We need to work hard to help our
youngest children arrive on the first day of kindergarten
prepared to take advantage of what lies ahead. Across our
state, there's one thing educators agree on: Tennessee needs
a strong pre-K program.
--Governor Phil Bredesen
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High Quality Pre-K Education Is A Critical Economic Development Strategy
- Business Week magazine identified universal preschool education as one of its 25 Ideas For A Changing World
In his paper Fostering Human Capital, 2000, Nobel Laureate and University of Chicago Economics Professor James J. Heckman found, through a broad evaluation of job training programs, tax policies, school reform, and financial interventions, that high-quality early education gives children “the advantage of an early start to their skill development improving their chances of successfully participating in the job market in later years.” Heckman recommends focusing policy-related investments on children because they are likely to result in a higher level of skill development and yield a greater rate of return. He concludes that “the best evidence supports the policy prescription: Invest in the very young and improve basic learning and socialization skills.”
- Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald’s 2003 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return, challenges conventional views of economic development that, “typically include company headquarters, office towers, entertainment centers, and professional sports arenas,” and proposes that early childhood education take its place at the top of this list. The authors find that investments in early childhood development not only yield high public as well as private returns, but also result in “better working public schools, more educated workers and less crime.”
- The Trustees of the Committee for Economic Development – a national, nonpartisan organization of business and education leaders – published Preschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society in 2002, calling on the business community to help build public understanding about the economic and social need for early childhood education. The report states that “[p]oorly educated workers are increasingly unable to earn a living wage in a global marketplace where skills matter more than ever before. Society pays in many ways for failing to take full advantage of the learning potential of all its children, from lost economic productivity and tax revenues to higher crime rates to diminished participation in the civic and cultural life of the nation.”
- The U.S. Business Roundtable and Corporate Voices for Working Families jointly released Early Childhood Education: A Call to Action from the Business
Community in 2003, stressing the need for high-quality early childhood education to “improve education and develop a world-class workforce.” These organizations conclude that high-quality early childhood education is cost-effective and pays big dividends in the long run. The report states that “[i]n today’s world, where education and skill levels determine future earnings, the economic and social costs to individuals, communities, and the nation of not taking action on early childhood education are far too great to ignore.”
Office of the Governor - State Capitol - Nashville, TN 37243 - 615.741.2001