It is worth noting when the nation’s top central banker talks about things besides interest rates and inflation, and earlier this month Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took time to urge state policymakers to continue investing in early childhood education. 

The busy Fed chief reminded his audience that while a strong K-12 system is an important factor in building a good workforce, quality early learning classrooms also play an important role.

Research increasingly has shown the importance for both individuals and the economy as a whole of both early childhood education as well as efforts to promote the lifelong acquisition of skills. The payoffs of early childhood programs can be especially high. For instance, investment in preschool programs for disadvantaged children has been shown to increase high school graduation rates. Because high school graduates have higher earnings, pay more taxes, and are less likely to need to use public health programs, such investments can pay off even from the narrow perspective of state budgets; of course, the returns to the overall economy and to the individuals themselves are much greater. – Speech to the Annual Meeting of the Southern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments. 8/2/10. (Early learning comments are near the end. See text for footnotes.)

As a journalist who dissected Federal Reserve speeches for key policy changes years ago, I can tell you Fed chairmen don’t waste too many words. And it is great to see Bernanke’s endorsement of quality early learning when he has so many other issues to comment on, including the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession.

Washington State News

• Ready by Five receives $379,000 federal grant – 8/19/10, Yakima Herald- Republic

National/International

• Officials encourage early education as way to fight crime – 8/18/10, WNYT-TV (NY)
• How to close the achievement gap – 8/16/10, Newsweek (NAT)
• Don't drop out of school innovation – 8/19/10, The New York Times (NAT)
• How Obama got it right on school reform – 8/20/10, The Washington Post (NAT)
  

Research/Policy

• Early learning paves future – 8/19/10, The Times Union (GA)

The country’s version of the free market is failing early learning.  It doesn’t support the right balance of supply and demand, costs tied to return on investment or decent salaries for the industry’s workers.

There is plenty of support for this argument in a new post “Why Girly Jobs Don’t Pay Well” over on The New York Times Economix blog. The piece looks at how the market fails to support caring services, such as elder care and early learning, and why women tend to work in these fields.

…Caring often creates “outputs” that are not easily captured in market transactions, such as the increases in lifetime capabilities created by excellent kindergarten and preschool teachers.

It’s hard to imagine an explicit contract that could enable a care worker to “capture” the value-added – which extends well beyond increases in lifetime earnings to many less tangible benefits. – “Why Girly Jobs Don’t Pay Well.” NYT, 8/16/10.

Capitalism’s failure to support this work is one reason the U.S. has a large welfare system, according to the blog post.   

Indeed, market failures in the provision of these services help explain why we rely heavily on a welfare state that is, not incidentally, often dubbed a nanny state.

…

Many of the worst-paying girly jobs – like teaching young children before they enter public kindergarten – pay badly because they get relatively little public support, are poorly regulated and serve families who can’t afford to pay for high-quality services.

There is a lot more in the story that’s worth checking out.

(Thanks to EarlyStories for highlighting this story.)

In this era of diagnosis, a new study suggests that when a child is born can mean he or she is more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, MSNBC.com reports today.

North Carolina State University researchers found that children born just after the kindergarten eligibility cutoff date were 25 percent less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children born just before the cutoff date. Children born just after the cutoff date are among the oldest in their class, and those born just before the cutoff date are among the youngest in their class. – LiveScience via MSNBC.com, 8/18/10.

The research and story raise several concerns. For example, are many students receiving an incorrect diagnosis of ADHD only because they are the youngest in a classroom?

It is also only one of the latest developments in the debate over diagnosing mental disorders and mental illnesses in children. A label of youth bipolar or ADHD often comes with a prescription for drugs with side effects, even though there is disagreement about how those disorders are diagnosed.

Toddlers Using Stats: It turns out toddlers use statistics when they play, a new study says.

Researchers found toddlers relied on non-random sampling to decide what toys someone wants, according to work conducted by researchers at Cornell University, University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan.

They watched the adult choose five toys that were either 18 percent or 82 percent of the toys in a box. The adult played happily with the toy either way, but the toddler only concluded that the adult had a preference if they'd picked the toys from a box in which that toy was scarce. – “Preschoolers Use Statistics to Understand Others.” HealthNewsDigest, 8/17/10.

