let's
look at Head Start as a super-powered program for the very most
needful parents, and do what we have to, including spending
more money, for those parents but not to universalize $20,000-
a-year for childcare.
Senator Casey [presiding]. I want to thank your Vice Chair,
Congresswoman Maloney----
Vice Chair Maloney. I will be back.
Senator Casey [continuing]. Who is going to be coming back,
and I appreciate her taking over.
I was just informed again that there is another vote. This
is not my day in terms of timing, but that is not anyone else's
problem.
I wanted to have Harriet Dichter respond just for a moment
on a couple of things in the limited time I have. I will try to
get back as soon as I can, or we may have to temporarily
adjourn and come back, but I wanted to get one question in to
Dr. Heckman before I left.
This whole question of a family environment in the
development of the life cycle of skills and health information
over time--and I think this is a solid bill, and we have got a
lot of work to do on it yet, but beyond the bill, or in
conjunction with this bill, what do you think the Federal
Government should be doing in this area in terms of focusing on
those priorities of helping to enhance that family environment
and developing both cognitive skills and the noncognitive
skills?
Dr. Heckman. Well, I think--and this relates to the earlier
question, actually. There is a powerful role in facilitating
the knowledge integration process.
You see, one of the barriers in many of these, and one very
important barrier, is knowledge. The knowledge about child
development is one that is rapidly changing.
Policy has been slow to catch up with it. If you think
about, for example, the importance of the early years on
health, it was only about 10 years ago that an English
researcher named David Barker pointed out a connection between
adverse early environments and cardiovascular health in adult
years.
This is still a debate about my this. My colleague, Robert
Fogel, at the University of Chicago works on this. It is an
area where there is active research. The research is coming
together, and it is inevitable that the policy is going to be
conservative somewhat and try to filter this evidence and not
just take the latest research item.
But the Federal Government can play a very powerful role in
facilitating this research and integrating it across cabinet
level agencies. Forcing, for example, people to think in ways
that are--or at least suggesting, anyway, that people should
think in ways that we simply did not think about 40 years ago.
I mean, 40 years ago everybody thought that IQ was the be-
all and end-all of achievement. You know, Head Start was
considered a failure in 1969 because it did not boost IQ. Well,
the Perry Preschool Program did not boost IQ either, and we
consider it to be a very highly successful program.
What we have understood in the last 20 years is that
noncognitive skills matter. What we are only beginning to
understand is how noncognitive skills feed into very important
aspects of health.
I'll give you an example of this point that concerns
diabetes, an epidemic. We do not associate of diabetes with
early childhood at all, but the fact is, we know that one of
the biggest problems with patients, with diabetics and so
forth, is that they know what they are doing is wrong. They
know what the right protocols are.
A lot of successful treatment has to do with self-control.
Regulation. Things that I think one can shape at earlier years.
So connections that have not yet been fully exploited where
different cabinet agencies sort of see this part of the person
or that. This needs to change.
Medicine is changing radically now towards much more
prevention, much more towards individuals taking self-control
of their lives. That means you have individuals who have better
capacities not only to process the information but to act on
it.
And that is a totally different perspective of medicine
than I would say we had 30 or 40 years ago when the view was
the doctor would cure somebody who had an exhibited problem,
some problem that was demonstrated.
Now we can prevent it. So I think what the Federal
Government can really be creative in a way that the State
governments cannot be, or have not been, anyway--and not to say
the State governments have not been creative and thought about
these issues--but it can facilitate the research on early
childhood, the work at NIH, the work in various agencies that
are devoted to different aspects, and really recognize that we
really are dealing with the development of human capabilities
and human potential.
Putting that together would be powerful. I think that is a
big barrier towards our knowledge and towards acting in a
politically coherent way. Because the knowledge is new, and it
needs to be distilled and put together in a consistent way.
Senator Casey. Thank you, doctor. I have to take a break
now. I think we should probably break. Now of the three of you,
can all three stay, or do you have to go? Because I think we
have still another half-hour if people can stay, but I realize
you have got schedules.
Mr. Besharov. We can stay.
Dr. Heckman. Yes.
Ms. Dichter. I can stay.
Senator Casey. Three for three. I am sure you could use a
break, by the way. You have been here for awhile. Thank you,
and we will return but either Congresswoman Maloney or I will
be here first, and we will continue. Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Senator Casey. I think what we will do is to resume. I want
to say again how much I appreciate everyone's patience.
We even have some members of the audience left. That is
especially impressive.
Mr. Besharov. They are our friends.
Senator Casey. But I wanted to try to go maybe another 15
or 20 minutes, and please, if any of the three of you have to
leave before that, I perfectly understand, and that certainly
goes for the audience as well.
But Dr. Heckman, you were sharing with me some rather new
research. Instead of trying to have me summarize it, or
headline it, if you don't mind just reviewing what we just
talked about kind of off-stage, so to speak.
Dr. Heckman. Well one item--there is a large project that
we have been conducting in the last 2 years which is to go back
and re-analyze and actually pull out of old data many findings
that were never previously analyzed.
So in particular, we have looked at the Perry Preschool
data which have been much discussed but rarely analyzed by
other people. There have been some recent reanalyses. But there
are a number of issues, and they are technical issues, and I
will not get into them, but what I was showing you was some
very supportive information that confirms what I think is
becoming a very central part of the argument for early
childhood intervention.
That is, that noncognitive skills, the socioemotional
skills, the ability of individuals to be open to experience,
conscientiousness, when we measure these--and it turns out that
there are measures that are possible in the Perry Preschool
data--you are finding substantial differences between the
treatment and control groups.
So that individuals who receive the Perry intervention, and
compared to those who do not, exhibit a number of behaviors. We
know that they are successful, but they exhibit a number of
behaviors that now I think would be acceptable by the
psychologists and understood in terms of modern psychometric
standards but were not even thought of in the 1960s when the
early Perry Program was done.
It is consistent with the other body of evidence, that
these programs are operating not necessarily through IQ, not
even primarily through IQ, but also through socioemotional
skills.
Senator Casey. You were talking about conscientiousness,
and what were the others?
Dr. Heckman. Conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to
experience. Openness to experience in very important in terms
of learning.
If a child is open to experience instead of closing off and
saying no, hiding out, they actually will learn more. And that
shows up. So that is why it is interesting in the Perry Study.
It is so contrary to what our thinking was 40 years ago, and
why I think our processes we are undergoing are a real
transformation of our understanding through the research and
science and collaboration across different fields: That it is
not just IQ, and that, in fact, Perry, as I said earlier, does
not raise IQ, but it does raise a whole set of behavioral
traits that seem to have lasting values as well as changing
parental behavior which we also haven't studied as much as we
should and we actually have evidence on now.
So what is emerging is a much more subtle understanding of
how people are formed and linkages which we didn't think
existed even 10, 15 years ago. We now look for them, and in the
old data sets, and certainly in the new data sets that are
being collected on these questions, we are finding powerful
evidence of interrelationships that we never thought existed.
Health has traditionally been segregated off into one area and
not being at all linked to cognition and socioemotional skill.
We now understand noncognitive skills are so much a component
of health that is really shaped in early years and through
these devices and a direct effect of health itself.
Senator Casey. Thank you very much. I guess sometimes that
is counter-intuitive to a lay person, as you gently corrected
me about 2 hours ago now, on how you measure. It's easier to
measure, or the perception at least is that it is easier to
measure IQ or something that has a numerical or data
characteristic to it, whereas what you are talking about in the
noncognitive is we are able to not only measure it, but we are
also seeing that there are results?
Dr. Heckman. Right. And I think that is very important.
That is a fairly recent development. In fact, the whole field
of personality psychology and economics now is a fairly recent
development. But when people start pitting cognitive versus
noncognitive skills, measures of openness to experience,
conscientiousness and the like, you see very powerful effects
at about the same level.
For example, on teenage pregnancy, if you move a young girl
from the bottom of the distribution to the top of the
distribution, whether it is in cognitive skill or noncognitive
skill, you are going to see essentially the same reduction in
terms of the probability of having a birth out of wedlock.
The same thing is true with even more powerful effects on
crime. For example, the probability of somebody being in jail
at age 30 is much more affected by noncognitive skills than
cognitive skills. Cognitive skills play a role, and there was
this whole literature, you know, by Hernstein, in particular, a
very brilliant psychologist who made it his life story talking
about the importance of cognition. And there is no denying it
is important. But we have now measurement systems that put
noncognitive measurements on the same footing as cognitive
measurements, and they are very powerful predictors. There is a
whole literature in psychology that shows that cognitive traits
are predictive of who gets a job, who holds a job, and so
forth.
I mentioned that the high school dropout rate is rising.
The reason why the high school dropout rate is rising, it turns
out, is because about close to 20 percent of all new high
school certificates are issued as GEDs. People who exam
certify. They drop out of school. They take a test. And it
turns out those people are then certified as high school
graduates.
That is a growing trend. It has been growing tremendously
in the last 30 years. Now what is interesting about the GED--
and it is a powerful test of American social policy--it
embodies the idea, the 1960s idea, that cognition was all
important.
It turns out that the GEDs are just as smart as ordinary
high school graduates who do not drop out. Yet they earn the
wages of dropouts. They cannot hold a job. Many sectors in the
U.S. military will not take the GED.
They are people who, basically, are wise guys. They are
smart, but they cannot hold a job. They cannot sustain an
effort. And it is the dimension of human performance which has
been neglected in public policy, but think of it now. One out
of every five new high school graduates is a GED. And in places
like Florida and New York, it is closer to 25 percent. And that
is among the native population. This is not just an immigrant
phenomenon.
Those people showed low levels of noncognitive skill, high
levels of cognitive skill. That is something we did not know
much about 15 years ago, and now we do. So it is again this
evolving process which makes it difficult for policy analysis
because the process keeps changing a bit.
You know, we are learning, but the basic core factors are
being put in place on how human beings are developing.
