Jean-Baptiste Bullet

Transcription

JOHN BAYLOR: It's been said that the human brain itself is the next great frontier in scientific progress. On an almost daily basis, neuroscientists, biomedical researchers, and even engineers are opening up vast new horizons in our understanding of how the brain works. Entire new technologies are now being invented to map the brain, treat diseases and injuries that afflict us at the neurological level and increase our capacity for learning. Among the most exciting advances in this field is our understanding of how the brain forms in the earliest years of life. Young children create neuro-connections at an astonishing rate. And according to neuroscientists, the strength and resiliency of these connections or circuits depends on the quality of children's learning experiences as infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers. When those neuro-circuits are strong and robust, children are better able to acquire and master the skills they'll need to thrive in school and beyond. ♪ MUSIC ♪ JOHN BAYLOR: Hello. I'm John Baylor your moderator for the State of Education in Nebraska. Our monthly series that focuses on emerging approaches and promising strategies educators in our state are taking to narrow the educational achievement gap. In Nebraska, as well as on the national level, more and more attention is being given to early brain development as a critical window of opportunity for starting kids off on the path of success. Researchers, educators, policymakers, and even business leaders are looking to this period in a human life cycle as the bedrock for building strong school systems, increasing graduation rates, and even spurring economic growth. But just how crucial is this stage in brain development and skill formation. What kinds of factors can throw this developmental process off track and who's responsibility is it to ensure very young children that they experiences they need to grow up capable, confident, and ready for success. On this episode of the State of Education in Nebraska, we'll be considering those questions and more with the help of some of our state's leading researchers, pediatricians, and early education experts. But first, let's take a look at the basic architecture of the brain constructed through a process that begins early in life and continues into adulthood. ♪ MUSIC ♪ NARRATOR: A child's experiences during the earliest years of life have a lasting impact on the architecture of the developing brain. Genes provide the basic blueprint, but experiences shape the process that determines whether a child's brain will provide a strong or a weak foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health. During this important period of brain development, billions of brain cells called neurons send electrical signals to communicate with each other. These connections form circuits that become the basic foundation of brain architecture. Circuits and connections proliferate at a rapid pace and are reinforced through repeated use. Our experiences and environment dictate which circuits and connections get more use. Connections that are used more grow stronger and more permanent. Meanwhile, connections that are used less fade away through a normal process called pruning. Well-used circuits create lightning-fast pathways for neural signals to travel across regions of the brain. Simple circuits form first, providing a foundation for more complex circuits to build on later. Through this process neurons form strong circuits and connections for emotions, motor skills, behavioral control, logic, language, and memory during the early critical period of development. With repeated use, these circuits become more efficient and connect to other areas of the brain more rapidly. While they originate in specific areas of the brain, the circuits are interconnected. You can't have one type of skill without the other to support it. Like building a house, everything is connected, and what comes first forms a foundation for all that comes later. ♪ MUSIC ♪ BAYLOR: This video is Part One of a three-part series titled, Three Core Concepts in Early Development. From the Center on the Developing Child and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. To learn more about how healthy development in the early years provides the building blocks for educational achievement, just log onto netnebraska.org/stateofed. Joining me to open our discussion is Dr. Samuel Meisels, founding Executive Director of the newly-created Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska. A nationally-recognized authority in the field, Dr. Meisels served for more than ten years as the President of Chicago's Ericson Institute. The country's premiere graduate school in childhood development. Before coming to Nebraska, Dr. Meisels, welcome. DR. SAMUEL MEISELS: Thank you. BAYLOR: Now what's the take-away from that initial brain development video we just watched? DR. MEISELS: Well, the video really showed us that the connections between brain cell synapses undergo tremendous change during the first years of life. We know that a four-year-old's brain uses more energy than it does at any other time in life. Eighty-five per cent of brain growth occurs during the first five years. We've learned that the foundations of brain architecture are established early in life and the sensitive periods that are so essential for childhood development begin at different ages in different ways. Relatively low level, as you can see on a chart that I'm gonna show you in a moment, relatively low level or primitive functions, which here are the light blue dots, like seeing and hearing are in place soon or after birth-right after birth and the neural connections responsible for language and for speech, which are the red dots on this chart, they also have an early start in life. Higher level, neural circuits which include language and thinking and reasoning, communication generally. These occur later on in life, but even by age five are mostly in place though for those parents who are watching, who have high school or middle school students, they should know that brain development continues on a little bit longer than that. The conclusion we can draw from this research is that different kinds of experiences are critical at different ages for optimal brain development and also that brains develop over time, but starting early is very very important. BAYLOR: Doctor, let's talk about the development of language. What is the critical age for that? DR. MEISELS: Language is a great example for us to use here. It's a cognitive skill that develops gradually and it's highly dependent on timing for maximum achievement. We know that languages-new languages are learned easily early in life, but as an adult, language learning becomes much more difficult. Anyone who's gone back and decided that they were gonna master that language that they started when they were in middle school or high school finds out how difficult it is, start to think well maybe that language was harder than I thought it was, but that's not what's going on. What's really going on is that we're learning that there is a dependence of language learning on age, which can't be ignored. This dependence holds for first languages and second languages, for spoken languages, and for sign languages, researchers tell us that as you see here on this chart that researchers tell us that for most people a thorough