Early Learning Testimony
January 18, 2005
Delivered by Greg Shaw, director, Education.
Madame Chair, thank you for inviting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to appear today to discuss the vital importance of early learning in the State of Washington. I would like to commend you and your colleagues today for your leadership on this important issue.
Although private foundations are not generally allowed to express their views to legislative officials on specific pending legislation, the written invitation we received from you requesting that we speak on issues surrounding early learning and Senate Bill 6466 allows us to participate at this public hearing.
Additionally, a primary objective of our participating in these discussions is to advance the public-private partnership recently announced between the State of Washington and private businesses and foundations to support high quality early learning opportunities for all children and families in Washington state.
For many years the foundation has been a supporter of early learning through our Community Grants program which provides funding broadly to support vulnerable children and families. To that end, since 2002 the foundation has provided $20 million in funding for early learning projects, including $8 million in funding for capital.
However, approximately two years ago we began an extensive research project to determine how the foundation could most effectively invest in Washington state to ensure that as many of our young people as possible entered adulthood successfully. As this committee is well aware, our foundation is a co-investor with the state in K-12 education, a significant area of focus where our goal is that every child graduate high school prepared for college, work and citizenship. Related to this goal, our Pacific Northwest giving program has been concerned for some time with at-risk children and families. We did not set out to complete a comprehensive early learning strategy, but our focus moved to earlier and earlier preventions as we learned more about the research and the status of Washington state’s adoption of that earlier research. It is our conclusion that we are failing to bring to scale here what the nation and the world knows about the importance of the earliest years. Two years after our study began, we have become convinced that early learning—beginning at birth—is the best investment that we can make to improve outcomes and ensure that children have the opportunity to become successful adults.
Quality early learning—preparing all children to be ready for school—should be a priority for our state. Our foundation’s investments will prioritize strategies for those most at risk, starting at birth, but we also agree with our colleagues that it must be a priority for all families. Research shows what concerned parents, educators, and social workers know from daily firsthand experience: Many children begin life with measurable indicators of socio-economic disadvantage, or “risk factors,” that are often overwhelming. In Washington State, 23 percent of all children age 0-5—more than 109,000 statewide—are born with two or more of these risk factors, poverty being the most prevalent. Without successful interventions involving parents and caregivers, many of these children, by kindergarten, are in danger of falling behind other children in their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Fully 75 percent of the children in Washington’s lowest-income classrooms are not school-ready, according to a teacher survey of kindergarten-readiness rates conducted by the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Washington State University. The farther behind children are when entering kindergarten, the more difficult it will be for them to catch up, and the lower the likelihood that they will grow up to be successful young adults. The result is an enormous loss of human potential and a high cost to taxpayers.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that the cumulative developmental toll experienced by high-risk children can be prevented or significantly reduced by providing high-quality early learning from birth to the start of kindergarten. Children that participated in the High Scope/Perry Preschool program had higher high-school graduation rates, fewer arrests, and higher median annual incomes than those who received no program benefits. In the Abecedarian program, participants were twice as likely to still be in school at age 21 as the control group. They were also, on average, two years older when their first child was born, and nearly three times as likely to attend a four-year college.
In addition, the economic benefits of early learning are clear and compelling. Cost-benefit analyses performed on the long-term returns of quality early childhood programs show returns of $4 to $8 for every $1 invested. The return on investment is significant for the individual (in increased earnings), the government (in decreased special education, remediation, and welfare costs), and society (decreased crime and its related costs). The real internal rate of return for high-quality early learning programs is estimated at 16 percent, with 80 percent of those returns benefiting the general public.
The foundation is prepared to make a 10-year investment of approximately $90m for early learning in the state of Washington. However, we recognize the critical importance of partnering in this effort. Put differently, we will not invest alone. A condition of our giving is that state and local jurisdictions, as well as other private foundations and businesses co-invest and learn together. To this end, we have just signed a memorandum of understanding to create a public-private partnership for early learning with Governor Gregoire, and representatives from Talaris, Boeing, The Foundation for Early Learning, Kirlin, Social Venture Partners, and the Ackerley foundation. And we hope others will join. But other investors are watching to see how and if Olympia supports this growing movement. The public-private partnership is a critical step in ensuring that new resources are available to guarantee access to early learning programs for all children and families in the state of Washington, that programs are of high-quality, and that resources are sustainable over the long term.
Public and private investors and experts coming together to advance quality early learning and school readiness for parents and families is exciting. But it is a first step. There are three areas of focus that this session can and must address:
- Partnership and investment. We need for the legislature to fund with us the partnership we are creating. In the 2004 session, this legislature helped to create what today is a public-private partnership called the Washington Families Fund. Rep. Ruth Kagi and Sen. Val Stevens were pivotal leaders in creating this public-private partnership for homeless families. The legislature funded the partnership but left it to motivated and highly competent public and private leaders to create its governance, financing and operations. Similarly, we believe the early learning public-private partnership will benefit from legislative investment and participation ultimately in its governance. But it would not benefit from a highly prescriptive approach at this stage.
- Standards and accountability. The Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) and tiered reimbursement pilots begin to set the standards while also providing the incentives and accountability that are needed to move early learning in this state toward higher quality for children and their parents. Private funders are counting on the state to invest in this. How can parents demand quality if they do not know how to ascertain quality? The QRIS and tiered reimbursement pilots are vital parts of both quality and safety in this initiative.
- Governance. Early learning today in this state is like so many strands of a rope—frayed and fragmented. The state is the largest funder of early learning but our grantees feel that it is fragmented. Similarly, private funders are often fragmented. The public-private partnership is a means of getting all funders behind the same rope, pulling in the same direction. But it is difficult when the largest funder of early learning is spread out in multiple agencies creating an incoherent governance structure with which to partner. We have researched what other states are doing in early learning to learn more about what works well. Pennsylvania, for example, has recently created a similar department for early learning, and our colleagues at the Heinz foundation believe that this new department is working and improving early learning in the state.
The Early Learning Council of Washington Learns gave careful consideration to the proposal of creating a new early learning department and ultimately concluded that such a department could be a valuable means of improving not just governance, but outcomes for children and families. However, for a new department of early learning to be an effective partner in the new public-private partnership, it will need to have fiscal and policy control over all early learning revenues. Currently, the majority of the funding for early learning in the state of Washington is from the Working Connections child care subsidy, which is a part of TANF. We believe that those dollars are a crucial ingredient in any movement toward quality early learning.
This is a pivotal time for Washington state. There is real momentum among public and private funders, child care providers, researchers, and parents to make sure that young children have the opportunity for the best start possible. This momentum should not be squandered, but rather be leveraged and built upon to create sustainable solutions for the children of our state. The Early Learning Council has presented its interim recommendations to the Governor and SB 6466 takes action on the core aspects of those interim recommendations. We believe the final recommendations of the Early Learning Council later this year will be of even more vital importance to improving outcomes for children and families, but they must build upon the elements before you today.
We appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today. Thank you.
*Greg Shaw is the former director of the foundation's Pacific Northwest program