Nebraska Policymakers Reach Consensus on Early Childhood Legislation, Based on Recent Scientific Findings
One illustrative model, he said, is Omaha’s Educare Center, which provides programs for children from birth through age 5. Such centers are noteworthy for the quality of care children received from college-trained teachers and assistants. Enrollment is available year-round for economically disadvantaged children.
During the legislative session, the combined testimony of both local academic experts and a national group of scientists was essential, according to Helen Raikes. “The testimony by Nebraska’s experts, including Ph.D.’s from our local university, advocacy groups, schools and others from the early childhood community, attested to the seriousness of the problem and the viability of solutions, ” Raikes said. “However, Nebraska legislators needed to understand early child development in a way that only nationally prominent scientists could explain, so we called in the scientists who had been examining evidence for the National Academy of Sciences and who had lately formed the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.” Raikes and others helped establish a bipartisan forum for hearing the scientific evidence, enlisting support from legislators, their staffs, and lobbyists. As a result, in March 2005, Jack P. Shonkoff, a pediatrician and chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, addressed Nebraska legislators at a reception held at the governor’s mansion. Twenty-one state senators attended the event.
Shonkoff presented recent scientific findings on early childhood development and the relationship between brain architecture and the ability of children to gain competence and positively affect the country’s economic base.
“Nurturing, responsive, and individualized relationships in the early years build healthy brain architecture that provides a strong foundation for all future growth and development,” he told the gathering. “The developing brain is most malleable in the first few years of life, when its structure—its architecture—is undergoing essential change. Public policies should capitalize on the important opportunity presented in the preschool and early school years,” Shonkoff emphasized.
“For example, based on the scientific evidence, we should consider the importance of recruiting and training attentive caregivers and teachers who understand the value of positive early childhood interactions,” he said.
Shonkoff also pointed to the emerging intersection of neuroscience and economics. He cited the long-term High/Scope Education Research Foundation’s Perry Preschool Project, initiated in 1962 in Ypsilanti, Mich., which revealed that, by age 40, preschool participants had higher earnings, were more likely to hold a job, had committed fewer crimes and were more likely to have completed high school than those in the control group of children who did not attend preschool. According to an analysis of this study and other research, for every dollar invested in early childhood education, there are yields of as much as 17 dollars in long-term benefits to society.
“We should not have to choose between our moral responsibility for children and the desire for strong economic returns on our investments—both goals are served well when we truly understand the science of early childhood and early brain development, and its relationship to healthy societies,” Shonkoff said.
The Role of Science
The effect of testimony from Shonkoff and other scientists and medical professionals from Nebraska was considerable. “Later, when lawmakers spoke on the floor about the measure,” Helen Raikes said, “they would often begin with the statement, ‘The research is there.’”
To Shonkoff, the Nebraska experience also illustrated that “science is most effective in the policy arena when it is communicated in an understandable, nonpartisan way and delivered to the right people at the right time. Scientists can play an important role in making sure that communication occurs, particularly when they respect the value context in which decisions are made.”
Clothier agreed. “The goal of legislators is, after all, effective decision-making, which requires the timely application of knowledge,” she said.
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