command of language is attained when learning occurs before around seven years of age. Statistically, language proficiency decreases progressively when language learning is delayed beyond seven years. Again, beginning early is very very important. BAYLOR: How about prior to the age of two when we don't think the child can actually talk or even understand words? DR. MEISELS: Well, you know, the interesting thing here is that we're finding that the way that children learn language, of course, not only is related to what their neural connections are like, but also what their environmental connections are like, what their relationships are between those children and their parents. And I want to tell you about a very very interesting study that was done at the University of Washington. And it's about the acquisition or the acquiring of phonetic skills. By phonetic skills, I mean the ability to hear and reproduce the sounds in the environment. Early in development, infants have the capacity to distinguish all sounds in their environment. That's why we have babies who learn how to speak Chinese and how to speak Urdo and how to speak English and Hebrew and many other languages. But by age one, most-if a baby is not exposed to particular sounds in his or her environment, the baby no longer has that universal capacity. So there was a very very interesting study that I want to tell you about right now that we have a chart on here that shows us how social interaction can change this kind of thing. How it can influence in the infant learning. In this study, these researchers at the University of Washington exposed four different groups of infants to a foreign language, Mandarin Chinese. And these babies had never previously been exposed to any kind of Chinese sounds in their environment. They'd never heard it before and they'd never been around Chinese speakers before. But what happened here is in the first group here that you see on the left-hand side these nine-month old babies were exposed to Chinese sounds and words in a playful environment in person with a Chinese and native Chinese speaker. What you see in the blue bar that follows that, the second bar, are babies who had no exposure at all to Chinese and that serves as our baseline. That's what we can measure the change between the two groups in. But interestingly, the second set of lines, the two groups on the right-hand side, one shows babies of the same age who were exposed only to audio and the other to video. And what you see here is you see absolutely no change between those two groups and the group that's shown in the blue barn, namely the group of children who never had any exposure to Chinese. So what this tells us is that social interaction is absolutely critical. What you see is no learning whatsoever when there is no social experience. The difference was relationships. Relationships are powerful. BAYLOR: So, video alone or audio alone is identical to no exposure. MEISELS: That's right. That's right. So people who think that by showing their children and putting their babies in front of videos that they're teaching their babies something, they're not. They may be entertaining the baby. They may be giving themselves a break, which is very very important for a parent, but so it's not something that's necessarily evil. But to think that that's-that the babies gonna acquire language, is gonna acquire new learning that way is probably a mistake. BAYLOR: So engage your newborn in conversation, holding, all sorts of activities to generate real learning. And don't turn it over to machines and don't turn it over to just sound. It's something about the human to human interaction that generates learning. DR. MEISELS: That's right. And then there were big differences as well in what kind of interactions are taking place. So let me tell you about another study. This is a study that was done in Kansas City by two researchers. Hart and Risley were their last names. And they followed about 42 babies and their parents for three years marking down every single recording and analyzing every single word that those babies said during the time that they were being observed and then analyzing all of that. And they really studied three different groups which you see up here. One group were children of professional families, the second was children of what they call working class families, and the third group were children from very poor families who were receiving welfare at the time. They gathered all of this data and they followed these kids until they were about eight or nine years of old age and then they were able to draw some very very interesting conclusions from that. They found that by age three, the preschoolers of professional families are typically able to say more than twelve hundred words. Preschoolers from working class families around 550 words. And then those from households living in poverty just 250 words. What's more, by age three, children raised by professional parents had heard 30 million words as opposed to parents of children, poor parents who had heard only ten million words. That's a three to one difference. Longitudinal research later in subsequent years demonstrated a high correlation between vocabulary size at age three and even before that in language test scores at ages nine and ten. This is an example of parental impact on child development and also it's an effect of social class of the experience that these parents themselves have had. So that we see here actually a generational impact and it gives us a better understanding of the achievement gap. BAYLOR: And this is just until age three. Very few of these children can even read at that point. It's just exposure. DR. MEISELS: None of these children are reading at that age. Right, but they're exposed to language all the time. And the question is how much of that language are they exposed to from their parents as opposed to listening to a television set that's on all the time. BAYLOR: This is related to your earlier stats right. (Right) Where the lower income families perhaps put the child in front of the radio or put the child in front of the television more often whereas the professional family may be more interacting human to human. DR. MEISELS: That's right. So what do we do about that? That's the question that we have to look right now at right now. And let me show you one last chart that I have here. This is a very very interesting chart. It says preschool enrollment reduces the achievement gap. And what you see here if you look closely at this chart is that the more that children, the more children who are enrolled in pre-school, the smaller the gap between the achievement levels of children who are poor and achievement levels of children coming from more affluent families. This happens to be a study of data from 70-from children in 73 different countries in which the researchers controlled for gross domestic product what we call GDP and other factors. And as I said, what they learned is that for every percentage point increase in the enrollment in pre-school, the achievement gap between high and low income children declined. As more and more students participate in pre-school programs, fewer and fewer failures occur. This is the return on investment of early childhood. This is what we can do to try to correct some of the imbalance in over a period of generations where we can change the outcomes for very young children by