Senator Casey. And all the more reason why the Federal
Government needs to help with the research in terms of
aggregating it and keeping it focused on those kinds of
results.
Dr. Heckman. And integrating the arms that it currently
funds. NIH has a very powerful role to play, actually, in
shaping some of the educational policy in ways that normally we
do not think about. But NIH has a whole section on early
childhood. It has a whole section on child development.
It is just rare that the knowledge that is distilled there
and supported there gets implemented into policy and education
and health, even though it is NIH. It has got a health
component.
Senator Casey. Right.
Dr. Heckman. There is too much segmentation. So you are
right. The Federal Government can play a huge role in tying
these pieces together and helping facilitate and distill this.
Senator Casey. I want to have our other two witnesses
comment on that but also the programmatic aspects of this.
Because one of the difficulties here always is taking good
research and good data and other kinds of important information
and making sure it not only gets into legislation, but then the
implementation is pretty difficult. I know you have seen it at
the State level. I don't know if you have any response to that,
either of you?
Ms. Dichter. I do want to emphasize actually what Professor
Heckman has said; that one of the core tenants I think we have
seen in early childhood over time has been an understanding, by
people trying to shape the investment in the policy, that you
can't go off to extreme in either the role of cognition and
language or in these worlds of what we talk about sort of self-
regulation and approaches to learning--basically, in ordinary
English--these traits like curiosity, persistence, and so
forth, initiative, and so on.
In fact, one of the pieces that I think has been at the
heart of a lot of the thinking about where we have to end up in
early childhood is the balance between these pieces for young
children and an understanding in the field that sometimes, I
think, has been difficult for people to accept who are outside
of the early childhood world, who get all hung up that the
program is only about one dimension or one aspect, basically,
of the young child's development.
And having said that, I actually would point to that is
probably an area where we are still at the Federal level.
I agree with Professor Heckman that it would be better to
see, in terms of the places where resources are available,
basically--certainly to the States--more integration of that
knowledge; and sort of more acceptance actually; and promotion,
basically, of those kinds of points of view, in terms of the
shaping of the funding streams and the sort of directives, do's
and don'ts, basically, and restrictions in terms of the
resources that we see.
I can give, actually, an interesting and specific, perhaps,
example of this that we have encountered under the Child Care
and Development Block Grant where there are currently set
asides where States are expected appropriately to reserve some
of their funding for work to benefit infants and toddlers.
As you know, and as you have championed, we have been going
about to try to really make the Nurse-Family Partnership a
statewide initiative in Pennsylvania. And we have got the idea
that we would be able to use our Child Care and Development
Block Grant funds as part of our funding strategy. But we
learned actually when we went to get our Federal approvals for
it that that really was not going to be the case.
The way the fund was being seen in the Child Care and
Development Fund was that it was too far afield from the
original principles.
Now we did not see it that way. We found an alternative way
in terms of how we would disburse some of our financing for the
program, but I think that is a concrete example basically where
there was a body of evidence that we thought was pretty clear
basically about why that was an appropriate support.
We thought it was related actually to the core purpose of
the Act and would be appropriate. We learned that there was not
really that integration of, basically, the knowledge and the
understanding in at least the same way that we were able to see
that.
So that is perhaps a concrete that we probably should be
working a little bit more around these broadened understandings
of the Federal funding streams to be able to facilitate,
basically, this kind of knowledge base and understanding that
we are not going to do well in terms of the outcomes for young
children if we just get really highly siloed.
At the same time, you know and I know that you are a good
believer in this too; we have to be able to structure the work
so that we can talk to people about the gains that we are
achieving with the programming.
That is obviously a very big thing. We are so far past the
point of being able to justify an investment on a moral basis.
It is the right thing to stand by children.
So, I do not want that to be hurt at all of saying that
understanding we ought to have a broad-based understanding of
kids' development means that we shouldn't end up without
accountability on the other side--both in terms of Federal
expectations and when we are then reserving resources to the
States basically to take leadership--to have the expectation
that we should, in a very practical way, be able to show people
what gains we are achieving, in fact, in local communities for
children.
Senator Casey. Right. And that is one of the jobs of
government and government programs to be able to justify their
costs.
As Harriet knows, I have spent the better part of a decade
as a fiscal watchdog in State government, so I was ever
critical of programs that were not working. But unless you can
justify them and you can pay for them in a way that is
reasonable and fiscally responsible, people will not support
them.
So we have the hurdle of--with this legislation, if it is a
new program technically under the umbrella of the Federal
Government with new appropriations. So we have got to be even
more cognizant of the challenge of not just introducing it but
also making sure we justify the spending.
Mr. Besharov, do you have something to add to that? I was
going to ask another question, but go ahead.
Mr. Besharov. I think I am the designated ``Yes, but,'' so,
yes, but. I do not have a view about this, but I have sat at
meetings where the mix was a little different.
I have heard very senior expert child development experts
say the following:
In the most perfect world, we want to do the whole child,
but we have 7 months. We have a couple of hours in the program
and only about 20 minutes a day--after kids get their coats
off, they get fed, and so forth.
Senator Casey. We are trying to get it beyond 7 months.
Mr. Besharov. Yes. Low-income children, especially African
American children who are one standard deviation below in many
of the developmental categories, are the children we are
talking about. I have heard many people say we just do not have
the tools or the time to address the whole child.
And that is why there is so much interest, I think, among
some professionals, not all--and I am not taking a position
here, just telling you--for focusing on cognitive development
because it feels to some of them, some people, that that is the
pressing need within the constraints of what can be done in
such a short period of time.
And you touched on that, which is: What are the limits of
changing a program? It just may not be possible to do
everything the first decade.
Senator Casey. Doctor?
Dr. Heckman. Let me disagree. Only because what we have
learned is the interrelated nature of these skills.
So for example, when we look at how cognition is produced,
a child who is able to pay attention, who shows
conscientiousness, is learning a lot more.
So even if our goal is to focus only on cognitive outcomes,
we also want to foster other outcomes. And the same thing would
be true of mental health and physical health. A sick child, a
disabled child, and so forth cannot easily learn.
So I would even say if we pick one target and we choose
that, which is a different issue, I would say to maximize
performance on that target we might still understand that we
want to have the whole package, not just focus on cognition.
My interpretation of why cognition receives such attention
in current debates is that many of the people who advocate its
primary learned 30 years ago that IQ was determinant of
everything. You know, it's just recently, 13, 14 years ago, we
had a best seller called ``The Bell Curve'' that claimed that
IQ was a powerful determinant of socioeconomic success. And
there is no question it is.
But the point is that there are other determinants as well,
and we now know how to integrate them. So I would respectfully
disagree with you on this point.
Mr. Besharov. You are not disagreeing with me. My point was
only: There is an argument.
Dr. Heckman. Right.
Mr. Besharov. So let's narrow the area of disagreement. I
carefully said: On this one I am not taking a position. But
there is an argument out there, and it is not right wing versus
left wing. There is an argument about what to do first. And
that is what is such a challenge about a Federal program.
Ms. Dichter. But I think I actually just want to chime in.
I actually think if you go back down to where the programs are
happening, basically, and you mentioned, well, it only turns
out to be a short period of time, a day, that the children are
learning whatever, if you actually look, children are in
programs. They are in these relationships over time. In a very
practical sense I actually think, you know, as people may say--
and do understand and accept--language acquisition is really
important for the young child, the young learned, and is
obviously a big impact in terms of all these things we care
about during the school years.
But if you look at any of the different ways that people
are thinking around interacting on that, all of these other
traits that Professor Heckman is talking about come in in a
very practical sense to how people are working with young
children around language acquisition.
So I think there is a little bit of--not trying to set
these issues up too much against each other--the point being
that I think everyone has been trying to make--and I do think
that Senator Casey's bill sort of gets to in terms of how it
talks about domains of development--is, again, there is a
continuum here that you are dealing with an entire child,
basically, in whatever setting you are in that the adults here,
of the very young children, have a need to be educated and
sensitive in terms of how they are interacting with the kids
around things we do know are valuable traits as adults: our
social skills and interactions. Those kindergarten teachers
talking about kids' school behaviors that they need to see as
they are entering the classroom for children to be able to be
successful, basically. That those are all things that really do
get well packaged together.
And it may be that we talk more publicly about one aspect
of the outcome again, then another aspect, but to really
understand that, you know, for the people that are sort of out
there at the forefront of this war, they actually have been
schooled in a way to see all of this as one continuum, the
whole of the child, in order to get, again, what I do think
people see as the eye on the prize here.
You know, kids who are able to be successful as adults, who
make good economic contributions, and who fit into this bigger
picture issues that we have touched on some here, which really
has to do with our overall economic competitiveness and how we
are managing and maintaining that.
Mr. Besharov. Okay, I will try it again.
I know you have a question. I will make this very short. So
it is not like we have broad agreement about K-12. It is not
like No Child Left Behind gave us the answer. And we all agree.
There is no reason why 3- and 4-year-olds should generate
the same agreement about what the intervention is. I subside.
Senator Casey. I just have a final comment, unless someone
walks in here to keep us going, but I know people have to run.
I think this legislation is essential for all the reasons
that you have stated. Even when there is disagreement, I think
there is more common ground here than not.
But I also think, in addition to this, there is a whole
menu, a whole list of things the Federal Government has either
got to do better or got to start doing. And we can't talk about
any of these issues--about the health and development of a
child and the learning of a child--unless you are really
committed on State Children's Health Insurance Program. That is
why $50 billion over 5 years is, in my judgment, a small down
payment on keeping a child healthy, but also having economic
growth and good employees and all the rest down the road.
We have a debate in the Farm Bill. I am on the Ag
Committee. There are some people who want to jettison or
shortchange nutrition. That would be a big mistake in terms of
all the things we are talking about here.
