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David Lawrence, President, Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, "Closing the Achievement Gaps" Forum, November 20, 2003 Ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege to be with you on a day so important, talking about a subject that is vital to the future of every one of us. I come here with admiration for your vision, and I come here with admiration for your leadership. And I am delighted to see you on the path of doing so much in behalf of children and, indeed, for the future of Connecticut. This is a state with so much going for it. You, of course, know far more than I about the realities for your state, your 3.5 million residents and the 45,000 babies born here each year. But having done a little homework, I do know some things. I am a lover of history -- and the owner of an 1840 New England home -- and already well aware that yours is a state of heritage and history, officially recorded since the Dutchman, Adriaen Block, sailed up the Connecticut River in the early 1600s. Your first constitution, going back 365 years, marks the dawn of American democracy. Indeed, this is a state of firsts: First municipal public library, first turnpike, first medical diploma, first newspaper, first submarine, first law school, first public art museum, first revolver, first portable typewriter, first tape measure, first pay phone, first hamburger, first lollipop, first vacuum cleaner, first color television. Your list of "firsts" goes on and on. The very phrase, ‘the Connecticut Yankee," symbolizes for me your leadership in ingenuity and inventiveness. And is there a more beautiful place than here? Hills and forests. Historic homes. White-steepled churches. Great corporate towers. An ocean shoreline. You have such advantages -- accessibility via high-quality roads and air, a strong education system, not much crime, people who want to work, a significant infusion of arts and culture, and you have made a mostly successful transition from an economy whose first engines were defense and insurance to one of more diversity and resilience. Connecticut is a good place for business, and a good place to raise a family. You have been able to strike better than most the balance between cutting taxes and emphasizing high-quality services. Yours is a state generally known, and rightly so, as a "good government" state. How lucky you are to live here. "The Smart State," in the words of the lieutenant governor. A state with room enough for Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Jackie Robinson and Charles Goodyear and Marion Anderson and Eli Whitney and Paul Robeson and so many more. A state with the wisdom to remember the past -- and the energy to look to the future. But all is not perfect here, of course. And I have come this morning to focus on the challenges (while not forgetting what makes you special) ... and, more specifically, to focus on the future of children and, indeed, the future of all in Connecticut. There is so much encouraging here: The expansion of health insurance for children, your major emphasis on school readiness (particularly these past half-dozen years), your governor’s emphasis on reading, his establishment of the Office of the State Child Advocate, the good work and leadership reflected in the Yale Child Study Center and so many other places. All that emphasis and good work shows up in the numbers: You have made an impressive dent in the number of high school dropouts. You have among the country’s best reading, writing and math scores. No state has a higher percentage of students taking the SAT. Almost a third of your adults have at least a four-year college degree. You do better than most in your percentage of low birthweight babies, in those getting prenatal care, your infant mortality rate, your teen birth rate, your diminished rate of child abuse and neglect. But one in seven of your children -- in this, a state so rich in so many ways -- lives in the full federal definition of poverty. Almost a third of your births are to single mothers. Keep digging into the figures, and you find an alarming number of teenagers who have had sex in the past month, skip school, use alcohol, smoke marijuana, smoke tobacco. Now ... please do not jump to the conclusion that I am telling you that we Floridians are somehow better off than you; in fact, the statistics almost invariably will tell you that we are worse off than you. My mission this morning is not -- repeat not -- to preach to the people of Connecticut. The point, rather, is that we are in this together, and we can learn from one another. In that spirit, then, the place for me to begin this morning is to share with you how I came to be involved in all this, what I have learned, and my sense of what it takes to build a real movement for "readiness." If you took me back just seven years ago, I could have told you almost nothing about the topic about which I speak this morning. Yes, I am the father of five children, now ages 18 to 39. Yes, I think our own children were raised by the health-and-education-and-nurturing principles of early childhood development, care and education. But back then, and for many years after, I knew none of these as "principles." What I came to know is that the wisest resources we could spend would be time and money on the front end of the lives of children from before birth to age 5. What I came to believe is that the futures of Connecticut and Florida literally depend on children getting off to a strong start in life. I worked for newspapers for 35 years. Seven different cities. On call 24 hours a day. Someone who loved his work so much that I never missed a day of work all those years. But there did come a time when I came to love newspapering less as the "business" became, in fact, more of a business. Fortuitously, almost serendipitously, I found a full second chapter of my life. Seven summers ago, Lawton Chiles asked me to join the Governor’s Commission on Education. Subsequently, I was somehow euchred into chairing one of six committees -- Readiness. The mandate, I was told, was to find out how we can make sure that every child in Florida enters school