Gov. Phil Bryant kicked
off a recent seminar at the Civil Rights Museum auditorium featuring Nobel
Prize winning economist Dr. James Heckman. An expert in the economics of human
development, Dr. Heckman spoke on "Making the Case for Investing in High
Quality Early Childhood Education in Mississippi." The Graduate Center for
the Study of Early Learning at the University of Mississippi is hosting internationally
known speakers to illustrate how investments in high quality early childhood
education yield a high rate of return. Dr. Heckman's research shows a 10% to
13% average return on investments (ROI) in high
quality programs for disadvantaged children age zero to three.
The Governor, who met
privately with Dr. Heckman after the event, spoke of his efforts to improve "the
continuum of learning" for children. Citing the high volume of Mississippi
children in daycare, he also noted that training programs at community colleges
are working to upgrade the skills of daycare workers.
Dr. Heckman said the key
to growing a skilled, flexible workforce in Mississippi is by building skills
and not just technical skills. He said research shows developing "social
and emotional skills" from birth to age three sets the stage for development
of other skills. He added that "the family is the cornerstone of effective
skill development."
"Conscientiousness,
self-control, motivation, persistence and sociability have far greater influence
on full-time employment, lifetime wages, health, family and social outcomes
than IQ and cognitive skills," he said.
These are the soft
skills employers yearn for in new hires.
Dr. Heckman said
government should focus its limited dollars for early childhood interventions on
children who will be most impacted. "The highest returns come from high
quality programs for disadvantaged children,"
he said. "Advantaged children have other resources often much better than
those from public programs."
"Invest more in
flourishing lives, not in correcting problems after they appear," he said.
"Later remediation is largely ineffective."
Dr. Heckman was the
second in the three seminar series the Graduate Center for the
Study of Early Learning is presenting. Drs. Craig and Sharon Ramey, experts in
early childhood brain development, made the first presentation in December. Dr.
Pat Levitt, Scientific Director of the National Scientific Council on the
Developing Child, will make the final presentation this week. Dr. Levitt will
discuss his research showing early life experiences influence social, emotional
and learning skills, and how these skills come together to help children
succeed in the real world and how healthy brain architecture provides the
resilience to deal with adversity experienced during the first years of life.
Interestingly,
just days after the Governor met with Dr. Heckman, the Mississippi Department
of Human Services revealed it had returned $13 million to the federal
government because
of the lack of state matching funds. These funds were for child care vouchers for low income families. The Clarion-Ledger reported the Governor's
spokesman said, "Gov. Bryant fulfilled his statutory responsibility
to balance the state’s budget" and he "is appreciative of efforts by
Department of Human Services leadership to continue fulfilling the agency’s
mission."
Hmmm.
What
Mississippi needs and what we'll pay for don't always geehaw.
Crawford (crawfolk@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist from Meridian.
11 comments:
The only way to raise the standards in Mississippi, is to raise the price of copper and other scarp metals. After going to school here, most people are only qualified to pick up trash for a living.
He said research shows developing "social and emotional skills" from birth to age three sets the stage for development of other skills.
This should be the important thing we need to remember. Too many children already have started their way to being a thug by the time they go to school. The parents are the people to blame if the child grows up to be a criminal and a drain on society. By the time they get old enough to go to school they have already been taught right from wrong.
How do you convince the parents to be a positive part of this early childhood development??? That is the real question!!!
Check out the Federal Government ...Office of Planning, Research and Development..a branch of Office of Admin for Children and Families
Here's what they do...
OPRE makes grants to support research in areas such as child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, home visiting, welfare and employment, strengthening families and healthy marriage, and family and youth services. We do not make grants to individuals or for direct services.
In 2012, the released a report that had followed the largest group of children ever followed from Heatstart through 3rd grade, over 5000 children...the report deterermined...
In the final phase of a large-scale randomized, controlled study of nearly 5,000 children, researchers found that the positive impacts on literacy and language development demonstrated by children who entered Head Start at age 4 had dissipated by the end of 3rd grade, and that they were, on average, academically indistinguishable from their peers who had not participated in Head Start. The new findings, released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are consistent with an earlier phase of the study which showed that many of the positive impacts of Head Start participation had faded by the end of 1st grade.
Just google "headstart gains lost by 3rd grade"...the report is easy to find, just not used because it doesnt fit the 100s of billions wasted on an entitlement...many headstart facilities are non-profits funded by government grants...many teachers and aids are the parents of children in the program...many with state benefits
Now there is a push to expand headstart to basically infant to pre-K...9.2 billion was spent in 2016...the expansion would cost an estimated 30 billion, almost the same amount spent on college PELL grants
And we (collectively) are all afraid to mess with Head Start. The same as we were afraid to criticize the welfare system in this state forty years ago. The same as we are afraid to criticize this and that black caucus or black group or black event or black program.