Cleo Li was born healthy. Then, one night when she was just three months old, she stopped breathing. CPR brought her back to life, but Cleo had suffered a massive brain injury due to lack of oxygen.

Just like that, the Li family had a daughter with special needs, and their world was turned upside down.

Watch this Learning for Life as the Li family gives us a look at what it's like to have a child with special needs - whether that child is born with special needs or, like Cleo, suffers a traumatic event to her body. They talk about the emotional ups and downs as well as the challenges of finding information and support and the amazing difference early intervention makes for a child and a family.

This is the third segment in a month-long series Learning for Life - and Birth to Thrive Online (Thrive's daily blog) - is doing on children with special needs. Next week, we look at Autism - what it is, how it's diagnosed and the signs parents should look for. We also explore the issue of whether there are enough resources available to support the increasing numbers of children being diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder and their families.

Learning for Life airs every Wednesday on KING 5 Morning News on KONG 6/16 TV between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m.

Learn more and watch past Learning for Life series and specials here.

(Third story in a series on special needs in early learning.)

When Anna’s son was born with a rare disorder four years ago her world changed and that included her child care. Her options shrank to nearly nothing.

During her four-month maternity leave, Anna looked for a high-quality program around Seattle, but nothing seemed to work. Initially, she hoped to enroll her new baby in a home-based child care near her North Seattle home. While they said they would be happy to add him, they were not equipped for his special needs tied to Ohdo syndrome, a disorder characterized by eating, movement, speech, learning and other disabilities.  

“I would rather have that answer than have him sit in the corner and not get what he needs,” Anna, who requested that her name be withheld, said.

Eventually, Anna found an option, Northwest Center, a long-running resource for children and adults with disabilities. But, the center was too expensive for a family that relies on Anna’s public teacher’s salary and her husband’s income as a Boeing Co. Machinist.

They tried an Au Pair for 18 months, but it didn’t work out. Then Anna heard of a good nanny through friends – an expensive option she was unsure would meet her son’s needs – and hired her. Three years later, the nanny remains a sweet and helpful part of the family, but also a costly addition to their already complicated juggle of half-day preschool at the University of Washington’s Experimental Education Unit, medical appointments and weekly physical therapy.

Parents often complain about the challenges of finding high-quality child care – waitlists, extensive individual research and the shock of fees that can run as high as college tuition. But families with special needs children have a far harder time. They may need accommodations, though not as expensive as some think, have few choices and bigger bills. These barriers may explain why one parent often stops working.

But Anna didn’t have that option. Like many modern American families, she and her husband live in an urban area where two salaries are often needed to cover the steep cost of living.

“I have to work. I don’t have a choice,” said Anna, who also has an 11-year-old child.

Hurdles in special needs child care not only make Anna’s life and others more difficult, but may push these families and their children further outside the mainstream. At a time, when many educators say they are striving for greater inclusion of children with disabilities in kindergarten through high school, these kids often start the first years of their education on the outside.

Complicating their child care juggle, Anna’s family, like many with special needs children, has bills other parents don’t.  Their son has medical treatments, prescriptions and physical therapy that sometimes are not covered by their health insurance.

And while some people may think Anna gets a lot of help with these bills from state and federal programs, Anna points out that isn’t the case.

 “I don’t have any assistance from the state,” Anna added.

As Anna’s son prepares for kindergarten next year, everything is once again changing. Anna will need to find care for her son before and after school. They are on the waitlist for Northwest Center, but they don’t think they will get in.

Anna and her family are not looking for sympathy or charity. It took Anna a year to grasp the idea that raising her son will be a lot different than raising her first child. But now the family accepts the future will always hold unknowns.

“It is just a different lifestyle, and you just accept it and go on. You don’t have a choice. You just do,” Anna said.

 Perhaps they should have a few more choices for child care as they do.

The U.S. Education Department is doing some interesting work with its competitive grant contests, i3 and Race to the Top, but there are now questions about early learning’s role in these battles for better education systems.