Head Start, the Women, Infants and Children's Program,
Quality childcare, I mean the list is long. But there are some
people in this town who frankly don't give a damn about a lot
of these programs and do not really care if we make the right
investments.
And as long as someone tells me that we have got $100
billion on the table for the upper scintilla of our economic
stratosphere with very few Americans benefiting to the tune of
$100 billion in one calendar year, as long as that is the
reality in Washington, we can find a lot more time and energy
and dollars, frankly, for these things we talked about today.
So we are going to--I am going to, and I am sure others
will join me--repeat ourselves until we are blue in the face on
this. Because to get a message through in this City you have
got to say it over, and over, and over, and over again. So you
are all going to hear from us again, and we want to hear from
you. But we are grateful for your time here today, your
testimony, the expertise, and experience that you have brought
to these issues, and your persistence. As I said to someone
earlier, kind of off-stage, laboring in the vineyards, to use a
phrase from long ago, but we need that because this legislation
and this agenda, even when there is disagreement, is not going
to be the subject of many sustained successes unless we really
stay persistent.
So we have got a long way to go, but I am honored by your
testimony and your presence here. Thanks very much.
This meeting is officially adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:45 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
Submissions for the Record
=======================================================================
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I want to thank my colleagues, Senator Bob Casey and Congresswoman
Carolyn Maloney for taking the initiative to hold this hearing on an
issue of long-term national consequence. We all recognize that an
educated society is a healthy and successful one, and American
education must start with quality early care and preschool.
In the stock market, they tell you to buy low and sell high. Most
economists would agree that the same can be said of early childcare and
education. With the right investment by Federal, State and local
governments, the stock of our future generations will pay off in a very
big way for the health of families and our economy.
Quality childcare improves employee productivity and reduces
absenteeism and employee turnover. Affordable, quality care and
preschool has been shown to promote female labor force participation,
increase parent productivity, and keep parents in the workforce.
Children who participate in high-quality preschools are more likely
than their peers to graduate from high school and enroll in college.
They are less likely to be in special education classes, become
pregnant, engage in criminal activity as teenagers, or pursue other
risky behaviors like smoking.
Successes extend into adulthood, with higher earnings and
employment rates, lower crime rates, and less reliance on public
assistance.
Unfortunately, quality care and preschool are not available to all
of American families. Even for middle class families, quality childcare
can be a tremendous burden. Center-based care for two young children
can cost $20,000-$26,000 annually. That is equal to about 40 percent of
the median income for families with children.
We do not expect parents to shell out tens of thousands of dollars
for education for school-aged children. We should not expect them to
spend $20,000 a year on quality care or preschool. Our children should
be receiving the best education and the best care from day one, not
just when they enter kindergarten.
Federal assistance to middle and lower class families is
dangerously inadequate and we must begin to tell working parents that
we want them and their children to succeed. Only one in seven children
eligible for childcare assistance through the Child Care and
Development Block Grant currently receives assistance. The current
level of funding for Head Start, the Federal Government's largest
commitment to preschool education, is sufficient to serve less than
half of the eligible population.
The families who could most benefit from high-quality care and
education--and the children who are most at risk of engaging in
behaviors that will be very costly to society--are least able to afford
high-quality programs.
In New York, 29 percent of 4-year olds are enrolled in State-funded
preschool programs. But only 1 percent of 3-year-olds are enrolled. And
New York is on the better end of the spectrum for early education
programs--12 States don't have State-funded preschool programs for any
ages and 24 don't have any programs for 3-year-olds.
Government assistance can help to close the gap between what
parents can afford and what high quality programs cost so that more of
American children can participate in the highest quality programs from
New York to Kansas to California.
I want to thank Senator Casey and Congresswoman Maloney once again
for their leadership on this issue. And we are all very grateful to our
fine panelists, especially Professor Heckman in from Chicago and
Governor Kathleen Sebelius from Kansas.
I am looking forward to learning from our witnesses today how we
can support early learning programs and assist our families in getting
the best care and education for all of our nation's children.
__________
Prepared Statement of Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr.
Good morning and welcome to the Joint Economic Committee Hearing,
``Investing in Young Children Pays Dividends: The Economic Case for
Early Care and Education.'' Thank you all for being here. I want to
give special thanks to Senator Chuck Schumer, our Chairman, and
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, our Vice Chair for the privilege to co-
chair this hearing with you, Congresswoman Maloney. I also thank you
for introducing my bill, the Prepare All Kids Act of 2007 in the House
this week. I look forward to working with you and your colleagues to
pass this bill in the months to come.
We are also very fortunate to have an outstanding panel of experts
with us this morning whom I will introduce in just a moment. I want to
thank each of you for taking the time out of your very full schedules
to be here with us today.
It is truly an honor to preside over this hearing today--there is
no issue more important to me as a U.S. Senator, or for that matter as
a father and citizen, than the well-being of our children. This morning
we are here to examine the value of early childhood investments. And I
believe what we will find is that there really is no smarter investment
we can make.
I have long been an advocate for investing in our children. During
my tenure as Pennsylvania State Auditor General and later as State
Treasurer, I led efforts to make childcare more affordable for low-
income families and to place a higher priority upon early childhood
programs in general. It is a privilege to be able to carry this
commitment to the U.S. Senate and continue my advocacy for children on
a national level.
Last month, I introduced a bill, the ``Prepare All Kids Act of
2007.'' This week, as I mentioned, Rep. Maloney introduced it in the
House, along with Representatives Allyson Schwartz and Maurice Hinchey.
The primary goal of the bill is to help states provide high quality
prekindergarten programs that will prepare children, and particularly
low-income children, for a successful transition to kindergarten and
elementary school. Too many children--especially economically
disadvantaged children--are entering school behind their more
privileged peers. And many times, these lags persist into adulthood and
are never reversed. We can do something about this.
Why should we invest in high quality early childhood development
and education? Well, for one thing, it's the right thing to do for
children and families. But decades of research tell us it also makes
sense from just about every other angle. From a purely monetary
standpoint, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the economic value of
investing in high quality early education. According to one study, we
save $17 for every $1 we spend. Dr. Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in
Economics and great leader in this field, has done tremendous work on
the benefits of early childhood investment. I look forward to his
testimony about why it is so important--and cost-effective--to invest
in children, particularly economically disadvantaged children, as early
as possible.
Here are just a few of the benefits from early childhood
investments that the research shows.
High quality early education and development programs
significantly improve children's outcomes. These children are more
likely than their peers to graduate from high school and enroll in
college. They are less likely to be in special education classes,
become pregnant, engage in criminal activity as teenagers, or pursue
other risky behaviors like smoking and drug use. Research from landmark
studies on the Chicago Child-Parent Center and the Perry Preschool have
documented these findings with multi-year longitudinal studies.
High quality early education programs have a positive impact on
state and Federal budgets. Children who participate in high-quality
preschool programs have higher employment and earning rates as adults,
and rely less on public assistance. Revenues are increased and spending
on public assistance programs, special education and other remedial
programs are decreased. Lower crime rates lead to less spending on
prosecutions and incarcerations.
High quality early education strengthens the economy. Children
who attend high quality preschool not only have cognitive gains, they
have non-cognitive gains in qualities like perseverance and motivation.
All this results in a more productive workforce. Those workers are able
to perform complex tasks, learn new skills and adapt to changes
quickly, and generate ideas for how to make improvements to the
productivity of the workplace.
Investing in high quality childcare assistance also strengthens
the economy. The importance of high-quality, affordable childcare for
promoting female labor force participation, increasing parent
productivity and keeping parents in the workforce is well documented.
The impact is particularly significant for low-income mothers. One
study found that single mothers who received assistance paying for
childcare were 40 percent more likely to be employed after 2 years than
similar women who did not receive such assistance.
This morning we will hear about the programs that are most helpful
to children in early childhood. One of these is prekindergarten. Most
states have either begun or are on the way to developing
prekindergarten programs. One of our witnesses, Governor Kathleen
Sebelius, will talk about the tremendous work the state of Kansas is
doing in expanding its new prekindergarten program as well as creating
a comprehensive early childhood system. It is so important that we
streamline early childhood programs so that services are not duplicated
and we are able to reach all the children who need early enrichment the
most.
In Pennsylvania, the new Pre-K Counts initiative will provide
approximately 11,000 3- and 4-year-olds with voluntary, high-quality
prekindergarten that is targeted to reach children most at risk of
academic failure. Harriet Dichter will talk about this exciting
initiative and the work she and Governor Rendell are doing in
Pennsylvania to streamline and coordinate services for at-risk children
and families from birth throughout childhood. I'm very proud of the
fact that Pennsylvania has a model program for the Nurse Family
Partnership program. This is a critical program for young mothers and
infants--one in which we need to invest much more.
We cannot truly help children without helping their families--I
think that's a theme we will hear throughout this morning's testimony.
We know that a large number of disadvantaged children are being raised
by single mothers and these mothers need support. Working families need
our support.
Now I know we run into a discussion about money whenever we talk
about early childhood investments. I think it is a disgrace that this
Administration has cut funding for critical programs like Head Start
and subsidized childcare. And we need a separate funding stream from
the Federal Government to support prekindergarten in the states--one
that does not cut into existing early childhood funding streams. I
challenge anyone who claims we cannot afford to invest more in early
childhood programs. Clearly, this Administration has provided tax cuts
to millionaires and multi-millionaires and billionaires. A recent
report out of the Center for American Progress puts the annual total of
the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts at $400 billion. That is $400 billion a
year. In 2008 alone the value of the tax cuts to households with
incomes exceeding $200,000 a year is projected to be $100 billion. My
bill calls for an initial investment of $5 billion, increasing to a
maximum of $9 billion a year. We don't have a money problem. We have a
priorities problem.
States need our help. The ``Prepare All Kids Act'' provides this
help--with conditions and matching commitments from states. Grounded in
research and best practices, my bill provides a blend of state
flexibility and high quality standards that will serve children well.