engaging them at a very very early age and engaging their families as well in pre-school experience. BAYLOR: Dr. Meisels, are these benefits primarily due to the human interaction that, of course, is evident in a early childhood educational experience, whereas it may be less evident if they're not there? Or is there something that's being done strategically in how they teach in successful and effective pre-schools? DR. MEISELS: Basically, it's all of that. I mean we have genetics that are part of this. We have the environment that's part of this. In general, the family environment. And then we also have the environment of the pre-school experience. And not all pre-schools, of course, are the same. Any more than all third grades are the same. So we are looking for something that is going to not only enhance the cognitive or intellectual development of these children, but also their emotional development, their ability to feel confident, to show self-control, to take initiative, to be related, to communicate, and to cooperate. Those kinds of characteristics of development are what have been associated with long-term goals, long-term gains in children's development. BAYLOR: In a previous program, the work of Professor James Heckman confirmed that life skills, otherwise known as soft skills, such as perseverance, attention, motivation, and self-confidence have a foundation in effective, early childhood programs. What is this early brain development have to do with social and emotional skills? DR. MEISELS: It has essentially everything to do with that. The early brain development, of course, that we were looking at in the video and then we were talking about earlier is where we start. And it is, of course, what we all need and what we all stand on. But it-to achieve potential of children, they also need these social and emotional or soft skills or what Dr. Heckman calls non-cognitive, as opposed to just intellectual skills. We need really all of these things and it's when we have them in place that we see tremendous gains and tremendous development over time. BAYLOR: Not just quantifiably in later test scores, but in these soft skills as well. DR. MEISELS: That's right. And these soft skills, of course, can be measured too in terms of outcomes. They can be measured in terms of children not feeling engrained. They can be measured in terms of fewer pregnancies, less delinquency, less trouble with the law, more students who go on and graduate high school and even go to college. Those are pretty clear quantitative outcomes. BAYLOR: Dr. Meisels, if a parent has a newborn or a one-year-old or a two-year-old at home, what do you recommend they do? Would you recommend they not do? DR. MEISELS: Well, for one thing, I recommend that they talk to their children. I recommend that they read to their children, that they make reading exciting, that they make it a part of life. And also, that they read some themselves for their own pleasure, if possible, because that's great modeling. I recommend that they get their kids out and around to see the fantastic things that we have in our state, that they be around other children also, that they be involved in child care programs, and that the parents make themselves open to opportunities that may come from organizations and agencies in their area. BAYLOR: Dr. Meisels, our State of Education in Nebraska attempts to highlight successful efforts to close that achievement gap so that all Nebraska kids have a chance to really excel academically and beyond. What's the take-away from this? Is the ROI, return on investment, best in the early years for childhood even more so than if we intervene at the high school level or the middle school level? DR. MEISELS: We never want to say don't do what we're doing in high school. Don't do what we're doing in middle school. We want to continue those efforts that are very, very important. What we want to say is let's start doing as much early on in life. That's where 85 per cent of neuro-connections take place, in the first five years of life. And for us to ignore that is for us as to continue to have problems. BAYLOR: Now approximately the state of Nebraska spends about ten thousand dollars annually on a K through 12 student. What do we spend annually approximately on a child who's under the age of five? DR. MEISELS: We spend about 25 hundred dollars per year on pre-schoolers. That is three and four year-olds. We spend-but when you look at children between birth and three, we spend roughly three hundred dollars on those children. BAYLOR: The most important years, we spend about 300. DR. MEISELS: It is upside down backwards. BAYLOR: Hmmm. Thank you so much, Dr. Meisels. We discussed a little about what happens in terms of neuro-development during children's earliest years. How it affects skill formation. And why this developmental window is so important. But what kinds of factors throw that developmental process off-track? And what are the results? Let's take a look at another video. From the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, it talks about how toxic stress can de-rail healthy development. ♪ MUSIC ♪ NARRATOR: Learning to deal with stress is an important part of healthy development. When experiencing stress, the stress response system is activated. The body and brain go on alert. There's an adrenaline rush, increased heart rate, and an increase in stress hormone levels. When the stress is relieved after a short time, or a young child receives support from caring adults, the stress response winds down and the body quickly returns to normal. In severe situations, such as ongoing abuse and neglect, where there is no caring adult to act as a buffer against the stress, the stress response stays activated. Even when there is no apparent physical harm, the extended absence of response from adults can activate the stress response system. Constant activation of the stress response overloads developing systems with serious life-long consequences for the child. This is known as toxic stress. Over time, this results in a stress-response system set permanently on a high alert. In the areas of the brain dedicated to learning and reasoning, the neuro-connections that comprise brain architecture are weaker and fewer in number. Science shows that the prolonged activation of stress hormones in early childhood can actually reduce neuro-connections in these important areas of the brain at just the time when they should be growing new ones. Toxic stress can be avoided if we ensure that the environments in which children grow and develop are nurturing, stable and engaging. ♪ MUSIC ♪ BAYLOR: Joining us to talk a little more about the hazards of early brain development is Dr. Laura Jana, an Omaha-based pediatrician, early childhood advocate and award-winning author of multiple books on child development. DR. LAURA JANA: Well, good to join you. BAYLOR: Let's be more specific. What do you mean by childhood toxic stress? DR. JANA: Yeah you know, it's a good point. Because when you say toxic stress, it makes it sound like something foreign or some-and it is something we need to take seriously. What we have working for us is that in pop culture, everyone can related to the cause of the stress. We probably felt it this morning. You can-and you have a sense that it has a physiologic response as we saw in the video. Your heart rate may go up. Your palms may get sweaty. You may-and it's not a comfortable