I was disappointed to read columnist Win Gruening’s recent attack on the Best Starts program. Best Starts is an initiative to improve the availability and quality of early education in Juneau. I genuinely admire Gruening’s insight on financial matters, and appreciate his impressive career at one of our community’s significant financial institutions. As a man of numbers, however, he needs to sharpen his pencil on this one.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago, James Heckman, has done considerable research on the return on investment from early education programs. He found that high quality birth-to-5 programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13 percent return on investment. These gains are realized through better outcomes in education, health, social behaviors and employment.
Professor Heckman’s work isn’t the only research that underscores the benefits of early childhood programs. In social science research, the gold standard for understanding impacts is known as a meta-analysis. While individual studies might differ on their findings, a meta-analysis combines all of these studies to demonstrate outcomes across a broad range of studies. In fact, a meta-analysis of 123 studies of early education programs found significant positive impacts in cognitive outcomes, with additional impacts in social skills and school progress.
Instead of consulting this overwhelming body of knowledge, Gruening cites some unidentified “critics” in their beliefs about the long-term impacts of early education programs. I invite readers to review my citations online and look at the full body of research on early education programs. The research is crystal clear: high quality early education makes kids learn better, get along better, and do better in school.
Finally, Gruening implies that public education is somehow broken and that we shouldn’t invest more in its early stages. This argument defies logic. If early education can help kids get along better and be better able to learn when they get to kindergarten, then they will do better in the school system and less investment will be needed in future years. It’s actually a way to save dollars. By investing early, public dollars can go further and reap more benefits in the long run.
As a business owner who depends on a stable, educated workforce and a safe community, I fully support investing in the Best Starts program, and want to thank Jesse Kiehl, Loren Jones and Rob Edwardson for supporting the measure at the Juneau Assembly. Investing in early education means that more people will have the childcare they need to come to work on a regular basis. Future workers will also be better educated and better suited to the working world. And finally, the social benefits of early childhood education mean that in the future fewer adults will turn to crime and steal from local businesses, a problem far too common in our community right now.
I’m sorry to see Gruening making a false start in his earlier column attacking this worthwhile initiative. I’m inviting him and his readers back to the starting line, though, to look at the full body of research in early childhood education. The facts are clear. The only question is if we have the foresight to make the right investment in our community’s future.
• Marc Wheeler is co-owner of a local business and board member of the Juneau Economic Development Council. A former Assembly Member and WT Grant Foundation Distinguished Fellow, he also worked for 12 years in the field of youth development.