One of my priorities in drafting the Prepare All Kids Act was to
provide support, not only for prekindergarten--but also for children in
the earliest years--and to also help single parents and working
families. That is why I created an Infant and Toddler Set Aside in my
bill which will provide funding for programs that serve children from
birth through age 3. And that is why I established an additional carve-
out to for extended daily hours and summer programs--so that working
parents can have high quality options for their children in the after
school hours and summer. Children should not suffer low quality care
because their parents have to work.
What it boils down to is this--it's just plain common sense. We can
pay now or we can pay later. But if we pay later, we will pay much more
and the returns will be much much less. And in the process, we will
have robbed untold numbers of children the right to live the lives they
were born to live.
I look forward to the testimony this morning and encourage my
colleagues to stay for questions and even a second round of questions
if time permits.
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Prepared Statement of Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Vice Chair
Good morning. I would like to thank Chairman Schumer for
encouraging us to hold this hearing to examine the economic benefits of
investing in high-quality care and education for the children of our
nation.
This is the second in a series of hearings that the Joint Economic
Committee will hold as Democrats in Congress work to develop policies
for the 21st Century that help families balance the competing demands
of work and family responsibilities.
I am honored to co-chair this hearing with Sen. Casey, who has
provided leadership on this issue for many years in his home state of
Pennsylvania and now in the U.S. Senate. I am pleased to be the lead
sponsor in the House of Representatives of his ``Prepare All Kids Act
of 2007'' which is designed to help states expand their pre-K programs
and childcare services--a goal that we both believe is critically
important to our nation. More than a quarter of a million 4-year-olds
in New York State would be eligible for the programs created through
this bill, including 100,000 children who would qualify for free pre-K.
At Speaker Pelosi's National Summit on America's Children last
month, a compelling body of research was presented that makes clear
that early intervention improves children's lives and eases the burden
on public resources. With the limited public resources we currently
have, we get the biggest bang for the buck by investing in our children
before they even go to school.
Estimates show that the return on investing in early care and
education is between 7 to 18 percent annually. If this were a stock,
all of Wall Street would be buying.
Children are our most precious resource and the success of our
nation depends on their ability to achieve their full potential. Early
care and education fosters higher labor force participation and
earnings, increases future productivity and economic growth, and helps
maintain our ability to compete in the global economy.
Quality childcare can help businesses' bottom lines by improving
worker productivity, reducing absenteeism, and lowering turnover.
Estimates show that employee absences due to childcare breakdowns cost
U.S. businesses $3 billion annually.
But there is a shortage of affordable childcare around the country,
and especially in New York City. More than half of all women with
preschool-age children in my district are in the workforce and
desperately need help finding childcare. Many childcare providers in
low- and moderate-income areas operate out of their homes. In the House
of Representatives, we passed a bill which included an amendment I
sponsored called ``Kiddie Mac''. Kiddie Mac encourages lenders to offer
mortgages on low- and moderate-income housing with licensed childcare
facilities, in order to help increase the supply of day care
facilities.
The Federal Government can also play a role in ensuring quality
childcare by establishing minimum standards. Children need to be in
safe environments that promote healthy development and lay the
foundation for future success in school. Children in quality care are
found to have better language and math skills, and have fewer
disciplinary problems. But many states do not set adequate standards
for childcare quality, including mandating low child-teacher ratios or
requiring teachers to have training in early childcare education.
I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for being here
today and I look forward to their testimony about setting our children
on a path for success early in life.
Prepared Statement of Dr. James J. Heckman, Recipient of the 2000 Nobel
Prize in Economic Sciences and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service
Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, American Bar Foundation
Investing in Disadvantaged Young Children Is Good Economics and Good
Public Policy
THE ARGUMENT IN A NUTSHELL
I. Many major economic and social problems such as crime, teenage
pregnancy, dropping out of high school and adverse health conditions
can be traced to low levels of skill and ability in the population.
II. Ability gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged open up
early in the life of the child.
III. Life cycle skill formation is dynamic in nature. Skill begets
skill; motivation begets motivation. If a child is not motivated and
stimulated to learn and engage early on in life, the more likely it is
that when the child becomes an adult, it will fail in social and
economic life. The longer we wait to intervene in the life cycle of the
child the more costly it is to remediate to restore the child to its
full potential.
IV. In analyzing policies directed toward children, we should
recognize the variety of abilities.
V. Much public policy discussion focuses on promoting and measuring
cognitive ability through IQ and achievement tests. No Child Left
Behind focuses on achievement test scores in the 4th grade, not looking
at a range of other factors that promote success in school and life.
VI. Cognitive abilities are important for socioeconomic success.
VII. But socioemotional skills, physical and mental health,
perseverance, attention, motivation, and self confidence are also
important for success in life.
VIII. Motivation, perseverance and tenacity feed into performance
in society at large and even affect scores on achievement tests.
IX. Early family environments are major predictors of cognitive and
socioemotional abilities, as well as crime, health and obesity.
X. This observation is a major source of concern because family
environments in the U.S. and many other countries around the world have
deteriorated over the past 40 years.
XI. Experiments support a large body of non-experimental evidence
that adverse family environments promote adult failure.
XII. If society intervenes early enough, it can affect cognitive
and socioemotional abilities and the health of disadvantaged children.
XIII. Early interventions promote schooling, reduce crime, promote
workforce productivity and reduce teenage pregnancy.
XIV. These interventions are estimated to have high benefit-cost
ratios and rates of return.
XV. Early interventions have much higher returns than other later
interventions such as reduced pupil-teacher ratios, public job
training, convict rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies or
expenditure on police.
XVI. A major refocus of policy is required to understand the
lifecycle of skill and health formation and the importance of the early
years.
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Today's hearing focuses on the economic case for investing in early
care and childhood education. I would like to welcome our witnesses to
today's hearing, especially Governor Sebelius from my home State of
Kansas, and look forward to listening to the witnesses' testimony.
Economic data from a host of Federal agencies and independent
research clearly shows that the path to economic success in our nation
is based on marriage, strong families, work, and education. Education
is an important determinant in achieving higher incomes and greater
wealth. The question for today's hearing is what role does early care
and early childhood education play down the road, not just in the
initial year or two after a child enters the traditional education
system? The question is important because it has become increasingly
common in today's changing work and family environments for children to
spend a significant amount of time in childcare. Over half of our
children under the age of 5 have mothers who are employed and 63
percent of children under 5 have regular childcare arrangements.
There are many who will want to jump to the conclusion that early
childhood education has a positive impact on children and the more
money we spend the better off we will be. I would caution my colleagues
that the easy answer is not always the right answer.
Head Start serves more than 800,000 students per year and during
the 2004-2005 school year, State governments spent almost $3 billion on
early childhood education.
Is this investment producing the desired results? The data suggest
that the economics of early childhood care and education are uncertain.
It is difficult to measure adequately the impacts--particularly the
long-term impacts--of early childhood programs. Most evidence suggests
positive short-term impacts that fade-out over time. These fade-out
effects are likely the result of children attending substandard
elementary and secondary schools and growing up in disadvantaged home
environments.
Some comprehensive, small-scale intervention programs have produced
positive long-term impacts whereby the benefits to society far outweigh
the costs. However, it is uncertain what effects would result from
replication of such programs on a larger scale and in a 21st century
setting.
Investing billions in our children is laudable, even desirable.
More desirable is seeing our investment pay off for those children, not
just in the first couple of years of formal education, but over their
lifetimes. Improving economic conditions for disadvantaged children (or
all children, for that matter) requires a comprehensive approach,
including parental support, a positive home environment, and high-
quality elementary and secondary education.
I look forward to the testimony and to a constructive dialogue on
what we can do to leverage our investments in early childhood education
to insure that the positive impacts do not ``just fade away.''
__________
Prepared Statement of Hon. Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of the
State of Kansas
Senator Casey, Congresswoman Maloney, members of the committee, I
appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today about the importance
of early childhood education to our children's success and our nation's
long-term prosperity.
All Americans know the power of education to change lives and
expand opportunities. That's why the guarantee of a quality public
education has always been such an integral part of our nation's promise
to its young people, and why we're seeing states making significant new
commitments to K-12 schools.
Kansas, for example, is dedicating $1 billion in new resources over
4 years to our K-12 schools in order to ensure every child, in every
school receives a quality education. And we've undertaken audits to
ensure these new resources are spent efficiently, as well.
But too many children are entering school without the basic skills
they need to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. This problem was
brought home to Kansas policymakers by a recent survey which revealed
that less than half of children start kindergarten fully ready to
learn. This ``achievement gap'' affects children of all backgrounds,
but most often holds back poor and minority children.
Ninety percent of a child's brain development occurs before the age
of 5, and children who attend early childhood programs are far more
likely to enter kindergarten ready to learn, more likely to read at an
appropriate grade level and more likely to go on to graduate from high
school. That's why education during the early years is crucial in
helping children acquire the tools and skills they need to succeed in
kindergarten and beyond.
But children who start off school behind their peers are more
likely stay behind throughout their school lives and into adulthood,
meaning they never reach their full potential. This costs states money
in terms of spending on remedial classes and programs, which are less
effective and cost-efficient than early learning efforts.
There are social costs as well, especially in reduced wages for
workers who aren't ultimately as successful as they would have been had
they been able to take advantage of the full opportunities of their
education. The cost of not continuing education beyond high school
alone is immense, with the Census Bureau reporting a college graduate
is expected to earn roughly $1 million more over a lifetime than
someone with only a high school diploma.
For every dollar we invest in early childhood education, studies
show we can save upwards of seven future dollars--perhaps much more--by
having fewer juvenile offenders in our prisons, fewer Americans on
public assistance, fewer teen pregnancies and a workforce more nimble
and prepared for an ever changing world. One study estimated an
investment in early childhood education could raise the GDP by half of
a percent by 2050, while saving $155 billion in costs from crime and
social problems.