feeling. The thing about stress is that we need to divide it into different categories because if you think about it, in healthy human development, it serves a useful purpose. There is such a thing as positive stress. Sometimes my teenagers don't think so, but those things that motivate you to study for a test that you're stressed about or maybe the stress of a new caregiver. That's positive stress. And it exists for a reason. All right. Then there's the, you know, tolerable stress. It'd be better if it didn't happen and that may be the, you know, the loss of a loved one or an injury where in the presence of an adult, who can help a child kind of get through that situation, you end up that it turns out okay. When we're talking about toxic stress, we're talking about something very specific. We know that it has significant impacts on the developing brain as we just saw. But we're talking about sorts of things like abuse and neglect and those sorts of things. And you can think of all sorts of other permutations. Right. I mean homelessness or not enough food or those sorts of things. When you have continued prolonged exposure, repeated exposure to that sort of stress, what you're doing at a very critical period of brain development is changing the way the developing brain ends up. BAYLOR: Forever. DR. JANA: Yeah and it sets kids so that they're-that sort of stress response again-think of your own sense of stress, is set on high alert. You're constantly on high alert. The other thing it does, it also takes away in a very critical period from the development that we just heard from Dr. Meisels is so critical for the developing brain and the developing child. BAYLOR: So even if this stress may occur at age one when we typically don't even have memories, you're saying it lives on physiologically. DR. JANA: Absolutely. BAYLOR: That there are neuro-connections that actually wither and they don't regrow. DR. JANA: Sure. And even worse than just withering, it's the-think about what we just heard about the percent, the 85 percent of brain development, those sorts of things that we're talking about, you don't want something like continued prolonged toxic stress and exposure to these adverse childhood experiences detracting from that really critical development. BAYLOR: Dr. Meisels, Dr. Jana, is this primarily bad parenting that causes this toxic stress in the lives of young infants? DR. MEISELS: Well we don't-it's not really primarily bad parenting. But it could be a lot of other things in life. And it can be parents who are exposed to problems themselves, stress themselves that they can barely control. And they can do very little for their parent-they or their children. As a result, they need help. They need to work with others who can assist them. DR. JANA: And in keeping with you know the Harvard studies that have been done, the theory of change really was shifting our focus. I cringe when I hear bad parenting. And I work with all sorts of parents. I've worked in the parenting space since the early 90s with Dr. Spock. And I always say if you start with-I don't know a parent who doesn't want to do the right thing for their children, except knowing what that is and now that we've got the brain science and got this research telling us what it is, we really need to shift to thinking this is skill building. And that's the Harvard theory of change. In fact, there's a lot of focus now on building adult capacities. Parents and other caregivers. Any child-anyone who's in a child environment, building those capabilities, those interactional important things that they can do and that improves child outcomes. BAYLOR: Give us an example or two. DR. JANA: You know, simple things, you know, we just heard reference to early literacy which is one of my passions. I've been long-involved. But when I'm sitting with a parent one-to-one in a pediatric office and explaining what that is, it's literally explaining to the parent of a nine-month old for a baby who puts the book in their mouth, changing that to a positive thing, you've got an inquisitive child, they must be smart cause they love books because babies who are exploring their world put things in their mouth. That counters what we often see in a parent with a parent who may never have been read to, may not know how to read, may never give their child a book. They tend to slap the baby's hand, take the book away and say I'll give it back to you when you know better. BAYLOR: So instead of so much correcting, perhaps really focusing on fostering communication interaction and all this communication in relationships can build these stronger neuro-connections. DR. JANA: What's striking about what Dr. Meisels said when he was talking about the communication, collaboration, relational abilities that we focus on in early childhood, I want people to shift over and think for a moment what we hear from the workforce development world, leadership engagement. What do we look for in 21st century workforce. Communication, collaboration, relationships, all those things, they're the same skills and they're the skills that parents and other caregivers need to have to work with children. They're what children need to then move forward and be able to become successful. BAYLOR: Let's look at some of these common risk factors that can increase the likelihood of unhealthy early development. DR. JANA: So we're looking here if you see, you know, things like low household income and premature birth and you know, low levels of parent education. None of those should come as a surprise to people in terms of what the risk factors are. In fact, they're basically the inverse of what we're talking is what children need to thrive. The important thing is to look at those as obstacles that parents are faced with as opposed to bad parenting. Getting back to your original question. Those things, the risk factors, they're not bad parenting. They're obstacles that keep getting put in a parent's path or a caregiver's path and what that really does is impairs a child's ability to succeed. BAYLOR: And it can be mitigated. DR. JANA: Absolutely. We're looking at a critical period. I look at this as we now have the research to support and the understanding and really the will to say we now know what we can do to make a significant difference. And it's a long-it's a potential. It's letting children live up to their potential by looking again, it's flipping it around and looking at early childhood years. BAYLOR: Not all early childhood education is created equal. It can be uneven and inconsistent. What should parents be looking for if in fact they're gonna allow someone else to raise the child during the day. DR. MEISELS: There is a lot of variability in childhood programs. You see it in almost every kind of program. You see it in state-funded programs. You see it in Head Start. You see it in private pre-schools. So what are we looking for? First of all, we're looking for relationships. We're looking for how the teachers interact with children. We're also looking as the children get older how they interact with one another. You can walk into a classroom and get a very very quick idea of what's possible there by the kinds of materials that are there. Are there books that are around? Are the materials within children's grasp? And within their reach? Or does it teacher always have to give it to them? Are children working on their own? Is there some and in this sense