Well it’s wonderful to be back here at the Center for American Progress, which has done so much important work in its relatively young life. We’re talking about pre-school and the Center for American Progress is just beginning but obviously showing great development and results.

It is really a privilege to be here with my colleague and friend, Senator Casey. Senator Casey, as John said, has a great deal of interest in the well-being of young children. He comes from a family that has really focused on maximizing the opportunity and the chances of every person to live up to his or her God-given potential and it is a great honor to be here with him.

I also want to recognize the panelists, some of whom I have worked with over many years. Cynthia Brown who has been a champion of education, including early childhood education, for many, many years. Cynthia and I worked together longer ago than either of us care to remember. Carol Brunson Day, President and CEO of the National Black Child Development Institute, a long time advocate on behalf of children of color and a real understanding of what it would take to close the gaps that still too often interfere with children’s potential. Harriet Dichter who, as was just referenced, is the Deputy Secretary of the Office of Child Development and Early Learning. Pennsylvania is doing some very exciting work in education. I really salute Harriet and the Governor for their commitment. And Libby Doggett, Executive Director of Pre-K Now, a wonderful advocacy group that is putting Pre-K on the nation’s priority list. And so many of you who are here in the audience--I see Pat Schroder, my long-time friend, former member of Congress--and others of you who have been beating the drums for early childhood, going back decades now.

And I think that perhaps the stars are finally coming into alignment, because the evidence has caught up with the advocacy. Many of us have known for a very long time that this needs to be a priority, but now it is abundantly clear that we have to invest in early childhood if we expect to remain competitive in a global economy, if we expect to honor our obligations to poor children, children of color, children from disadvantaged backgrounds, where English is not the first language, so that they too can have as good a chance as possible to fulfill their own dreams and contribute to our country.

So this is an issue near and dear to my heart. It’s one that I have fought for, believed in, written about, talked about, and now trying to legislate about for over 35 years. It is also something that I come to as a mother, because clearly what I tried to do with my husband to invest in our own daughter, we did because we thought it was important. It wasn’t a luxury, it wasn’t some kind of casual commitment. We understood that trying to make those first five years as rich a learning environment as possible would lay the groundwork for everything that came after.

And like everyone in this room, I have seen what happens when we invest in our children; when caring adults and families, and in the village -- as I like to refer to it -- come together to make a commitment.

I saw it back in Arkansas when I brought a program called HIPPY from Israel to Arkansas--where it now has the largest program in our country--to help teach parents how they could become their children’s first teachers. We taught them the importance of talking to their children, reading to their children -- and if they were somewhat uncomfortable reading because of their own skills, using a book to tell stories -- but interacting in a very verbal way with their own children. Using household objects to teach lessons that so many of us just take for granted. Using the assets of whatever community they were in, from getting a library card to going to museums or other sites that could be enriching experiences for their children. What all of us have tried to do for our own children.

I’ve seen it in Head Start and Early Head Start programs where children were learning to read, to count, to solve problems, to develop the habits of socialization and discipline that would enable them to interact with others and succeed in a structured environment like school. And we are seeing it around our country in states that have begun investing in early childhood programs.

Three years ago only 11 of America’s governors had pre-kindergarten on their policy and budget agendas. This year the number is 29. But state-funded Pre-K programs currently serve less than 15 percent of three and four year olds. If we add Head-Start we’re up to about 20 percent, but that is woefully behind what is being done in some of our major competitors. And I have seen the very positive effects that these early childhood programs [have] in other countries and I don’t think we have a choice any longer. I think we have to invest in early childhood for all of the reasons that we’ve discussed.

This is about the success of our children in school, it is about basic fairness, it is about closing the achievement gap and it is about our global competitiveness in the international economy. That’s why I’ve introduced the Ready to Learn Act. We have to recognize that voluntary universal pre-school is no longer something to be talked about. We must act on it.

It is something that I believe goes hand-in-hand with school reform. Much of what we spend money on in school reform is not proven to be as effective as early childhood education. So by taking our federal, state, and local dollars and beginning to shift them into early childhood we will actually get better results than how we are currently spending a lot of those dollars.

Children who attend high-quality Pre-K programs are less likely to be held back a grade or to need special education. They are more likely to graduate from high school, to have higher earnings as adults, less likely to become dependent on welfare or involved in crime.

And the reality is that while many parents can afford high quality Pre-K opportunities for their children, many hardworking families simply cannot. As a result, in today’s current education system, it is not unusual at all for many children to arrive at Kindergarten already behind their peers. Nearly 50 percent of Kindergarten teachers report that at least half of their children come to school with problems that hinder their success. One in every six Kindergarteners needs specialized one-on-one tutoring or special instruction in a small group. Each year more than 200,000 children repeat Kindergarten.

When I was First Lady I hosted a White House Conference on early childhood development and learning where expert after expert emphasized the importance of these early years. A child who arrives at Kindergarten ready to learn has a far greater chance of excelling, not only in his or her early years, but far into his academic career.

Studies show that children who learn the names and sounds of letters before entering Kindergarten are 20 times more likely to read simple words by the end of Kindergarten than children who enter Kindergarten not knowing the letters of the alphabet.

Eighty eight percent of children who are poor readers in first grade remain poor readers by fourth grade. Children who are not at least modestly skilled readers by the end of third grade are unlikely to graduate from high school.