Other studies that have tracked students over long periods of time,
such as the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, show that children who
receive instruction from an early age do better in school and in life
than those who do not. That study focused specifically on reading, and
showed that problems learning to read at an early age lasted throughout
their school lives. Additionally, these students were more likely to
become teen parents and three times as likely to be unemployed than
students without similar reading issues.
What this tells us is that we can help lift children up and expand
their opportunities through investments in early learning which close
the achievement gap that currently keeps too many children from
achieving their full potential.
This isn't just an issue in Kansas--it's a national problem, one
that requires a national commitment to early learning efforts such as
pre-K.
That commitment is unfortunately lacking. Currently, Head Start is
only serving 5 out of every 10 eligible children, while Early Head
Start is serving only 3 out of every 100 eligible children. Huge
numbers of children are being left out, yet while the reason cited for
this lack of commitment is budgetary, we end up paying more down the
road when the children who are left behind need remedial education,
additional job training or worse.
In the absence of a full Federal commitment, the states are taking
it upon themselves to invest in early childhood education. This year,
29 Governors proposed increased investments in pre-K and other early
learning programs. This is 11 more than the previous year, with the
total investment of these proposals exceeding $800 million and
providing early learning opportunities to more than 100,000 3- and 4-
year-olds.
These proposals show the building momentum for a national
commitment to early education, and I'm proud to say that Kansas is one
of the states that increased its commitment to young children this
year, just as we've done over the past several years.
We started in 1999 by devoting Kansas' share of the tobacco
settlement to children's programs, specifically early childhood
education. Smart Start grants have been given to communities for a wide
range programs focused on the well-being of children from birth to age
5, with $8.4 million of these grants expected to be made this year
alone.
These efforts were continued and enhanced when I took office. For
the first time, we brought stakeholders together in what had previously
been a disconnected and disjointed system of Head Start programs,
childcare centers, home care and school-based efforts.
Previously, there was little if any interaction between these
groups. No one had talked to each other, there were no common standards
and little cooperation. We now have a clear goal and a group of
stakeholders in the public and private sectors, including key business
leaders, who are the driving force behind expansion of early learning.
In 2006, this coalition won a victory when Kansas legislators
supported my recommendation to increase funding for early childhood
education, including the creation of pre-K pilot projects around our
state. In six of our largest counties we funded early learning
classrooms where children received instruction and guidance from
trained, qualified specialists.
Due to the success of these projects, the effort was expanded in
2007 through an additional investment of $3 million, bringing the total
to $5 million, and we expect upwards of 600 children to receive an
opportunity to close that achievement gap and start off school at or
above grade level--an opportunity they likely wouldn't have otherwise
had.
But as I said before, this pre-K effort is not an isolated
program--it is part of a broad based approach to early childhood
education, one supported by business leaders and educators alike.
As the culmination of a 2-year planning process, we've created the
Kansas Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems plan. This plan was
developed using the stakeholders we brought together several years ago
and is based on the best practices that have been shown to improve
community, school and family influences on a child's school readiness.
This strategic plan gives us a road map for the expansion of early
childhood learning efforts over the next 3 years. Its first year
focuses on pre-K--which we're addressing in part through the pilot
projects. The plan calls for the expansion of access, the development
of curriculum-based programs and an increase in professional standards,
items all stakeholders agree on.
It also calls for the creation of a quality rating system for
childcare, so parents can feel confident their child is receiving
instruction from a qualified early learning professional, and an
education campaign to inform parents about the importance of school
readiness.
And while it isn't usually thought of as part of early learning,
our strategic plan also calls for every child in Kansas from birth to
age 5 to have health care. There is a clear connection between the
health of a child in her early years and the success of that child
later in life. Insuring every child would allow them access to cost-
effective preventative care that will help keep children healthy and in
school, rather than sick and at home or in a hospital.
These coordinated efforts will have significant and lasting
benefits in Kansas, just as similar efforts can have a positive impact
on our nation.
That's why I'm heartened to see an interest on the part of Congress
in making a national commitment to early learning. States are making
progress, but we can't do it alone.
As Senator Casey's ``Prepare All Kids Act of 2007'' points out,
``State-funded preschool is the most rapidly expanding segment of the
United States educational system, but in many States a lack of stable
funding poses an enormous threat to the provision or continuation of
high quality preschool.'' Many of the states that don't offer early
learning opportunities have populations that would benefit from it the
most, which is why the targeting of help to low-income communities--as
is done in the proposed bill and in Kansas--is critical to closing the
achievement gap.
The proposed legislation demonstrates an understanding of one of
the challenges of offering high quality preschool opportunities--
professional development. Teaching 3- and 4-year-olds is different than
teaching older children. They have specific needs and there are
specific ways that teachers can help their minds grow. But this
requires special training, which we're seeking to ensure in Kansas,
just as this bill would promote nationwide.
I'm also pleased to see the bill includes requirements for
prekindergarten teachers, but would add my hope that Congress does not
create another unfunded mandate. Many states do not currently have the
educational programs in place to help early childhood educators become
better providers, which is why the aforementioned support for
professional development is so important.
I do want to point out that early childhood programs, particularly
pre-K, cross traditional agency boundaries. Our state's Department of
Commerce, Department of Education and social services agencies are all
involved in a collaborative effort in this area, and I want to make
sure Congress recognizes the cooperation that is required to
effectively provide early learning opportunities.
It's important that any legislation promotes community-based
programs as well as school-based efforts, just as we've done in Kansas.
This is again because pre-K isn't just an education issue, but a
social, health and economic issue as well. The costs borne across the
spectrum that result from a lack of quality early learning
opportunities can just as easily become benefits, but only if we have a
coordinated approach to the issue.
Finally, one aspect that is missing from this proposal is parental
involvement to the degree we're seeking in Kansas. There needs to be an
education effort to inform parents on the importance of early learning.
But more importantly, parents need to know that the program they've
chosen for their child is staffed by qualified teachers and has an
appropriate curriculum. Parents need to have the peace of mind that
comes from knowing their child is in a learning environment that will
help her develop the knowledge and skills needed in school and life.
We're doing that in Kansas through a quality rating system and I would
recommend looking at a similar system for programs supported through
Federal grants.
Yet above all, while Federal funding for early childhood programs
developed by the states would help expand early learning, there are
several non-monetary principles agreed upon by Kansas parents,
educators, social service providers and early learning advocates that
should be followed by any Federal effort.
Any comprehensive early childhood program should ensure all
children have health insurance and access to medical providers.
Each early childhood care and education system should coordinate
all birth to five efforts across the education, social services and
advocacy spectrum, and mental health and social-emotional development
must be fully integrated into the system, as well.
Parents should have access to the resources they need and should be
well informed about issues of childhood health, development, and
education.
And finally, any early childhood system should strengthen families
to help them develop and utilize both intellectual and material
resources to prepare their children for school and life.
Young people face a range of challenges, but education has the
remarkable ability to arm them with the knowledge and skills needed to
overcome these challenges. A Federal commitment to early childhood
education will give countless young Americans the start they need to
succeed in school and in life. It pays dividends far in excess of the
cost, by reducing the need for remedial programs, increasing worker
productivity, and reducing the number of young people who turn to crime
and those who see their horizons limited by poor choices and abandoned
dreams.
I again appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today to
reinforce the importance of making a national commitment to early
learning, not just for the sake of our children, but for the sake of
our nation's long-term prosperity.
Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to working with
you to expand early learning opportunities throughout the nation so
that we can close the achievement gap and create a brighter future for
us all.
__________
Prepared Statement of Harriet Dichter, Deputy Secretary, Office of
Child Development and Early Learning, Pennsylvania Departments of
Education and Public Welfare
Good morning, Senator Casey, Representative Maloney, and members of
the Joint Economic Committee. Thank you for today's opportunity. I am
Harriet Dichter, Deputy Secretary for the Office of Child Development
and Early Learning of the Pennsylvania Departments of Education and
Public Welfare. Improving the national track record for both
investments and outcomes for young children is essential to both our
short and long term competitiveness. The educational and economic
payoffs from a systematic investment in early childhood education are
compelling--we have far more evidence of the return on investment in
this arena than in many others of significant public investment.
Based on our experiences in Pennsylvania, I have three points to
make today:
1)There is no one silver bullet, not just one investment or program
that works. What matters, no matter what the program, is a common
framework of high standards, accountability and sufficient investment
to make a difference.
2)The Federal Government has not been sufficiently proactive in
this area, leaving too much to the states to do, especially on
financing.
3)Proper public-sector governance needs to be a focus to assure
good outcomes and efficient use of public dollars.
First: We can no longer afford to consider childcare as only a way
to get parents working, or that the quality of our children's learning
experiences before they reach kindergarten or first grade is not a
public responsibility. To advance the early childhood agenda, we need a
continuum of services that assures the educational and economic
benefits from early childhood investment. This is as true for early
childhood education as it is for other systems such as higher education
or health care. This means that we can and should expect to make
investments in programs with different names and labels--childcare and
prekindergarten are two that come to mind--and that we should expect to
make investments in children in each and every year up to their
entrance into school (and of course continuing investment in the school
years).
In Pennsylvania, we do not focus on just one type of early
childhood program. We do insist that all of our programs get organized
with certain commonalities: high standards, accountability, and
sufficient financial and other supports. For example, we recognize that
childcare reaches the largest number of young children. To that end, we
have created a systematic approach to voluntarily improving quality
called Keystone STARS which integrates research-based standards,
improvement strategies, financial resources, and public ratings of
programs. An independent evaluation has shown that Keystone STARS has
systematically reversed Pennsylvania's 10-year decline in childcare
quality. But childcare alone is not enough--this year we are seeking to
develop a new high quality program for at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds
called Pre-K Counts. This targeted, highly focused investment will have
immediate payoffs in our school system and future payoffs in academic
and career achievement which will benefit our children and the broader
community. For the exceptionally at-risk children of young,
impoverished mothers, we continue to expand the renowned Nurse Family
Partnership program. All three programs apply a similar framework of
high standards, accountability and sufficient financial supports to
early childhood issues in different settings
We cannot afford to have a silver bullet approach to early
childhood development where we focus on only one program or one
financing stream. But we must insist upon a common framework across
each of the programs for any public investment. This common framework
makes a meaningful difference to children, and will build confidence
from business and parents in our communities. This is the framework
that we use.