of the room one of peacefulness relatively speaking given you may have a dozen three-year-olds there. But as opposed to a classroom where there's a lot of conflict. And there's always some conflict. If there's conflict, how does the teacher deal with it. These are the sorts of things that we're looking for. And they're not easy to come by. It's one of the big issues that we face in this state and in other states is developing the very best people to work for young children. BAYLOR: Dr. Jana, if a parent is shopping for early childhood educational opportunities, what are some red flags? DR. JANA: You know, as someone not only as a pediatrician, but who owned an educational childcare center for the past ten years, it's really more important and sometimes parents don't ask the right questions. Sometimes, you know, on a my-from my center, I found that sometimes parents are focusing on they want the flashcard academy. They want the child that they think is reading at age three or four, as opposed to focusing on more of the relationship, what is the interaction. And again, if you're gonna look to root causes and really distill this down to a nutshell, it's a caring responsive adult. How that manifests, Dr. Meisels has listed quite a few ways where that manifests itself, how is discipline handled. So I often want to tell people, look at the discipline. Look at the-what's available in the classroom. Is there room to explore? Or is the child in a very rigid environment where they're told what to do? BAYLOR: How about the prevalence of video? If they're using television and radio? DR. JANA: Absolutely as again, early literacy fan and I don't know anybody in the space of early childhood, you know, early childhood who's not I look for books, interactional toys, toys that you can be creative with as opposed to you follow step-by-step and then you're done. You know, I always say it's the out-of-the box, not writing between the lines, but you know, all over and creative play. Those sorts of things I look for. I also as a pediatrician have to say that I have long seen and the evidence bears this out, health and education you really can't extract the two. They're one and the same in early childhood. Some of the ratings that people have done on high quality early childhood education when you look at 13 factors from one of the studies, for example, half of them relate. So what we would consider sort of the more medical health side of things-health and safety, you know, you've got hygiene practices, whether it's diapering and again, I always toss this back too. Hand washing is very important and germs and those sorts of things with, for example, diaper-changing, but so is the interactional opportunity of changing a diaper. So they go hand-in-hand and I focus on those things. BAYLOR: What about nutrition? Excuse me, what about food? DR. MEISELS: That's also a very big part of it. And for families that don't have many material resources, this maybe the place where the children are gonna get their only warm breakfast and where the lunch is very important and during breaks, during vacations, holidays, and so forth, children may go hungry. BAYLOR: You want to see natural foods, avoid processed foods? DR. MEISELS: You do. DR. JANA: And you want nutrition? I mean quite honestly, I'm not quite sure, as somebody who's written a book on Childhood Nutrition and Parenting and I'm not sure how we've gotten so far from what you put in your bodies, the fuel you need to think, to learn, to do those sorts of things. Also, think about being hungry. I certainly think of that as a category of adverse childhood experience. You can't learn new things when you're starving, for example. And if you think about mainstream parenting, it is not hard for people to understand. We always say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. We look at test scores related to breakfast. Then we look at kids who are disadvantaged and don't have that. And we know it's critically important. It's the fuel for brain development and physical development and as well as avoiding adversity. BAYLOR: Let's find out how prevalent this problem is and take a look at what the numbers are when it comes to children under the age of five who are at risk in the state of Nebraska. Dr. Jana, 39.4 per cent, nearly 40 per cent of our children are deemed to be at risk. What do you mean at risk? DR. JANA: You know, we're talking about the adversity of early childhood, not being able to develop up to their potential. And you know, people like to kind of think of this as just where's the poverty? Poverty is a risk factor for this okay. But there are lots of things now again, we know strategically what we can do to intervene in the earliest years to let children develop in a way that they'll live up to their potential. So this number basically what that says to me is this isn't someone else's problem. This isn't something that we all should feel we need to do just because we should. It's our problem. It affects, you know, almost, you know, half the children in our state. BAYLOR: Dr. Meisels, what do you say to the 60 per cent who suggest, hey this isn't my problem? DR. MEISELS: Right. Well, the fact is that to the extent that all children will gain by having those who are the most at risk gain. Let me say that a little bit more clearly. Kids who are at risk can pull down the other kids. And so to the extent that those are all of our children are making progress, we're gonna find that our state will be in a much better place. BAYLOR: And we saw in our last show last month's State of Education in Nebraska when we talked to the superintendents that the kids that arrive in kindergarten often arrive at very different levels. And what a nightmare for a teacher. DR. MEISELS: It is. And it's difficult for the other kids as well, but what we want to see is we want to see every single person have the opportunity to meet their potential, to reach their potential, to go on and to make contributions. And that helps everyone. If we just concentrate on those who have advantages to begin with, we're going to find that we will all be pulled back. BAYLOR: Are you two literally suggesting if we as a state invest more in early childhood education, open up more early childhood educational centers, maybe we don't have to invest so much in incarceration and prisons? DR. MEISELS: Absolutely. And the research is quite clear about that. That to the extent that we have an early childhood program that begins really from birth and the most through third grade that those kids will grow up to be in less trouble with the law, to be incarcerated much less frequently than others who start the same as them, and fewer teenage pregnancies, get on welfare less often. All of those things-that helps everyone. DR. JANA: And let me give you another piece of information that really caught me. I thought it was so profound. I was attending an early childhood summit, a national one, first while being host at a federal reserve bank because there was huge economic implications and workforce implications. But the comment that was made, which I've subsequently learned, is very common not just in the state that I was at, but across the country. There are a lot of states who use third grade male reading scores as predictive of the number of beds they'll need in their prisons. Kind of projecting forward. Now that's scary enough alone, okay. But if you looked Dr. Shon Kauf