fully prepared to learn. Back then, the word "readiness" would have set off no bells in my head. Back then, I had no awareness of a nascent national movement for readiness. Back then, I had never heard about the brain research that underscores our cause. I came to believe the tragedy of early childhood unpreparedness was preventable. I came to believe that however well intended we might be, we would never make more than incremental change unless we could create real "public will" for real change (most particularly the public awareness on the part of parents for what their children really needed). I came to believe that if parents ever knew what their children were entitled to, and needed, in a society of decency and fairness, we could create a mighty army for change. I came to think about "supply" and "demand." I came to believe we could never create enough "supply" of the high-quality basics until we could create the "demand" for such. While so much else good in the early childhood arena was going on in my community, while so many were engaged in the important work of building the supply of basics, I decided to focus an increasing measure of my own energies on building "demand." And so it was that two years ago we launched Teach More/Love More, a name that underscores the crucial nature of "teachable moments" in the first years of life as well as the necessity of love and nurturing in growing successful children. Our television, radio and print ads built a "demand" for high-quality early childhood basics. Meanwhile, we put together what has become the best local early childhood website in the country, accessible through teachmorelovemore.org. That is accompanied by 24-hour, seven-days-a-week phone lines staffed by volunteers to answer questions about child care, health insurance, breast-feeding and much more. And everything we do is in Spanish, English and Creole. Then, on the "supply" side, we built a partnership with 38 neighborhood health clinics, 13 birthing hospitals and 5 birthing centers in our community. We give every expectant mother, for free, a video covering the first several years of life. We give every new parent a high-quality baby book with a message speaking to the crucial nature of reading with your child way before the child’s first birthday. We give each new parent a preview copy of a locally produced, high-quality Teach More/Love More newsletter, all focused on helpful tips for parents. Parents can order this free newsletter to be mailed 11 times a year. Today more than 16,000 homes receive this newsletter. But what are we really trying to build where I live? You surely know that we have our full share of challenges in Miami. I live in the most interesting and challenging big place in America. Great wealth and great poverty. Great beauty and real misery. Our 2.3 million people make us larger than 16 of these United States; our one county contains a full two-thirds of the population of your entire state. You might tell me that Connecticut is increasingly diverse, and I would acknowledge that -- and the 10 percent of the population that is African American and another 10 percent Hispanic American. But listen to the Miami-Dade numbers: 58 percent Hispanic, 21 percent African American or black (frequently not the same in Greater Miami), 21 percent non-Hispanic white (and only 15 percent of the babies). More than half of the people in our community were born in another country -- the largest such percentage in these United States. We in Miami are on the "cutting edge" of the America to come. We are living the "great American adventure." Where I live -- and this is one of the most important parts of my own vision -- we focus on "school readiness" for all children. That does not mean, as you know, that children need to read, say, by age 3. But it surely is about children becoming ready and eager to learn by the time they reach formal school. I believe to the core of my being that it is in the best interests of everyone for us to make sure that high-quality basics become affordable and accessible to every child. Surely all children --- rich and poor, and in-between -- deserve the same start in life. Surely it is in our mutual advantage for all children to get off to a good start in school and life. The first-grade teachers in Connecticut’s 656 elementary schools -- teachers who already know that one of every four children enters school "ill-prepared to learn" -- know so well the frequent tragedy of the student who already feels like a failure. Many are well aware of the national study that told us that if a hundred children leave first grade unable really to read, then 88 of them remain lousy readers after the fourth grade. Wonderful teachers try, as they should, to save these children; inevitably, many are not saved. These are unacceptable failures in a country of greatness and goodness. We must ensure the investment that will bring these children in far better shape to first grade. The smartest of Connecticut’s 41,000 public school teachers will tell you, yes, class size is important, but they will quickly add that the truly crucial variable is the composition of the children in the classroom: How good a shape are these children in -- socially, intellectually, emotionally? I promise you that we would burn out far fewer teachers if we delivered to first grade far more children eager and ready to learn. Let us not blame the children for how ready they are, or are not. That is, first, the responsibility of parents ... and, yes, it is also our responsibility. We seek to build an integrated, comprehensive approach covering health and education and nurturing for all children between birth and age 5. That means we must do much better than what we have now -- good programs, good people invariably disconnected from other good people, other good programs. We need to change to a focus of about what is good and right for all children and away from the axis of "my" money and "my" people. Central to my vision is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of -- that is, "all of God’s children." That is not the way it works now. Instead, well intended, good-hearted people target one deeply disadvantaged neighborhood