1:37 pm You cannot wait until a child is 6 years old to start teaching them. That is a no brainer.
The problem which you address is that State and local politicians use the funding of educational programs as political spoils to reward their supporters . They dare not let education challenge local belief systems no matter how archaic.
Politician support education by omission which is no different than lying by omission.
It's not what we teach, it's what we don't teach.
We don't teach social skills or coping skills or self-discipline. We don't teach a child how to objectively evaluate information.
Ignorance remains if you can spend your life avoiding what you don't know.
Asking because I don't know...
Does Headstart touch on personal responsibility, the rights of others, respecting authority, how to manage a small allowance, how to raise your hand and respect others in a group, respect for members of the opposite sex, how a gentleman or lady behaves, why society has rules, the fact that 'mother' is not half a word?
12:43 pm The answer is that you teach young people how to avoid unwanted children and how to raise children and take care of a family before they become parents.
Every student in my schools had lessons in parenting, economics{ budgeting, buying a car and home, figuring interest, and investing), child development, marriage and the family, civics and socio-economics before they graduation from high school. We also tested higher than any other school system in any Southern state. Our city was not a " suburb" and we had one high school that everyone attended.
What we did have that other cities and towns didn't have was an enlightened clergy and parents who wanted their children to be more successful than they had been.
The misdirected refrain that the gains made by children in Head Start are not real because the gains disappear by third grade is not an indictment of Head Start but rather it an indictment of the poor underfunded educational system the kids are thrown into after leaving the nurturing Head Start program
@Anonymous Early Childhood WHAT?.. said...
Asking because I don't know. @ 8:39
Yes everything you mention are part of the Head Start curriculum.
So why are a certain minority segment of today's Black parents so poor at parenting? A huge part of the problem was and is the influx of drugs exported into Black communities across the US by Ollie North and the CIA to finance the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Just like the current opioid epidemic in the White community, the crack epidemic in the Black neighborhoods devastated individuals, families and communities. Resulting in prostitution, loss of traditional heads of households, out of wedlock births and basically children raising children. You cannot teach what you yourself do not know.
So White folks just think. The government placed crack in the Black neighborhood 40 years ago and now, again abetted by the Conservative Republicans and corporate Democrats in government, the large pharmaceutical companies are exporting addictive opioids into your White communities.
pattern continues.
Try out dastardly plans against the weakest US communities, perfect the process and the rhetoric and then, 40 years later, unleash the same type of evil on the White community.
Just saying.
F mickins, you are correct about the introduction of crack though it is a documented event that most like to sweep under the rug.
But, I'd point out to you, that while this exacerbated a problem, that long before crack, we had alcohol addiction in our poor communities.
The poor and uneducated and intellectually challenged have a far greater rate of reproduction. We have done everything , as society, that we could do to encourage that high rate.
It's not because of welfare though those who have no clue that welfare does provide enough to adequately care for any child , much less multiple children, it's because we have systematically made access to birth prevention and control impossible for those below the poverty line. Worse, we no longer allow the parents of a daughter they know cannot be responsible for herself, much less take care of children, to have that daughter sterilized.
We know that puberty in females has an earlier onset, but we now insist that 10-12 year old who reached puberty who are raped to give birth.
We insist that females with a genetic defect that we know can be passed to their offspring give birth.
So no one should be surprised that the least effectual and poorest humans among us are reproducing themselves in greater numbers.
What the poor get in great numbers is children. And, yet we are surprised when poverty increases.
The pro life women can give out loads of children's clothes and diapers and cribs. They can talk to the single mother until they are blue in the face ( she will nod and agree and try to please as is typical of the intellectually challenged) . They can visit the child they convinced her to have and the next 6 or 8 as well. But, the pro life volunteers can't make these children have a higher IQ or erase genetic defects.
If those with above average IQs have 1-4 children and the poor and those with below average IQs have 4-8, you should be able, even if math challenged to figure out there will be fewer productive people and more underproductive people in a society over time.
What we are seeing that no one has acknowledged is that while poverty was mostly among African Americans in the South, these ridiculous policies have now grown the poor white population in this country as well.
Please remember the employment rate has never included those who have never been employed. It quickly ignores those who haven't been able to function on a job and who ,in short order, become unemployable. That's the statistic neither party wants you to see.
Once again F Mickens shows up to remind us what a delusional idiotic he is. The government infected black folk with aids, caused crack addictions in the black hood, provided the rope for tens of thousands of lynchings, caused Crown Vics to explode upon acceleration, sprayed wigs with a flesh-eating bacterium and created entitlement programs as a means of breaking up black families.
Mickens has long danced to the tune of total absence of responsibility among his brothers and sisters. It's always the fault of somebody else. And as long as there is one white man standing...the finger will be pointed at HIM.
Is he aware how similar his remarks are to those of Louie Farrakhan?
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