and others and at the research that people have now, would you like to know what's looking like it's very predictive of third grade reading scores? (Yes.) It's 18-month vocabulary, which gets right back to the issue where we're talking about a word gap and we're talking about parents reading and talking and singing with their children, look at-it's sometimes hard. BAYLOR: Directly correlate. DR. JANA: It's sometimes hard to make those giant leaps, but that's exactly the point. BAYLOR: Dr. Jana and Dr. Meisels, thank you so much. Stay right there. We've heard a lot about what leads to healthy brain architecture in early childhood and what kinds of hazards can derail the process. We've also discussed why this problem matters to a large number of children throughout Nebraska. To drive this point home, let's take a look at a previously aired program from our partner, Nebraska Loves Public Schools. KYLE McGOWAN: If you're a school that is sitting back waiting for children to come, your success will be directly in line with the number of children that are in poverty or the number of minority poverty students, so there's no sense in even really doing a test because I can already tell you what your test scores are gonna say. JULIA PARKER: Whether it be vocabulary, whether it be social or emotional skills, for some reason, low income students are lacking in those areas. DECUA JEAN-BAPTISTE: When a student comes to school unprepared, those students literally look like a deer in headlights because they don't know basic things. They don't know their letters. They don't know their sounds. They don't know their colors. They're typically six to 12 months behind their peers at that time. And it takes em twice as long to catch up. DIANE BRUHA: Children were showing up for Kindergarten and were on very different playing fields. We had such a variety of kids from knowing zero letters to knowing all of their letters and reading books. And we really felt like we needed to bring those skills together a little bit and level that playing field. PARKER: A lot of people think that early childhood education is just dropping your child off with a friend or a neighbor, but really when we say quality early childhood education, we're talking about the additional academic supports. We're talking about social and emotional development. JEAN-BAPTISTE: We have two Head Start classrooms where the children are learning to socialize with one another. Because many of em don't have those types of skills. And the teachers are working on those fundamental things like their alphabets, like their numbers, like their sound. ABBY DOMEIER: As a Kindergarten teacher, it makes a huge difference that I can see when they come to Kindergarten, those who have been in Pre-School and those who haven't. By being in the Early Childhood Education Program, they pick up so much more vocabulary. Their vocabulary is much more enriched. They know more school words. They know more about how to follow directions. How to raise their hand to talk to the teacher. How to make a-form a line. So those are all things that are needed when they come to Kindergarten just for us to be successful as Kindergarten teachers and teach them what they need to know to go onto First Grade. McGOWAN: The schools that are overcoming some of those high-risk factors are the schools that are taking control of their own destiny and saying, Why would I want to miss out on a two-year-old, a three-year-old with all that sort of potential for learning? BRUHA: What early childhood does is gives these kids a foundation before they ever hit Kindergarten, which gives them so much more of a chance to get through it with graduation. That I think if we aren't providing early childhood education, we've missed the boat with those kids. ♪ MUSIC ♪ JOHN BAYLOR: Now joining the discussion are Julia Dadds, Executive Director Edu-Care of Lincoln, located at Belmont Elementary School and Amy Bornemeier, Associate VP of Early Childhood Programs at Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. And the statewide coordinator of Nebraska's Sixpence Early Learning Programs. Both Edu-Care and Sixpence are programs that target children who are considered to be most at risk of lacking the kinds of early experiences and opportunities that lead to healthy brain development and skill formation. Welcome Julia and Amy. Let's take a look at this map that shows us geographically where we have the most at risk kids in our state. And the redder the county, the more at risk students there are. Is there ever an age when it's too early to provide early childhood education or when a parent, it's too early to provide assistance to a parent. We should wait and let em do it on their own? JULIA DADDS: Really? No. Because we know that parenting is perhaps one of the most difficult complex and wonderful jobs that we can have, and it's never too soon to start learning what makes for effective parenting, what makes for good development for a child. We start in many Educares, we start with prenatal education for the parents and pay close attention to how development is going from birth on. There's not a time that's too early to attend to good development. BAYLOR: Amy, tough question. There might be some naysayers out there who suggest, you know, that's too young. We shouldn't usurp the opportunity of a parent to take care of a newborn. You are saying no, get in there at a young age. AMY BORNEMEIER: Well, the reality is in Nebraska, we have one of the highest percentages of working parents in the nation. And so, we have an opportunity to help provide high-quality opportunities for interaction, high-quality environments, whether that is at home with the parent, with a caregiver, or in a childcare center. In any of those environments, it's important that we support high quality because that seems to make the difference in laying the foundation for later success. BAYLOR: It'd be kind of nice if we had a little time. Like if you'd just say, okay parents, get this figured out by age five. We can't. Really before birth often, you need to come in there and talk to certain parents. Not all parents. And you certainly are not suggesting we mandate this, but you're suggesting, we need as a culture to make it much more readily available. Sound advice based on research and successful practices. So that we have more successful one and two-year-olds cause that's gonna translate into more successful 40 and 50-year olds. DADDS: Absolutely. Well, if we all understand at what good inputs for child development are, then we can support each other. We're a community. It isn't only about families at risk because families at risk live in community. So if they might actually have knowledge and understandings that they gain from their child's exposure to high-quality early childhood education that they can then share with a neighbor. Or a neighbor also can support their learning and their own interaction with their child and their neighbor's child and it isn't like we act in a vacuum ever in community. If we all understand what good early childhood development and education is, then all votes are raised. BAYLOR: And just to repeat, it's about relationships. It's about communication. It's about reading. Minimal video. Many minimal just audio. It's all those things. DADDS: Relationship really is the key. What I see all the time in our Educare Center is that it's the small casual interactions that are the