Some child care advocates criticized the finalists announced this month for i3, officially known as Investing in Innovation, for not including enough early learning work, EarlyStories reports. Today, the Hechinger Institute blog covers the response from Ed Department leaders, who said there is plenty of early learning among the finalists.

Early Ed Watch questions some of the scoring of i3 grant applications, “Inconsistencies in Scores for i3’s Early Learning Winners.”

Folks who are tracking federal efforts to encourage early learning innovation should check out both stories.

Washington State

• Child Care Subsidies Among Gregoire Cuts (with interview with DEL Director Bette Hyde) – 8/13/10, KPLU
• WA gov announces $51M in cuts to state welfare – 8/13/10, The Seattle Times
• Pre-K education gets good reviews, frugal funding – 8/11/10, Tri-City Herald
• Editorial: Early learning program is a good investment – 8/10/10, The Daily News

National/International News

• Editorial: Kids Come First – 8/13/10, Florida Today (FL)
• State to spend $1.5m on child care training before rating system begins – 8/12/10, The Journal Times (WI)
• U.S. Government Creates Board for Early Learning – 8/11/10, Blog: Eye on Early Education (MA)
• Better Training on Early Years Urged for Principals – 8/11/10, Education Week (NAT)
• How to get the extra help your child needs – 8/10/10, Washington Post (NAT)
• America left behind – 8/10/10, The Huffington Post
• Child Care Costs More Than College – 8/9/10, New York Times Magazine (NAT)
• Make early education a part of school reform – 8/9/10, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
• Milk party campaign aims to improve child care in Florida – 8/9/10, The Chicago Tribune (NAT)
• Is Your Child Ready for Preschool? – July 2010, Parenting Magazine (NAT)

Research/Policy

• Impact of pre-K through 3rd grade alignment – 8/12/10, League of Education Voters

Today, Gov. Chris Gregoire announced cuts of $51 million to the WorkFirst program for the rest of state fiscal year 2011 (which ends June 30, 2011). WorkFirst is our state’s “welfare to work” program, which helps low-income families become self-sufficient through training and support services. WorkFirst includes the Working Connections Child Care program, which offers child care subsidies to low-income families who are working, looking for work or in job training.

Read more about today's announcement on the Department of Early Learning's blog, DEL Connect.

Seattle public schools chief Maria Goodloe-Johnson gave the PreK-3rd movement a boost today, endorsing a move to a PreK-12 system as the most powerful step education policymakers could take.

“I believe that the single most powerful change we’re going to make…the one that’s going to have the largest and most long lasting impact on our kids…is to switch us from a K-12 system to a PreK-12 system,” Goodloe-Johnson said in draft speaking points to be delivered at an event in Seattle today.

The event focused on Seattle’s draft plan to integrate prekindergarten and early elementary grades. The idea is to improve coordination among these grades by expanding access to quality pre-k and universal kindergarten, improving quality across these grades, aligning standards, data and assessment tools, improving transitions between grades and providing better support for students with the greatest needs.

Seattle and Washington State have emerged as leaders in the PreK-3rd movement, and today’s event is one of four the National League of Cities is supporting around the nation to promote the effort. At today’s workshop, “PreK- 3rd Grade Partnership: An integrated, Aligned System for Education Achievement,” national and local leaders are planning to discuss Seattle’s Draft PreK-3rd Action Plan.

Yesterday Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn offered support.

“Yes, we should work together to improve our high schools and middle schools, but for many students, our efforts at those ages are too little, too late.  Their education struggles began very early, and we now know that students who start school behind almost always stay behind,” McGinn said in a draft of speaking points prepared before the event. “…We will no longer be satisfied with building systems for kids and families that are adjacent to one another.”

The federal government could play an important role in Seattle’s and other efforts to align prekindergarten and elementary school by changing federal rules to allow easier blending of Head Start, Title I and special education funds, which would make it easier for prekindergarten classrooms to be in public schools or administered in coordination with school districts, according to one observer.

Senior leaders at the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are already working on better coordination of early learning work spread among the two agencies.

Goodloe-Johnson made it clear Seattle will soon have far better coordination between prekindergarten and elementary school.

“The co-located but un-linked preschool is about to be a vestige of the past,” Goodloe-Johnson said.