or another. Then they devote extra resources (which, because those resources are disbursed in such a non-holistic way, so often add up to precious little progress for children). Meantime, the rest of the community sees how we target our resources, and reasons: "Oh, I see, it is about those children." In fact, "readiness" is not about those children, but rather about everyone’s child. A community that embraces all children will become a safer, more prosperous, more optimistic community for everyone. Indeed, all children need all the quality early care and education that your children and my own need: Love and nurturing. All their shots. Excellent nutrition. The fullest opportunity to be safe. Stimulating pre-K. Child care that engages the mind, not the "warehousing" that so many children receive in Connecticut and Florida. Connecticut does much better than most in high-quality child care, yet only one in five licensed child care facilities in this state is nationally accredited, meaning a parent would have emblematic evidence of a stimulating environment within. Meantime, all children need relationships with pediatricians, not the emergency-room-as-basic-medical-care that more than 60,000 children receive in Connecticut. And, yes, all parents need to learn the skills so each of us can make wise decisions in behalf of our children. Parents must make the decisions for their children, but they deserve our respectful help in partnership. In fact, what we need to build is a "movement" in behalf of everyone’s child. Let me use kindergarten as an example of a "movement": I frequently ask audiences to guess when kindergarten began, and usually I hear back that it was sometime in the past few decades. In fact, kindergarten was "invented" in 1837, and came in this country a century and a half ago. Taking more than a century to be genuinely widespread, kindergarten was frequently fought as unnecessary and, even, "anti-family." For decades, kindergarten was seen as mostly for society’s worst off and society’s best off. Only when it became a "movement" in behalf of everyone’s child did it become a full reality. Today, a high-quality kindergarten experience for all children has become an expectation on the part of every parent of every 5 year old. Kindergarten isn’t mandatory in Florida for 5 year olds, or for that matter in Connecticut, but I have yet to meet the parent of a 5-year-old who wants anything less than a high-quality kindergarten-like experience for that child. Building an early childhood movement is surely daunting. But I remind you of the words of Robert Greenleaf in "The Servant and Leader": "Not much happens," he wrote, "without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams." Ladies and gentlemen, let us dream; let us do. So what has been achieved in relatively recent times in the place where I live? Let me give you just a half-dozen examples, but there are many more:
Let me expand on this item because it is so much of your agenda: Your far-seeing State Board of Education has issued a call for achieving high-quality pre-K for all 3 and 4 year olds within the first decade of this century in Connecticut. It is, to be sure, a lofty, worthy goal. I hope you achieve it. Yet I cheat on you if I fail to offer you a half-dozen pieces of advice built from my own pain and progress:
Ladies and gentlemen, it truly depends on you. You are leaders, and this is all about leadership. Leadership is problem-solving, but it is much more than that. It is great and purposeful energy. It is teaching. At its wisest and best, it is embracing and inclusive. It is to dream. (In the eloquence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream.") It is a belief in a higher purpose. ("We were born," said Nelson Mandela, "to make manifest the glory of God within us.") Leadership is, in the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, "to dare mighty things." Leadership is a reminder that the best stories ever told are those of individuals who made a great difference in behalf of others. Think of Jodi Rell, the lieutenant governor ... and Elaine Zimmerman of the Connecticut Commission on Children ... and Janice Gruendel of Connecticut Voices for Children ... and George Coleman of the State Department of Education ... and so many more. All of you; each of you. My friends, could we not be wise enough to come together to "own" a portrait of what we would want for every child? Can we not see this as a matter of wise investment in their future and our own? Is it not basic American fairness that every child have a real chance to succeed? Your own governor tells us: "Our great obligation is to leave our children a better Connecticut." Can we not have the strength and compassion to embrace and include every child? One is tempted to think that we have discovered this imperative of high-quality early development, care and education only in recent times. While today’s need is greater than ever, today’s wisdom has, in fact, been known for many years. Go back now eight centuries to the wisdom of one of England’s greatest kings, Henry II. His obsequious attendants would tell him frequently that the very realm depended on him. He could take this line no more, and one day reminded them that "in my kingdom there is a town, and in the town there is a street, and on the street there is a house. In the house is a cradle with a child in it." And on that child, Henry would say, all else depends. And so it is, and always will be. But perhaps I am focused on information still too recent, so let us turn to Socrates 2,500 years ago. "Fellow citizens," he said, "why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children, to whom one day you must relinquish it all?" So, ladies and gentlemen, this is our burden; this is our opportunity. The future of our country depends on what we can achieve for all our children. Ours must be a mission to build a movement in behalf of every child. Ours is a cause that is moral, is right, is vital and, yes, it truly could be done. That depends on you and me. I have great faith in what you could do ... in what you will do. Thank you, and God bless you.  |
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