huge meaningful interactions. If I recognize a parent in the hallway, they feel honored. I feel honored. We exchange information and understand more about their world. They feel more ready to come to any of us in the building with a question or a concern. And across time, that mean that child has home with us and in the community because we're a part of the community. It becomes a way for that parent to understand that they aren't alone in the world and for that child to understand that there are many adults who want to see them grow and succeed. BAYLOR: We've established, panel, that these first years of childhood are so vital in a child's development. And for a society's health. Is there a chance that there's gonna be this fadeout impact. That at age 7 and 8, for whatever reason the child is not in a healthy situation anymore educationally or otherwise, that we lose the benefits of early childhood education. Dr. Meisels. DR. MEISELS: Most of the fadeout that we read about comes about because there's actually been a fadeout of support and of education for the children. Early childhood is not an inoculation about-against all the awful things that can happen to a child. It takes some time. And it takes some continuity. So but what translates to is we want to see children begin very early who need this, to begin very early in early childhood programs through pre-school, through Kindergarten and through third grade. And what we see then is we see an extension of the skills that are acquired during those years. If we stop before that, it's not very likely that those skills will stay and they may-they may fade out. BAYLOR: Some studies have suggested that Head Start itself is not effective over the long term. DR. MEISELS: Head Start has been studied more than any other program probably, public program of any sort in this nation. And most of the studies do show positive outcomes. A couple of them haven't been as positive as others and there are technical reasons for that. But the fact again is that Head Start takes the poorest children and provides them with the kind of support that they need. The poorest children go to poor schools and typically have poor outcomes. So we need to strengthen what happens to children after they leave Head Start. That would be the best way for us to evaluate the quality. DR. JANA: The other thing that's absolutely correct. And the other thing that I think is worth pointing out is it depends what measure you use for success okay. And when we use, for example, straight IQ or straight cognitive theory sort of approach to looking at children's outcomes, sometimes people say wow it didn't change. Part of that is because you stopped, you know, investing in those children. You know, you cut off the support. But the other thing that we're finding, you know, earlier we heard on the video, the reference to soft skills and the discussion about soft skills. And interestingly, some of the people who've really kind of done the research on that, they actually cringe at the word, soft skills and non-cognitive because in some ways, we're talking executive function. It's working memory and also it's almost the most cognitive skills that we have and the most important ones we have. And what the evidence is showing us is if you look at those outcome measures, again getting back to communication, collaboration, and perseverance, grit, these things that we're figuring out how to measure, but we're not necessarily sure how to yet, the kids actually end up being much more successful with all sorts of beneficial life outcomes that just before we weren't measuring them. BAYLOR: So Amy, it doesn't sound like any of you are suggesting that the panacea, the silver bullet is investing in grade ages 5 to younger, you're suggesting we have under emphasized that as a culture. And we've got it backwards. We're emphasizing and investing primarily K through 12, whereas we invest a fraction in the more important ages apparently, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Is that a fair inference? BORNEMEIER: Absolutely. And it's a matter of how we invest those monies that we don't just throw monies at random programs for time-limited periods. That we are really smart with our investments and matching those with local funds, matching private and public funding to blend and that's how you can do service delivery is also through blended opportunities, maximizing resources, being smarter with how we're spending our money. And also with that, being really true to evaluation and having a sense of accountability, so that you can show that the money that is being invested is making a difference and is providing for positive outcomes, not only for those children, but also for those parents with positive parent/child interactions. BAYLOR: Let's talk about money. You broached it. So do we have studies yet that show that the return on investment for early childhood programs definitely pays for itself in a period of time? DADDS: We do. A very basic well-known study that says for every dollar spent, we recoup seven. BAYLOR: Seven. A pretty good investment. DADDS: That's a pretty great investment. DR. JANA: We're looking at the level of Nobel Prize winning economist sorts of research. So what's interesting though is that people flock to the give me all the events. What's been done before. What's the recipe. I mean what I find striking is that some of the programs here in Nebraska, I mean if we look at what Educare's doing, if we look at Sixpence, the commitment to evaluation and teacher development and in combination with how do you become part of the community, there are a lot of people around the country looking to us and certainly with Dr. Meisels and the Buffett Early Child Institute, looking to us to see what works because we have in place the ability to invest and to see what works and to cater what we do for maximum results. BAYLOR: Why is a state, perhaps, but certainly as a nation have we been so slow in this process? Usually, when you get a seven-time return on investment, the free market will come in and the government as well to make sure they exploit that opportunity. Why don't we have this across the board effective pre-five early childhood educational system in place nationwide? DR. MEISELS: It's a complicated answer and the fact is that not only do we not have that kind of a program here, we don't have many of the supports that families have in other countries. And we are-we fall behind most western industrialized countries in terms of supports and services that we provide to families when they have a newborn. So this is not been a country that has done that as country that said, that's up to the family, that's part of American independence and all of this. All of which is true. Nobody's trying to take babies away from their families and is I believe Amy said, when you look at the list of all the states and you in terms of which states have more women working or more two-parent families working, Nebraska's in the top five among all the states in the nation in terms of that. So if we say, well we-the place for a baby and for a woman, a mom is at home, true or not, it's not the case. It's not true anymore. And indeed, women deserve and want and have taken their place in society. We can't forget about the children. DR. JANA: And that's a touchy subject getting to why this hasn't happened. I mean it's a subject people don't want to go to. In my pediatric