Preschool years are critical to children's success

by David Lawrence Jr., published in Greensboro News-Record, April 12, 2014.

It is “The Week of the Young Child” here. But it could be — yes, really — “The Century of the Young Child” in Greensboro and Guilford County.

I know Greensboro better than many “outsiders,” having first visited this beautiful place when I was editor of The Charlotte Observer back in the 1970s — and many times since, most recently this past year. I came away with the strongest sense of business and civic leadership deeply engaged in doing everything possible to get children off to a good start in school and in life.

You have so much going for you, beginning with the beauty of this place, nestled between ocean and mountains, blessed to have four splendid seasons that we could only wish for in Miami (marked, most especially, by the beauty of your springtime). Your state has been a national beacon for leadership in public education, most especially in higher education. Moreover, your own Smart Start — established under the quite extraordinary leadership and vision of former Gov. Jim Hunt — is a national model for early learning investment. You build upon so much.

Miami-Dade and Greensboro-Guilford are 800 miles apart, but share a growing appetite to help every child succeed. Here is the reality for the more than half-million people of Guilford County and the 6,000 babies born each year: More than 1 in every 3 of your third-grade students cannot read with minimal proficiency. Almost half your high school sophomores cannot read at grade level.

The national research tells us:

l 85 percent of brain growth occurs by age 3.

l 30 percent of children start school behind, and then most of them get even further behind.

l If 100 children leave first grade not really knowing how to read, 88 are in similar shape at the end of fourth grade.

Children with momentum in first grade, chances are, will have momentum all their lives. Children without momentum get triaged and tracked in school. They and we then pay a lifelong price. The wisest path for public education “reform” won’t be found in “fixing” the fourth grade, or the seventh grade, or the junior year of high school, but rather by delivering the children in far better shape to formal school. The greatest possible gift for the teachers in Guilford County’s 73 elementary schools would be to bring children to kindergarten in superb shape — intellectually, socially and emotionally — giving them the best chance to succeed in school and in life. If we did that, teachers could do far more teaching and far less triaging.

What could be more “American” than for every child to have the genuine opportunity to succeed in school and in life? What we need is a “movement” for everyone’s child — poor, rich and in-between. It makes sense — practical, economic and moral — to be mindful of how everyone is doing. If we want safe and secure neighborhoods, if we want less crime, if we want more people to grow up to own homes and cars, and more people to share the basic costs of societal well-being, then we should know of the quite extraordinary evidence of the power of early investment and the power to grow children who dream and have a real chance to achieve those dreams.

That means high-quality, brain-stimulating child care in a country where two-thirds of women with children between birth and age 5 work outside the home. It means children and families having real relationships with medical caregivers. It means investing in parent skill-building because nothing is more important than a knowledgeable and caring parent. It means parents who know how to use a shopping trip to Harris Teeter or elsewhere as an early literacy experience. It means parents who know that TV is a lousy babysitter — first of all because it lacks interactivity, and children need real relationships with real people. It means parents who know to read with a child from her or his very earliest days.

It means you. And me. All of us.

David Lawrence is the retired publisher of The Miami Herald and now president of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and Education and Community Leadership Scholar at the University of Miami School of Education & Human Development. He leads The Children’s Movement of Florida and helped secure passage of a constitutional amendment that makes free prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds in Florida and a property tax increase in Miami-Dade that provides more than $100 million extra each year for early intervention and prevention.

http://www.news-record.com/opinion/columns/article_58e4dbca-c1b6-11e3-9f92-0017a43b2370.html