1) High standards and expectations for program quality, articulated
in plain language, based on research and experience, and focused on the
bottom line-outcomes for children;
2) Professional preparation and ongoing education of the teachers
and administrators to whom we are delegate the responsibility of
delivering these programs. In short, investment in accountable methods
for assuring that the people and programs are of good enough quality.
It is not enough to tell people to achieve high standards, assistance
is needed to achieve and maintain them;
3) Accountability for results--and a practical way to help those
people whose work is far outside of early childhood to see and
understand these results;
4) Financial supports that are linked directly and clearly to the
standards we articulate and are made available at sufficient levels to
get the job done.
See Chart 1 below for how I like to think about and how we do act
on this--it is a reminder that the work is complex, but that it can be
broken down and a realistic, achievable strategy can be achieved.
Chart 1: How Pennsylvania Approaches Its Early Childhood Programs
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8106.007
The second point is the importance of shared and responsible public
investment in these programs. Professor Heckman has made the case for
improved investment. In Pennsylvania, we have been working to improve
our state investment in these programs. Each year, I have been
disappointed with the lack of improved Federal investment in early
childhood programs. The established and dedicated funding streams in
areas such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start
are not keeping pace. Pennsylvania is using state resources, for
example, to close the gap between those eligible for Head Start and
those funded at the Federal level. Our broad based educational streams
that can be used on a discretionary basis to support some early
childhood programs such as those under No Child Left Behind are also
not keeping pace.
While Pennsylvania has moved from less than 20 percent of our young
children with an opportunity to participate in a good-quality program
in 2003 to just over 30 percent today, this is possible only because of
our state commitment and the growth of state dollars.
This is not right--all of us reap a benefit when we invest in
quality early education that makes it possible for children to achieve
in school and throughout their lives. We need to see progress made at
the Federal level in improving our investment. From my perspective,
this means we should stand by the established programs, and that smart
proposals such as the one that Senator Casey has advanced for preschool
should move out of the idea stage and into a funded reality.
The Federal role is to help with financing at a level that makes a
meaningful difference, to insist that states have meaningful standards
and accountability based on nationally acceptable minimums, and to
facilitate coherence across the Federal programs. When we crafted
Keystone STARS and the proposed Pre-K Counts, we turned to research-
based evidence and to other states' experience to learn what standards,
accountability and supports will produce quality results. It is
possible to have a national baseline that does not interfere with the
sensitive implementation of state programs.
This brings me to my third and final point, which is the importance
of organizing the programs and resources so that they make sense.
Historically, public responsibility for early childhood education
programs has been scattered and divided among different agencies and
revenue streams, both at the Federal and state levels. I know that our
families do not care what we call the programs that we offer to them--
it doesn't matter to them if the program is named Keystone STARS, Head
Start, Pre-K Counts or something else. As both parents and as
taxpayers, people want to have confidence in the responsiveness and
quality of the services to their children and they want to know that
their public investments are made efficiently and are well-leveraged.
In our state, we have chosen to take these issues on through our
governance structure. My office is part of the organization of both of
our Departments of Education and Public Welfare. Governor Rendell
created this office in order to be efficient, to unify and integrate
the early childhood programs of both agencies. The office covers the
waterfront--we encompass school and community-based programs for
children from birth through full-day kindergarten. Working across two
agencies allows us to take advantage of the assets of our human
services and educational systems. At the same time, we have a single
staff and, as I described earlier, a consistent framework that we use
to systematically advance the work.
We are organizing the resources in new and creative ways and our
governance structure recognizes the historical split between ``care''
and ``education'' and seeks an alternative, new pathway to early
learning that takes the best from the history. We have to be prudent
public stewards--and so this approach to governance allows us an
ongoing commitment to both excellence and to efficiency.
I urge you to remember that every child we educate is also
America's child.
Thank you for the opportunity to brief you today.
__________
Prepared Statement of Douglas J. Besharov*, American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Douglas J. Besharov is the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a
professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He was
the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect, and is the author of Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the
Concerned, published by the Free Press.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Madam Chair, Senator Casey, members of the committee, thank you for
inviting me to testify on this important topic.
Because I understand that the other witnesses will make the case
for investing in young children (something that I strongly agree with
in theory), I will discuss what I see as the underlying question before
you: Deciding how to make that investment so that it has a reasonable
chance of being a success, or, to borrow a phrase from the investment
world, does not go sour. That is the real challenge before you, and the
nation.
Because my time is short, I decided to put my testimony in the form
of a series of questions and at least partial answers. Also, although
there has been a tendency to speak about the goal of ``universal
preschool,'' I will address only programs for low-income children
because their needs are greatest.
Many of the points I make below are discussed in greater detail in
``Giving Head Start a Fresh Start'' in Handbook of Families and
Poverty, eds. Russell Crane and Tim Heaton (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, forthcoming, 2007).
1. Is there a serious achievement gap between low-income and more
fortunate children, and should it be a matter of government
concern?
Yes. On a host of important developmental measures, a large and
troubling gap exists between the scores of low-income children and more
fortunate children. This gap, commonly called the ``achievement gap,''
but really much more multi-dimensional, curtails the life choices,
employment opportunities, and earnings potential of large numbers of
children, especially African Americans, Latinos, and other
disadvantaged minorities.
Regardless of what causes the gap, government should be concerned
about its impact on the children and families involved as well as on
the larger society. Government's response, however, should be guided by
a full and accurate understanding of what causes the gap and what can
be done about it.
2. What is the cause of the achievement gap, and can a preschool
program reduce it?
The achievement gap has many causes, from the poverty stemming from
a history of discrimination and curtailed opportunity to the child-
rearing styles of many disadvantaged families--with cause and effect
intermingled in multiple and controversial ways. The plain fact is that
the family is the primary teacher of young children--and compensatory
programs face a much larger challenge than the advocates' rhetoric
commonly suggests.
The argument that preschool programs ``work'' stems largely from
the widely trumpeted results of two small and richly funded
experimental programs from 40 and 30 years ago: the Perry Preschool
Project, and, later, the Abecedarian Project. They cost as much as
$15,000 per child per year in today's dollars, often involved multiple
years of services, had well-trained teachers, and instructed parents on
effective child rearing. These programs are more accurately seen as
hothouse programs that, in total, served fewer than 200 children.
Significantly, they tended to serve low-IQ children or children with
low-IQ parents.
As you may know, I have been a critic of too easy assertions that
Head Start, pre-K, and other early childhood education programs can
reverse such deep-seated developmental deficits. Many of the studies
that are used to support this line of argument are, simply put, not
methodologically sound. Furthermore, most advocates tend to ignore the
many studies that show these programs have little effect on children.
For example, most objective observers have labeled the results of the
Head Start Impact Study ``disappointing.'' If this study is to be
believed, Head Start simply fails in its mission to help prepare
students for school.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families, Head Start Impact Study:
First Year Findings (Washington, DC: HHS, June 2005).
For 4-year-olds (half the program), statistically significant gains
were detected in only six of thirty measures of social and cognitive
development and family functioning (itself a statistically suspect
result). Of these six measures, only three measures--the Woodcock
Johnson Letter-Word Identification test, the Spelling test and the
Letter Naming Task--directly test cognitive skills and show a slight
improvement in one of three major predictors of later reading ability
(letter identification). Head Start 4-year-olds were able to name about
two more letters than their non-Head Start counterparts, but they did
not show any significant gains on much more important measures such as
early math learning, vocabulary, oral comprehension (more indicative of
later reading comprehension), motivation to learn, or social
competencies, including the ability to interact with peers and
teachers.
Results were somewhat better for 3-year-olds, with statistically
significant gains on 14 out of 30 measures; however, the measures that
showed the most improvement tended to be superficial as well. Head
Start 3-year-olds were able to identify one and a half more letters and
they showed a small, statistically significant gain in vocabulary.
However, they came only 8 percent closer to the national norm in
vocabulary tests--a very small relative gain--and showed no improvement
in oral comprehension, phonological awareness, or early math skills.
For both age groups, the actual gains were in limited areas and
disappointingly small. Some commentators have expressed the hope that
these effects will lead to later increases in school achievement;
however, based on past research, it does not seem likely that they will
do so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I point this out not because I am hostile to the idea of Head
Start--far from it--but because it hurts me to see a program so
important to disadvantaged children not be successful.
That's why the findings of recent studies are so heartening. Both
``Project Upgrade'' (funded by HHS and evaluated by Abt Associates) and
``Reading First'' (funded by the Department of Education and evaluated
by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.) used the most rigorous
techniques--and they both show that a properly or narrowly focused,
early childhood intervention can make a significant improvement in at
least some elements of the cognitive development of disadvantaged
children. (The same seems to be true for a number of state preschool or
pre-K evaluations.)
But those four words--``properly or narrowly focused''--hint at how
complicated and politically controversial the next steps will be. Many
experts in child development have successfully argued for less direct,
cognitive-oriented instruction and more play-oriented and discovering-
learning activities. Yet, according to Nicholas Zill, former director
of Child and Family Studies at Westat, Inc., ``the latest research
evidence indicates that direct assessments of cognitive skills at
kindergarten entrance are predictive of both early and later
achievement, into the later grades of elementary school and beyond.''
