What do two of the state’s top business leaders, John Rathgeber, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and Marie O’Brien, president of the Connecticut Development Authority, have in common?
Economic development would be the most obvious response, not early childhood education.
But the two business leaders and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell are among the unlikely proponents for what has typically been the province of social activists and education advocates. Rathgeber is co-chair and O’Brien is a member of the governor’s Early Childhood Research and Policy Council.
While the business community has a long history of supporting employee training and quality education for high school students, generally the education of three- and four-year-olds was left to the purview of educators, and not considered a work force issue.
Until now.
One reason is because a number of new studies are demonstrating that the public investment in a quality early childhood education program pays. And it pays big, offering a high rate of return on investment.
Just three years ago, it was uncommon to see business leaders advocating for preschool programs. In fact, Arthur Rolnick, director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, remembers telling a pro-education organization that while it was certainly a moral issue, it was not a business matter.
Early ROI
After Rolnick conducted his own research on the subject, he changed his mind. His research discovered a 16 percent return on investment with publicly funded high quality preschool programs.
Economic research, such as the one done by Rolnick, combined with education studies evaluating graduation, crime and employment rates over time, is providing the kind of evidence that is boosting support for early childhood education from the business community.
Studies aside, businesses can see for themselves that fewer young adults are prepared to join the work force with the necessary skills. With the diminishing supply of highly trained workers and an increasing number retiring, the need is becoming increasingly clear.
More businesses are now making the connection about preschool’s payback in future employee productivity.
Tomorrow’s Workers?
Education has been intrinsic to businesses for a very long time, said O’Brien, who heads the Connecticut Development Authority. “People are their first concern, a labor force and a skilled labor force,” she said.
While business owners tell O’Brien that while they must constantly try to decrease their operating costs, “they can’t even focus on that if they don’t have the first element necessary of a competing enterprise, and that is a work force.”
The governor’s focus on spending more on early childhood education resonated with those of us who came out of the private sector, O’Brien said.
“The governor did a fabulous job pulling together the individuals for her council, and reaching out to a number of us who would not be traditionally involved,” O’Brien added.
In Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget, she is proposing spending $63.7 million during the next two fiscal years on improving school readiness.
O’Brien said she is seeing a beginning of a shift in how small manufacturers and other businesses think about preschool education. “In that arena, they are looking for the next generation of workers. That shift comes from … the public debate on early childhood education. The issue is linking our educational leaders, experienced teachers, throughout middle and high schools, more closely to business [needs].”
Business Connection
While some businesses already appreciated the value of a high-quality preschool program, it was not a mainstream belief.
Hard data and an actual business plan were needed to win the support of the business community, said Janice Gruendel, the governor’s senior early childhood advisor.
Three years ago, that evidence was not available.
The support of the business support was critical to gain lawmakers support, she said.
“If businesses are not willing to support it, you get no place fast,” Gruendel said.
She recalls suggesting to gubernatorial chief-of-staff Lisa Moody that the business community needed to be on board last year, and what better way than to get Rathgeber, the head of the CBIA, to head up the effort.
Indicative of the business mindset at the time, Gruendel remembers Moody doubtful that Rathgeber would join the early childhood council. Despite Moody’s reservations, Gruendel made the case to Rathgeber personally.
But Rathgeber was already a proponent. “Our state’s economic success has been the skill of our work force and the innovation that work force brings,” he said. “There is really good evidence that when a child enters kindergarten unprepared to learn and reaches grade 3 and unable to read, that child will have a very difficult time being a productive citizen.”
Unless children enter the school system better prepared, regardless of the current education reforms, those reforms aren’t providing the kind of results businesses demand now and in the future.
Rathgeber sees the problem only getting worse. “We can’t have a community where there is such a wide gap in performance of those who are high achievers and those who are dropping out of high school or those who do graduate but are only able to do remedial [work],” he said.
Rathgeber said the council created a business case that gives municipal policy makers the ability to phase in a high quality preschool program over seven years with different scenarios, but all requiring a minimum of at least one master teacher and teachers with bachelor degrees certified to teach preschool children.
He notes that he is not advocating a universal preschool system – for all preschool children – but simply to target about 14,000 children 3- and 4-year-olds living in poverty who don’t have an opportunity for early childhood education.