The arc is very clear. You start kindergarten behind, you are more likely to stay behind. By the time you are eight or nine years old, if you are still behind, you begin to internalize that message that you’re just not smart enough, you’re just not good enough and the path to a high school drop out is laid.

So, the money we don’t spend on our children before kindergarten we end up spending in special education, crime, welfare, unemployment, lower productivity. We already know that for every one dollar we spend on early childhood education we reap seven dollars as a society in returns.

One study indicates that in total annual benefits, voluntary universal pre-kindergarten pays for itself within nine years and by an increasing margin each year after that. By the year 2050 such a program is estimated to generate government budget benefits in higher incomes, lower social costs of $191 billion. The same study also shows that voluntary universal pre-kindergarten would increase the future wages and benefits of children who participate to the tune of about $432 billion by 2050. Investments in pre-kindergarten will dramatically reduce crime and the costs that come with it, saving an estimated $156 billion nationwide by 2050.

Another important aspect of this, which doesn’t come from me. People would say, well you’ve been a child advocate all your adult life, of course you would believe that. But the Federal Reserve Board of Minneapolis recently did a study asking themselves what one investment could America make that would more likely enable us to be competitive globally than any other. And I think they were surprised to come back after reviewing all of the studies and the literature, with the answer, early childhood education.

James Heckman, a Noble Prize winning economist at the University of Chicago--hardly known as a hotbed of liberal, soft headed thinking--has concluded, also looking at the benefits from early childhood, that it alone would narrow the achievement gap between African American and Caucasian children by 50 percent.

So, we have incredibly strong evidence on our side as to why this is a good investment for a child and for our country. That’s why I have introduced the Ready to Learn Act. I am proposing that the federal government fund states to establish high quality early learning initiatives to promote school readiness for four year olds in their states. We’ll invest in the programs that states have already started and create a big incentive for states to start pre-kindergarten programs, if they haven’t already. We’ll take pre-existing, voluntary pre-kindergarten programs to the next level by increasing access and quality through targeted grants and loans. Fifteen percent of those funds will go toward improving quality. We’ll devote 25 percent of the funding of grants to schools, child care providers, Head Start, and other community-based organizations.

Finally, I am proposing that we require states to target four year olds who need pre-kindergarten the most and will benefit the most: children from low income working families earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty limit, children from limited English households, and children who would not otherwise have formal early learning opportunities.

One of the most important studies that I think has been done in this area is called, Meaningful Differences. I wrote about it in It Takes A Village, because I thought it was information that needed to be as widely dispersed as possible. Over a period of years, with a longitudinal study, researchers from the University of Kansas followed children from high income, middle income, and low income families. These were all functioning families, healthy families, families that loved each other and supported each other. Their main difference was income level and education level, which correlates with income level.

The researchers literally counted the words between parents and children. They analyzed the interactions at home and outside of home between the children and the adults in their lives. Here’s what they found: high income families talk a lot to their children, probably more than the children want to hear. It’s constant talk, it’s reading constantly. I used to think that before Chelsea was pre-verbal she was probably thinking, “Oh no! Here they go again, reading to me.”

But, there was so much of a rich atmosphere that was just charging up those brain synapses where all that language was just being laid in because we know that you have about 50 percent of your vocabulary by the time you’re five.

Middle income, working families didn’t talk as much, but talked. A lot of people in the families--the adults in the family--weren’t necessarily all that verbal themselves, but they did have conversations that included the children. It wasn’t quite as constant as higher income families, but it was certainly part of the daily life and interaction in the family.

Lower income families did not talk as much to their children. There wasn’t that give-and-take, there wasn’t the reading, there wasn’t the emphasis on building up vocabulary. In fact, often language was used to protect children or to discipline children: Don’t go there. Stop doing that. Don’t get in trouble. It was to try to send a message to their children that it was a world where there could be some threats and dangers out there. So language wasn’t a rich, involving experience so much as a boundary-setting, limiting experience.

And the researchers concluded that the difference in the way that the interactions in the family occurred had profound effects on the extent of vocabulary and the comfort with language that children from each of these different family settings acquired by the time they entered school.

I can remember very well working on early childhood, going back to my years in Arkansas -- even before the HIPPY program -- traveling around the state. And I used to -- just for conversation when I’d see a mother with a toddler or with an infant -- I would often say, “Well, I bet you’re having a wonderful time with your baby and I bet you’re talking to your baby.” And I can’t tell you how many quizzical looks crossed the faces of so many of those mothers. And I remember very well being in Bald Knob, Arkansas, one hot Saturday in the summer and having a mother say, well why would I talk to her she can’t talk back. This is a mother who loved her child, who cared for her child, who would have died for her child, but did not know the importance of talking to her infant.
So, early childhood is not just about a government program. We have to, as a nation, do a better job reaching out to parents, to help them feel comfortable with the role of being their child’s first teacher, equip them -- through the mass media, through the Internet, through one-on one-contacts--with the tools so that they can actually implement this.

I’ve seen many cases where an older child didn’t go to Head Start or didn’t go to HIPPY or didn’t go to one of the programs, but a younger child did, and have a parent tell me how much better their younger child is doing in school and how proud they were.

So, I think this is one of those win-win strategies that are rare in public policy and I appreciate CAP for bringing the focus on it today. I’m delighted to be here with Senator Casey and I look forward to working with all of you to really implement a program that is worthy of our children and their future. Thank you very much.

 

 

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Read more about Senator Clinton's pre-kindergarten legislation.

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