Invest Early in All Our Children

Right now, a strong case is be­ing made for pub­lic in­vest­ments in high-qual­ity early child­hood ex­per­i­ences for all chil­dren. The re­search is clear: The earli­est years of a child’s life are marked by rap­id brain de­vel­op­ment, lay­ing the found­a­tion for fu­ture edu­ca­tion­al and life out­comes. High-qual­ity early child­hood op­por­tun­it­ies be­ne­fit the chil­dren who par­ti­cip­ate in them, par­tic­u­larly those with the greatest needs and the greatest risk of be­ing left be­hind. So­ci­ety be­ne­fits through a sub­stan­tial re­turn on in­vest­ments made.

As we work to­ward ex­pand­ing ac­cess to qual­ity early child­hood ex­per­i­ences for all chil­dren, however, we must re­cog­nize that some chil­dren will need more in­tens­ive sup­port sys­tems than oth­ers. Pro­grams must be de­signed so that they can meet the unique needs of chil­dren com­pre­hens­ively. Chil­dren who are the poorest, strug­gling with dis­ab­il­it­ies, learn­ing Eng­lish as a second lan­guage, home­less, or in foster care of­ten need an ex­tra boost to meet their in­di­vidu­al needs and keep them abreast of oth­er chil­dren in early child­hood set­tings.

The num­bers and needs of these chil­dren will vary from classroom to classroom and pro­gram to pro­gram. But they must be con­sidered and planned for as in­vest­ments in early child­hood are made and ex­pan­ded. A snap­shot of chil­dren with spe­cial needs tells us that:

• More than one in four chil­dren un­der age 5 — nearly 5 mil­lion — were poor in 2012; and nearly half were ex­tremely poor, liv­ing in a fam­ily of four with an in­come of less than $11,925 per year;

• In 2011, more than 1 mil­lion chil­dren ages birth through 5 were iden­ti­fied as hav­ing dis­ab­il­it­ies or de­vel­op­ment­al delays, and were served by the In­di­vidu­als with Dis­ab­il­it­ies Edu­ca­tion Act;

• Dur­ing the 2011-2012 school year, chil­dren learn­ing Eng­lish as a second lan­guage rep­res­en­ted 12 per­cent of chil­dren in pub­lic school preschool pro­grams;

• More than one in three of the al­most 400,000 chil­dren in foster care in FY2012 were un­der the age of 6.

Chil­dren with spe­cial needs of­ten bring a wide range of phys­ic­al and emo­tion­al chal­lenges to early child­hood pro­grams. Some­times their fam­il­ies lack ba­sic es­sen­tials, in­clud­ing food, hous­ing, and med­ic­al care. Some chil­dren may have un­met health and men­tal health needs due to in­creased ex­pos­ure to vi­ol­ence, ab­use, and neg­lect — and the stress that ac­com­pan­ies them. Oth­ers may need little ex­tra help. The good news is that we now have abund­ant evid­ence that high-qual­ity early child­hood ex­per­i­ences can buf­fer the im­pact of chal­lenges some chil­dren face and pro­mote pos­it­ive short and long-term out­comes.

Ac­cord­ing to a 2013 re­port re­leased by the So­ci­ety for Re­search in Child De­vel­op­ment and the Found­a­tion for Child De­vel­op­ment, while all chil­dren be­ne­fit from high-qual­ity pro­grams, chil­dren from low-in­come house­holds, those with oth­er spe­cial needs, and chil­dren learn­ing Eng­lish as a second lan­guage have the po­ten­tial to be­ne­fit more. The re­port high­lighted evid­ence from pub­lic preschool pro­grams in Bo­ston and Tulsa, Okla., as well as the fed­er­ally fun­ded Head Start pro­gram.

Gov­ernors and may­ors in red and blue states across the coun­try have taken note of such find­ings — and the eval­u­ations of New Jer­sey’s court-ordered Ab­bott Preschool pro­gram, which tar­gets com­munit­ies with high con­cen­tra­tions of poverty. The par­ti­cip­at­ing chil­dren in New Jer­sey have shown pos­it­ive be­ne­fits from the pro­gram last­ing through at least their fifth-grade year. Oth­er states are now work­ing to in­crease their own in­vest­ments in high-qual­ity early child­hood de­vel­op­ment activ­it­ies for chil­dren; however, without a strong na­tion­al com­mit­ment, ac­cess to qual­ity pro­grams will be in­flu­enced by the lot­tery of geo­graphy.

A na­tion­al com­mit­ment to a high-qual­ity early child­hood ex­per­i­ence for every child must mean a tar­geted com­mit­ment for in­di­vidu­al young chil­dren with dif­fer­ent spe­cial needs. There must be train­ing and oth­er sup­ports for staff work­ing in early child­hood classrooms so they can reach chil­dren suf­fer­ing the stresses of trauma in their daily lives. There must be com­pre­hens­ive ser­vices so no child enters a classroom dis­trac­ted by hun­ger, sick­ness, or pain. Chil­dren in foster care, of­ten vic­tim­ized by ab­use or neg­lect, and chil­dren who are home­less may need ex­tra sup­ports to en­sure they do not slip between the cracks and miss the be­ne­fits of early child­hood de­vel­op­ment and learn­ing.

Chil­dren with dis­ab­il­it­ies and those who are at risk of de­vel­op­ing them need con­sist­ent ac­cess to early in­ter­ven­tion ser­vices as they move through the con­tinuum of early child­hood pro­grams. Par­ents and oth­er care­givers must also be en­gaged as act­ive part­ners in their chil­dren’s early de­vel­op­ment and learn­ing, and ex­tra sup­port should be offered par­ents when they need it.

The Strong Start for Amer­ica’s Chil­dren Act re­cog­nizes that this is all ne­ces­sary if we truly want to pro­mote equal op­por­tun­ity for all chil­dren and build a stronger so­ci­ety.

All our chil­dren have it in them­selves to be ex­traordin­ary. With sup­ports, young chil­dren born in­to ex­treme poverty today and without con­sist­ent ac­cess to ad­equate health care or nu­tri­tion can be­come the nurses and doc­tors who will care for our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren to­mor­row. In­fants and tod­dlers liv­ing in home­less shel­ters or in foster care can be­come the en­gin­eers and as­tro­nauts who race to the heav­ens and take hu­man­kind to places bey­ond our wild­est ima­gin­ings.

MaryLee Al­len is act­ing policy dir­ect­or and Daniel Hains is an early child­hood policy as­sist­ant at the Chil­dren’s De­fense Fund.