\2\ In fact, the most successful interventions tend to use specific
curricula that focus on building specific cognitive skills (such as
reading, vocabulary, and math). But even these ``successful'' models do
not make a socially significant improvement in many areas of child
development--and many tend to ignore the child's social development.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Nicholas Zill, e-mail message to Douglas Besharov, May 3, 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me be as clear as possible here: I read the research literature
to say that preschool programs can probably make a marked improvement
in the lives of disadvantaged children, but that we have only a partial
idea of how they should be organized and managed, that is, brought to
scale. As of now, there is no actual model of preschool services that
has been proven successful in closing the achievement gap, and any
additional funding should be used to create a flexible system that can
change--and improve--as more knowledge is accumulated.
3. Should funding for early care and education be expanded, and if so,
for whom?
As asked (and answered), this question usually assumes that most
poor children do not now receive early childcare or education. But that
is not quite correct, and an accurate answer to this question requires
an understanding of current patterns of childcare and early education.
That is not as simple as one might think because of the overlap among
various programs and the lack of a centralized program data base.
We have created such a data base, with financial support from the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (childcare Bureau and Head
Start Bureau), the National Institute for Early Education Research
(NIEER) (at Rutgers University), and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Our
Early Education/childcare (``ee/cc'') Model is essentially an Excel-
based model of current childcare and early education program spending
and enrollment. According to our model, which has been widely vetted:
almost all poor 5-year-olds are in kindergarten or another school
or preschool program (about 96 percent);
almost 85 percent of all poor 4-year-olds are in either Head
Start (about 48 percent); a full-time, subsidized childcare program
under the Child Care and Development Fund (about 29 percent); or a
preschool program (about 7 percent);
about 43 percent of poor 3-year-olds are in such organized
programs; and
much lower proportions of poor children under age 3 are in such
programs.
(See table 1.)
Hence, the question is not simply whether funding for preschool
programs should be increased, but, just as important, how any new
funding should be spent within the context of existing services.
4. What are the options available to Congress for expanding childcare
and early childhood education programs?
Congress' decision about how to expand early care and education
programs is complicated by the fact that three largely separate and
independent programs uneasily coexist in most communities. Each has
major strengths and weaknesses, and any expansion effort should try to
rationalize their currently uncoordinated operations.
1. Enrich childcare programs by encouraging or requiring the use of
curricula with a proven ability to raise achievement. An increasing
number of low-income mothers have jobs, especially since welfare
reform. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation
(SIPP), in 2002, about 19 percent of poor mothers of 4-year-olds worked
full-time, and about 16 percent worked part-time. For 3-year-olds, the
respective figures were both about 17 percent.\3\ As a result,
enrollments in childcare programs have increased substantially, and
Head Start no longer enjoys the dominant place in the constellation of
Federal childcare and early childhood education programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Authors' calculation based on U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of
Income and Program Participation 2001 Panel Wave 4, from data files
downloaded at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp (accessed
February 1, 2005).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As late as the 1980s and early 1990s, Head Start was by far the
largest early childhood program, amounting to over 40 percent of all
Federal and related-state spending in some years. But by 2003, Head
Start had fallen to only about 32 percent of total childcare
spending,\4\ largely because of recent increases in childcare funding
associated with welfare reform. (Between 1997 and 2004, for example,
spending under the five major childcare programs--the Child Care and
Development Fund, Head Start, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,
the Child and Adult Care Food Program, and the Social Services Block
Grant--rose about 79 percent, from about $11.65 billion to about $20.89
billion, compared to only about 45 percent, from $4.69 billion to $6.77
billion, for Head Start.\5\ )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Douglas J. Besharov and Caeli A. Higney, ``Federal and State
childcare Expenditures, 1997-2004: Rapid Growth Followed by Rapid
Spending'' (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, Welfare Reform
Academy, 2006), http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/childcare/
childcarespending060907.pdf (accessed January 26, 2007).
\5\ Douglas J. Besharov and Caeli A. Higney, ``Federal and State
childcare Expenditures, 1997-2004: Rapid Growth Followed by Rapid
Spending'' (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, Welfare Reform
Academy, 2006), http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/childcare/
childcarespending060907.pdf (accessed January 26, 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For many years, it was said that the nation had to make a tradeoff
between high-quality but expensive programs like Head Start and lower
quality childcare programs designed to help low-income mothers who have
jobs. Recent research efforts such as ``Project Upgrade'' and ``Reading
First'' strongly suggest that, at modest additional cost, childcare
programs can be more effective than Head Start in narrowing key
elements of the achievement gap. This would have the advantage of being
the least expensive option (see table 2), but would not deal with the
children in Head Start nor those with parents who are not working. It
would be an incomplete solution, at best.
Moreover, despite the recent extremely promising evaluations of
focused curricula, many childcare specialists think that making a
meaningful improvement in the quality of childcare would require much
more money and a high level of regulation. There is also some
reluctance to embrace curricula that focus on cognitive achievement at
the cost of social development. Most important, without addressing Head
Start's problems, this strategy would not address the needs of the much
larger number of children in that program.
2. Improve Head Start's services so that it does a better job
closing the achievement gap and expand its hours of operation to meet
the needs of working mothers. This would have the advantage of building
on an existing nationwide network of federally funded programs focused
on poor children. But besides Head Start's disappointing impacts on
child development, reorienting it to serve the growing number of
children whose mothers have jobs would be a major and severely
disruptive undertaking.
It would also be very expensive. (See table 2.) Head Start is
already the most expensive form of early intervention. By our estimate,
the basic, part-day program costs about $5,608 per child. Expanding
Head Start to full-time, full-year would bring costs to about $20,607
per child--and that would not address Head Start's apparent inability
to meet the developmental needs of poor children. Moreover, if the past
is any guide, the Head Start community would oppose such moves and,
instead, press for the program to serve younger children and higher-
income children without changing its approach to early childhood
educational services.
It is worth noting that private foundations, state policy-makers,
and parents have decided against the Head Start option. Many liberal
foundations have already shifted their support away from Head Start and
toward the expansion of preschool or prekindergarten (``pre-K'')
services--which siphon off hundreds of thousands of children from Head
Start programs. Many states have likewise begun funding expanded
prekindergarten programs, again at Head Start's expense.
Perhaps the best indication of Head Start's slumping reputation
comes from low-income parents themselves, who often choose not to place
their children in Head Start. One can see this in the declining
proportional enrollment of 4-year-olds, Head Start's prime age group.
Between 1997 and 2006, even as the number of poor 4-year-olds increased
and as Head Start's funded enrollment increased by about 15 percent
(about 115,000 children) almost all of this increase went to 3-year-
olds and to Early Head Start. In those 8 years:
the number of enrolled 4-year-olds decreased by about 3 percent,
from 476,285 to 463,693;
the number of enrolled 5-year-olds decreased by about 24 percent,
from 47,629 to 36,368;
but the number of enrolled 3-year-olds increased by about 33
percent, from 238,143 to 318,220;
the number of children in Early Head Start increased by about 186
percent, from 31,752 to 90,920; and
the number of children enrolled in Head Start for 2 or more years
increased by about 55 percent or about 100,000 children (from about
180,000 to about 280,000).
3. Expand state pre-K and preschool programs. The new
prekindergarten/preschool programs for low-income children established
in many communities seem to be enormously popular. State spending on
these state-funded prekindergarten/preschool programs, which serve
mostly low-income children,\6\ increased greatly over the last decade
and a half. Comparing estimates from the Children's Defense Fund and
from the NIEER, it appears that state spending on these programs about
tripled between the 1991/1992 and 2004/2005 school years, going from
about $939 million\7\ to about $2.75 billion ($2.84 billion in 2005
dollars).\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ The National Institute for Early Education Research, The State
of Preschool: 2004 State Preschool Yearbook, stating: ``Most states
targeted their programs to low-income children and children with other
background factors that place them at risk for starting school behind
their peers.''
\7\ Karen Schulman, Helen Blank, and Danielle Ewen, Seeds of
Success: State Prekindergarten Initiatives 1998-1999 (Washington, DC:
Children's Defense Fund, 1999), p.31.
\8\ W. Steven Barnett and Kenneth B. Robin, ``How Much Does Quality
Preschool Cost?'' (working paper, National Institute for Early
Education Research, 2006), http://nieer.org/resources/research/
CostOfEffectivePreschool.pdf (accessed March 9, 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
School-based prekindergarten programs, alone, now enroll more
children (of all incomes) than Head Start, and at their current growth
rate, will soon be the dominant early childhood education program for
low-income children. According to the U.S. Department of Education,
total prekindergarten enrollment (of all ages and incomes) almost
tripled between 1990/1991 and 2000/2001 (the latest year with
comparable data), rising from about 300,000 children to about 800,000
children.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education
Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2003, NCES 2005-025, ``Table
40. Enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools, by level and
grade: Fall 1987 to fall 2001,'' (Washington: U.S. Department of
Education, 2004), http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/
dt040.asp, (accessed April 11, 2005). These data on 1990/1991 and 2000/
2001 prekindergarten enrollment come from the Common Core of Data, as
reported by the Department of Education's Digest of Education
Statistics.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The expansion of these programs is still uneven. In the 2004/2005
school year, ten states had no program at all.\10\ Others were quite
small. Nebraska's, for example, covered only about 1,000 children at a
cost of about $2.1 million. But a few are effectively universal, such
as Georgia's, which now provides prekindergarten/preschool access to
all 4-year-olds, regardless of family income. The program operates 5
days per week for at least 6.5 hours per day. During the 2004/2005
school year, the program spent about $276 million and served over
70,000 4-year-olds (covering about 55 percent of all 4-year-olds, and
about 26 percent of all 3- and 4-year-olds), resulting in an average
per-child cost of about $3,899.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ The states offering no prekindergarten/preschool program were
Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire,
North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. See, W.
Steven Barnett, Jason T. Hustedt, Kenneth B. Robin, and Karen L.
Schulman, The State of Preschool: 2005 State Preschool Yearbook (New
Brunswick, NJ: The National Institute for Early Education Research,
2005), http://nieer.org/yearbook2005/pdf/yearbook.pdf (accessed March
16, 2007).
