Early intervention gets a great return on the investment
Who wouldn’t be happy with a 13.8 percent return on investment? A stockbroker who could do that would have investors beating down his door.
Nobel prize winner economist James Heckman was in Jackson, Mississippi, last month presenting evidence that early childhood intervention can yield a 13.8 percent monetary return for the state of Mississippi.
Lest you think this is a bunch of left-wing hokum, Heckman was introduced in the auditorium of the new Civil Rights Museum by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant who enthusiastically endorsed the use of daycare centers as early intervention platforms.
“We have talked for years about how do we teach these children literally from birth to when they go into a pre-K program,” Bryant said in his introduction. “We’ve talked about how we’re going to put them on a school bus. Put bigger buildings out there in the public education system now. We can go further than that. We know where they are at. So we are going about training our daycare workers through our community colleges with a grant to the Department of Human Services so we are putting a learning component with the daycare workers.”
The concept of reaching disadvantaged children at a young age is nothing new. The federal Headstart program has been around for decades.
What’s new about Heckman, a University of Chicago economics professor, is his rigorous methodology of tracking the participants of early childhood programs and measuring how their success in life creates a compelling investment return justifying the government spending.
Heckman, as he told the crowd, is not a social worker. He is an economist. He is concerned about tracking the return on the government investment in early childhood education.
Heckman has discovered two key things: First, you can indeed track and quantify the return on investment for different early education programs. Second, some work. Other’s don’t. Those that work can confer a huge return on social investment.
Which ones work? Basically, the earlier the better. The first three years are critical. Heckman’s website has a wealth of data, reports and analysis illustrating how a state such as Mississippi could reap an amazing return that could transform the state.