practice, in my parenting space, I do reality parenting. And the reality is it's not my place to judge whether that's right or wrong or whether that's right-the reality is you can't argue with women in the workforce when you're in a state where we have one of the highest rates of it. I always say, let's start with what do we want to do to serve the parents of our state and the children of our state to help them reach their potential? And that's where we get into these discussions. Where you avoid the, it's not a discussion thing and it's really very short-sighted to do that. BAYLOR: Need a quick answer from someone. What do you say to someone says, hey I didn't have any of these fancy programs when I was under the age of five? DADDS: You say well, you had a community likely that was if your parents didn't have the information, then perhaps they had somebody they turned to for wisdom and guidance. And the fact of the matter is that not all of us did grow up with optimum inputs, nor did we discover our full potential as readily as we might have, had we had those. BAYLOR: The stakes are higher now. It's a knowledge economy for a reason. You want to get skills and knowledge and it's more important than ever to get off to a good start. Well, just a few weeks ago, the education committee of the state Legislature announced that they would be targeting early childhood as a priority issue for support in the year ahead. Considering how much fiscal support has already been allocated for early childhood education, in Nebraska, I'd like to hear from each of you. Why we should continue to prioritize these kinds of investments in the years ahead. I'll start with you Julia. DADDS: Because it works. The bottom line is it's good for all of us. If we pay attention to the earliest years and the youngest children and families, then we build a stronger community across time for the lifespan and for the lifespan of our community. It works. We should invest in it. We should do it. It's a good thing for the United States of America. BAYLOR: Amy. BORNEMEIER: Absolutely. And it works locally. We have the evaluation data to show us that the money that we are investing, especially in our infants and toddlers is very much worth it. And needs to continue to be re-invested. BAYLOR: Invest a little bit more now and save a lot more later on. Social Services and incarceration costs and who knows what else? BORNEMEIER: Exactly. BAYLOR: Dr. Jana. DR. JANA: You know, again I agree with what's been said so I'm gonna toss in a little bit of a medical perspective here, which also goes back to the question you just asked. You know, anyone born before the 60s probably didn't have the advantage of seatbelts or penicillin for treating strep throat. But knowing what I know now, it would be unheard of for me to not recommend someone wear a seatbelt or not treat a strep throat to prevent long-term complications. Okay. Now we shift over to early childhood and it's not new evidence, but there's this confluence-if you think about what we now have at our disposal, we've got functional MRIs. We've got genetics and epi-genetics. We've got the brain science. We've got child development. Pediatrics. Parenting. You name it. And it's all coming together. How could we possibly ignore what we now know. And I don't care whether you're talking social, personal, or financial return on investment, it's almost the how could we ignore what we now know about doing the right thing for children and families. BAYLOR: It's gonna cost some. We talk about K through 16 now rather than the old K-12 model now. People want to see Nebraskans and all Americans get two and four-year college degrees affordably. But we're talking here about starting it much more before Kindergarten. So it's really a 20, 21 year journey. DR. MEISELS: We're talking not K-16. We're talking about Pre-K to 16. We're actually talking birth onwards. And all of us are saying the same thing. We're saying this works. The evidence is very very clear. For us to ignore that evidence is for us to embrace failure and remediation at best. But rather what we need to do is to embrace success and prevention. This is an opportunity to help everyone reach their potential. And if we ignore this, we're hurting them and we're hurting ourselves. BAYLOR: The achievement gap itself, to what extent can better, more effective early childhood education close that? DR. MEISELS: We know that the achievement gap has mostly to do now with the inequality in our society, rather than any other factor like race, for example. That's what the evidence tell us. It's about inequality. We can do something about the differences in how children are raised through early intervention, through early childhood programs. This is the way that we can reduce or eliminate the achievement gap and the evidence again shows us that early childhood intervention does that. it will successfully help us to eliminate or reduce income-based achievement gaps. DR. JANA: If we get back to, you know, what is the single most important factor buffering toxic stress, okay, which leads to these poor outcomes, it's a caring responsive adult. And in whatever form we can get. And if it's parents, that's fantastic, if it's a partnership between parents and a child care center, whatever that may be. But again, when people hear things like home visitation and prenatal programs and pre-school and child care, we tend to sort of push those away as the-again, the soft side of things. And we don't value them or we haven't traditionally valued them at the level that we now have all pointed out. The evidence is just too great to ignore that. BAYLOR: That brings us to the end of our discussion. I want to thank Dr. Samuel Meisels of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. Dr. Laura Jana, Julia Dadds of EduCare of Lincoln, and Amy Bornemeier of the Sixpence Early Learning Program for joining us. Thank you all very much. But the conversation's not yet over. Next month, on the State of Education in Nebraska, look for an in depth program from our partners at Nebraska Loves Public Schools on the Early Childhood Education landscape here in Nebraska. And here's a preview. JESSIE RASMUSSEN: I think most parents want to be great parents. But there's a body of knowledge about how best to promote a child's healthy growth and development and those little ones don't come with a set of instructions when they're born. Children who live in resource families are children whose parents have access to time, to education, to information, to extended family. They have the resources to learn how best to promote their child's early learning. And families who are under a great deal of stress due to poverty are socially isolated. They don't have the social capitol to call upon. And they simply aren't aware of what they ought to be doing to promote their child's early learning, their early development. JOHN BAYLOR: And then we'll follow up in March for the panel discussion involving Nebraska's policymakers, business leaders, law enforcement officials and others, about the dollars and cents justification for investments in our state's youngest children. To learn more about how the true impact of a child's earliest years on educational achievement, just log onto netnebraska.org/stateofed And thank you for joining. And remember, the State of Education in Nebraska depends on all of us. Learning, growing, leading. What's your role? ♪ MUSIC ♪