\11\ W. Steven Barnett, Jason T. Hustedt, Kenneth B. Robin, and
Karen L. Schulman, The State of Preschool: 2005 State Preschool
Yearbook (New Brunswick, NJ: The National Institute for Early Education
Research, 2005), http://nieer.org/yearbook2005/pdf/yearbook.pdf
(accessed March 16, 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why the apparent preference for prekindergarten programs? Perhaps
parents find them more attractive than Head Start because of their
seeming universality. Although most pre-K programs are directed to low-
income children, they generally serve children from families with
incomes as high as 185 percent of the poverty line.\12\ Or perhaps it
is because parents deem pre-K programs to be superior, especially since
they are usually in school buildings and staffed by better educated
teachers. Certainly, the few evaluations of these programs suggest that
they are substantially more successful than Head Start.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ W. Steven Barnett, Jason T. Hustedt, Kenneth B. Robin, and
Karen L. Schulman, The State of Preschool: 2003 State Preschool
Yearbook (New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education
Research, 2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In any event, judging from the growth in enrollments, expanding
preschool programs is apparently the most popular option available to
Congress. Doing so, however, would not provide assistance to low-income
children under age 4, and would also be expensive if expanded to cover
the full-time care needed by the children of working mothers. (The
NIEER estimates the cost to be about $13,556 per child.)
Moreover, these pre-K programs are unlikely to have a meaningful
impact on the most distressed children and families--who need earlier
and more intense intervention.
4. What should Congress do?
To be successful, any expansion of early childhood education
programs should (1) build on--but also rationalize--these three key
programs and (2) allow them to change over time as needs change and as
experience and research suggests programmatic shifts.
Rationalizing the three key early education programs starts with
the understanding that we should not have a one-size-fits-all approach
to early childhood education. Head Start, for example, tries to do too
much for some children--and too little for others. Despite the
conventional rhetoric, not all poor children have the cognitive and
developmental problems that prompted Head Start's creation. Many poor
children do not need the array of support services provided by Head
Start and, based on the evidence, do just fine in regular childcare
when their mothers work. Children from the most troubled families
(usually headed by young, single mothers), however, need much more than
the program currently provides.
Hence, at the risk of being wildly impractical, I would suggest an
approach that recognizes the differing needs of low-income children:
(1) Childcare programs. A strong commitment to early childhood
education should be added to childcare programs funded under the Child
Care and Development Fund (CCDF). This program is largely and
successfully operated through a voucher system to parents. Although
this should not change, a systematic and on-going effort at both the
Federal and state levels to identify effective curricula and program
approaches (such as those described above) could be the basis of
professional and parental education and, hence, wide-scale program
improvement.
(2) Pre-K and other preschool programs. As described above, these
programs have grown dramatically; they already enroll more children
than Head Start. Because these programs are largely state-funded, the
first question one might ask is whether the Federal Government should
become involved at all. But that is probably a naive question. Even
those states already spending money on preschool programs will be eager
for Federal assistance, despite the possibility of more Federal
oversight.
My concerns are two-fold. First, it is not clear how most preschool
programs will be integrated into full-time childcare arrangements for
the children of working mothers. At present, they seem to require the
same kinds of awkward ``wrap-around'' services as Head Start. Second,
most of these programs have been established in public schools and it
is not clear to me whether we want to create another education
monopoly. Why not give parents the right to select the preschool
program of their choice? (As mentioned above, the CCDF operates largely
on that principle.) That would also encourage the creation of flexible
programs that meet the varying needs of working mothers.
(3) Head Start. The current Head Start model is just not
sufficient, in terms of both its services and curriculum. It generally
consists of only 4 hours a day of classroom instruction (some grantees
provide more), for less than 9 months. And, despite Head Start's claims
about ``parent involvement,'' there seem to be no systematic efforts to
include parents in the program or to give parents better child-rearing
skills.
The best thing would be for Head Start to go back to its roots, to
search for ways to make a meaningful improvement in the lives of the
poorest, most disadvantaged children. It might, for example, provide
services to unwed teenagers that start during their first pregnancy.
Focusing on the most in need, the new Head Start would be truly two
generational, that is, with real services for parents (not just the
current lip service to parent involvement), and it would bring to bear
all the programmatic services that have developed since Head Start was
first conceived--the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC),
Medicaid, the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant program,
the Community and Migrant Health Center Program, and the Title X
program, which seeks to reduce unintended pregnancy by providing
contraceptive and related reproductive health care services to low-
income women.
Before closing, I want to emphasize what I hope has been my clear
theme: A strong case can be made for expanded early childhood education
services, but only in the context of program flexibility (enhanced by
vouchers) and systematic and rigorous research and evaluation. We have
so much more to learn.
Congress should mandate a systematic program of research and
experimentation, one that tries and evaluates different approaches to
see what works best. We simply do not have a scientifically tested
knowledge base about which approaches work--and for whom. Needed is a
scientifically rigorous inquiry into the comparative effectiveness of
various curricula and program elements, such as full-day versus part-
day and 1- versus 2-year programs, traditional 9-month versus full-year
programs, classroom size (paralleling work on class size done at the
elementary level), the training or formal education of teachers, and
effective ways of helping parents do a better job meeting their
children's needs. Most important, distinctions among children from
different family backgrounds and with different degrees of need will be
crucial.
Such a multifaceted research and development effort could be
patterned after the new one for K 0912 education established under the
No Child Left Behind legislation. That effort enjoys a $400 million
annual budget, compared to only $20 million for Head Start research. A
tripling of Head Start's research budget would be a good start. If no
new money is available, Congress could reallocate some of the $30
million to $111 million now designated in the pending reauthorization
bills for quality improvements (especially since about half of these
funds go to raise the salaries of Head Start staff, already among the
highest in the early childhood education world).
Conducting such an inquiry will require substantial intellectual
and political effort--because of the turf battles it would trigger, the
scientific challenges involved in designing so many multi-site
experiments, and the sustained monitoring and management needed.
Nevertheless, without an effort on this scale and without such
intellectual clarity, it is difficult to see how better approaches to
childcare and early childhood education can be developed.
Thank you.
Table 1.--Combined Coverage of Income-Eligible Children in Head Start and Selected Other Arrangements
By Age
(2000/2001)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total poor At enrollment
children -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------- Nonpoor Poor children in Head Poor children in Poor children in full-
children in Start preschool, time, subsidized Total
Age Head Start -------------------------- prekindergarten, and childcare combined
Number ------------- school -------------------------- coverage of
Number Coverage -------------------------- poor
Number Number Coverage Number Coverage children
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.................................. 694,743 86,426 209,536 30% 38,574 6% 50,871 7% 43%
4.................................. 697,681 137,032 332,226 48% 201,216 29% 50,871 7% 84%
5.................................. 673,753 11,064 26,823 4% 580,992 86% 39,131 6% 96%
3-5................................ 2,066,177 234,522 568,585 28% 820,782 40% 140,872 7% 74%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources and notes: ``Total poor children'' based on special tabulations by Richard Bavier, Office of Management and Budget, based on: U.S. Census
Bureau, 2002 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2002). U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Head Start Bureau, ``Head Start Program Information Report for the 2000-2001 Program Year'' (Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, undated); U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, ``Prekindergarten in
U.S. Public Schools: 2000-2001,'' NCES 2003-019 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2003), http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003019.pdf
(accessed December 19, 2003); U.S. Census Bureau, ``School Enrollment--Social and Economic Characteristics of Students: October 2001, Detailed
Tables,'' table 2, ``Single Grade of Enrollment and High School Graduation Status for People 3 Years Old and Over, by Age (Single Years for 3 to 24
Years), Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: October 2001,'' http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2001/tab02.pdf (accessed April 25, 2005);
and Child Care and Development Fund: Special tabulations of 2001 CCDF data prepared for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families, childcare Bureau, by Anteon Corporation, 2003. ``Nonpoor Children in Head Start'' is Table 1's ``Total
reported nonpoor enrollment,'' divided by the PIR's age distribution for cumulative enrollment. ``Poor children in Head Start'' is the total Head
Start funded enrollment, distributed by age, minus the number of nonpoor children. ``Total combined coverage of poor children'' is the number of poor
children in Head Start added to the number of poor children in preschool, prekindergarten, school (including kindergarten), and full-time, subsidized
childcare.
Table 2.--Cost Comparisons: Head Start, Early Head Start, CCDF childcare, and Prekindergarten/Preschool
(2003/2004)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Head Start CCDF Pre-K/
---------------------------------------------------- Preschool
Cost Ages 3-5 Ages 0-2 Ages 3-5 ------------
----------------------------------------------------
(HS) (Early HS) Center Family Ages 3-4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average per child (regardless of hrs)
Head Start Bureau estimate................... $7,222 $7,222 ........... ........... ...........
Besharov/Myers estimate...................... $9,381 $15,999 $8,100 $7,225 ...........
NIEER estimate............................... ........... ........... ........... ........... $3,435
Part-day and full-day sessions
Besharov/Myers estimate (part-day)........... $5,608 ........... ........... ........... ...........
Besharov/Myers estimate (full-day)........... $12,570 ........... ........... ........... ...........
Hourly (across all durations).................. $8.99 $10.21 $4.18 $3.81 n/a
Hourly (full-time)............................. $8.41 $10.17 $3.52 $3.15 $5.53
Hourly (part-time)............................. $10.51 $12.71 $4.45 $3.96 n/a
Full-time, full-year (50 hours/week, 49 weeks/ $20,607 $24,904 $8,616 $7,709 $13,556
year).........................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Douglas J. Besharov, Justus A. Myers, and Jeffrey S. Morrow, ``Costs Per Child for Early Childhood
Education and Care: Comparing Head Start, CCDF childcare, and Prekindergarten/Preschool Programs (2003/
2004),'' (June 22, 2007).