“In 2009, the city adopteduniversal prekindergarten ... and frankly, it is some of the best money thatwe could ever spend. Those who have to deal with truancy every day know exactlywhat I mean. Those who see children who wind up in special education because offailed educational opportunities, because of the social and economic conditionsin which they live, know exactly what I mean. Those professionals who have tooversee the juvenile justice system know exactly what I mean. It pays foritself over time.”
--MayorVincent C. Gray, Washington, D.C.
Thisweek there is some good news from Washington, D.C. in the midst of all thedismal Congressional news on the shutdown. Like many American cities, thenation’s capital faces deep challenges, including some neighborhoods wherepoverty, violence, and unemployment rates are rampant. These major challenges plusthe necessity of educating all the city’s children for the future made the Districtof Columbia ready for major changes. Over the last several years they’ve made aseries of decisions that have made the city a model of best practices for itsyoungest children. When Mayor Vincent Gray spoke on early childhood education ata recent Children’s Defense Fund/Duke University Child and Family Policy Centerconvening, he shared some of the approaches our nation’s capital city isgetting exactly right when it comes to preparing the next generation of workersand leaders for the future.
Mayor Gray explained that because hehad a background in clinical psychology and entered politics after serving as thecity’s Director of Human Services he understood that investments in earlychildhood pay for themselves many times over in better outcomes throughout achild’s entire life. He knew the city couldn’t afford to waste more childhoods:“Ninety percent of brain development has already occurred by the time a childis five years of age, yet many children don’t start school before five years ofage, which seemed like an incredibly lost opportunity to me.” The mayor helpedlead the push for universal pre-kindergarten, and since it was adopted fouryears ago the city has chosen to fund pre-K using the same formula as everyother grade to ensure its availability. As a result, over 90 percent of D.C.’sfour-year-olds are now in school in a full-day program as are over 70 percentof three-year-olds. Children in the city’s pre-K programs are all being taughtby teachers with the same qualification standards as teachers at every othergrade level in the system. There is also a strong team in place in the D.C.Public Schools making this work.
That tremendous achievement is onlypart of D.C.’s early childhood education success story. The city’s EarlySuccess Framework focuses on children starting at birth through third grade,and Mayor Gray explained that for the last year and a half the city has been examiningthe existing resources and agencies that already serve these children and theirfamilies to decide how efforts can be better coordinated and organized formaximum impact. The city uses a three-pronged system: traditional publicschools; public charter schools, which now serve 43 percent of D.C.’s students;and licensed home and community-based providers, which help serve the very youngestchildren beginning in infancy. Public schools are also co-locating withcommunity agencies that operate infant and toddler child development centers. Ashigh schools are modernized throughout D.C., all of them are opening with stateof the art infant and toddler classrooms. As the mayor explained, that’s justone more way the city is able to provide developmental programming for its childrenat the earliest stages and also engage parents right from the verybeginning.
Sincechildren do not come in pieces, I was pleased to hear that schools are beingconnected to the city’s health care system, and at the same time the healthcare system is emphasizing the successful developmental interventions that canbe made with young children. The city also is making new investments in infantsand toddlers and has begun talking with the Clinton Global Initiative aboutstrategies to decrease infant mortality. The mayor summed it up saying, “theEarly Success Framework is really a frame for us to be able to put together a panoplyof programs on behalf of children.”
Andit’s working. “We are already seeingit in terms of third grade test scores on the part of kids. We are alreadystarting to see it in terms of kids’ reading capacity. We’re starting to see itin terms of the expansion of very young children’s vocabulary... I thinkit’s because we have started our kids out at an early point.”
Mayor Gray said most D.C. residentssupported these new investments in children because they knew somethingdifferent needed to be done and understood this was a prudent use of cityresources:
Being able to move systems in that way is a very difficult and
painstaking progress, but it will never happen until you conceive of it, and
then you start to try to make it happen ... I know there is no panacea to any
of this, but frankly, it is the closest thing we have to a panacea, and it
amazes me that jurisdiction after jurisdiction does not invest in early
childhood education—or hard times hit [and] it’s one of the first things in
which jurisdictions disinvest. That is a huge, huge mistake.
Imaginewhat could happen in America if many of the dysfunctional self-serving membersof Congress had the common sense to focus on what is truly important: investingin rather than undermining America’s children and future with cheap fleetingpolitical posturing. Communities andgovernments all across the country can learn from the strides Washington, D.C.is making for its young children. And I hope they will.