As a part of the Focus on Education Series, the Greater Dallas Chamber hosted a breakfast featuring panelists discussing the importance of Early Childhood Education and its future impact on the Texas workforce and economy. The breakfast, held on August 21, 2007, emphasized the importance of business involvement in early childhood education programs, legislation and funding.

Thanks to panelists: Dr. Toosje Van Beveren, University of Texas at Dallas; Richard Brock, Wachovia; Lisa Oglesby Rocha, AVANCE; and John Gasko, Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition, the event brought together three very different perspectives focusing on one main objective: today's children and their future impact. 

As one of three collaborating sponsors of the event, Susan Hoff, Executive Director of the Child Care Group, a Dallas-based non-profit dedicated to providing quality early childhood education to hundreds of Dallas children and their families, shares with us her outlook on the state of early childhood education.   

"Growing up in rural west Texas, I didn't have the opportunity to attend preschool or kindergarten and I still remember feeling a little lost in first grade.  The kids who had a year or two of early education under their belts seemed to have it all figured out.  It took the rest of us some time to get into the swing of things.  Fortunately, my parents spent time reading and talking to me in the years before I started school and instilled their strong value of education in me.  Many children don't have that advantage.

Educators, economists, and business leaders all agree that high quality early childhood education is the key to eliminating the achievement gap and ensuring a strong workforce for the future.  Several prominent economists, including Rob Grunewald and Art Rolnick of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and Nobel Prize Winner and University of Chicago professor James Heckman, have evaluated the public return on investment and concluded that viewed purely as an economic investment strategy, the return on investing in high quality early childhood development programs "far exceeds the return on most projects that are currently funded as economic development, such as building sports stadiums and business relocation." 

Children who don't have a strong early learning foundation begin school behind and often stay behind.  Without early intervention, thousands of young children are doomed to years of struggles with school and lost opportunities for achieving their full potentials.  These are losses we can ill afford.  Heckman supports the investment of public dollars in early childhood education out of urgent concerns about the low skills of the U.S. workforce.  He fears a continued decline in skill levels would cause a disastrous loss of productivity and economic competitiveness. 

In today's world, jobs that don't require highly technical skills and at least some post high school education are few and far between and this trend will continue.  Yet high school drop out rates are still high, especially for minority and low-income students.   Drop out prevention efforts need to begin in preschool.  Children who enter school ready to learn are more likely to not only stay in school, but thrive there. 

The business angle for investing in early learning programs is compelling.  Our economy depends on a strong workforce.  But the human angle is even more important.  When I consider all the children who have missed out on early learning opportunities I wonder how Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and Marie Curie's have we lost; how many more can we afford to lose?  Investing in high quality early learning programs is not only the smart thing for businesses to do it is also the right thing to do."

For more information on the Chambers Education Initiatives, please contact Cristina De Los Santos, Manager of Workforce & Education at (214) 746-6778 or cdelossantos@dallaschamber.org.