Last week I was fortunate to meet over an hour with Governor Dayton at his residence. Normally, it's good to get 15 minutes with him because he is so busy. Only a staff person taking notes was there.
Most of our discussion was on Early Childhood issues, which are most important for the future of Northsiders. Governor Dayton has shown a tremendous commitment to early childhood issues by putting nearly 400 million dollars of new money on various early childhood programs, and 100 million on tax credits which can be used for early childhood or K-12. Obviously, I thanked him greatly.
I'm always amazed at how much Gov. Dayton knows about a wide array of topics, but he can only understand the issues when he gets accurate information and I believe he has gotten incorrect advice from education officials on how to get the best results. Most of the money in his proposal is spent on full day prekindergarten for all 4 year olds. He believes this will greatly reduce the achievement gap.
Last fall, I was one of 10 legislators from around the country who was invited to the White House to meet with the two top advisors for President Obama on early childhood issues. They indicated they were moving most of their money away from 4 year olds and into children aged 0 to 3, and then using it to target at-risk kids; with special emphasis on expanding the brain development training by visiting nurses. New research shows 80% of brain development is before age 3 and 90% before age 4. The next day, the same information was echoed when I attended a conference at Johns Hopkins, which is often considered the leading research university on early childhood. Over the last couple years, I've heard the same from Jack Shonkoff (the leading early childhood expert in the country), Chuck Nelson, Wagner and other experts at Harvard, leading experts at other well-known universities and the leaders at our U of M Institute of Child Development.
Some Minnesota education officials told Governor Dayton that the full day for all 4 year olds will produce 7 to 10 dollars for society for every dollar we put into it, and that it will greatly reduce the achievement gap. They citied articles from famous national studies by Art Rolnick and Art Reynolds, both of whom I know. I contacted Mr. Rolnick and Mr. Reynolds and they said those education officials were misinterpreting their studies. They said their work showing 7 to 1 or better returns was based on high quality early ed programs targeted to at-risk kids, and that there definitely would not be such returns when the money was spread over all 4 year olds (as in the Governor's proposal). There are a few studies that show a little better than 1 to 1 return from quality early ed for middle income kids but nothing like the return on our tax investment that comes from targeting the money to kids in concentrated poverty and other high stress situations.
I thanked Gov. Dayton profusely for wanting to put so much money into early childhood but strongly suggested that he do something that would greatly reduce the achievement gap; namely do what all research suggests and put most money into ages 0 to 3 and target it toward at-risk kids, and put some into at-risk 3 and 4 year olds.
As I've found before, Governor Dayton is thoughtful and he indicated he wasn't locked in on how the money for early ed would be used and he would work with me and others as we move toward the end of session. The biggest challenge is with the senate Democrats who are locked in on spending almost all of the money on all 4 year olds and the House Republicans who want to spend almost no money on early ed.
I’ll continue to monitor and advocate for the best outcome for our children.