Close to Home: Key to future workforce is early childhood education

In his Feb. 23 opinion piece, ("Finding team players in iPod age,") Paul Gullixson poses the question of how it can be that our county is experiencing both high unemployment and a labor shortage.

The solution, according to panelists on the future workforce at a recent Economic Outlook Conference, is in the local education systems. A study done by oDesk further revealed that part of the problem lies in the high expectations of today's graduates not having had to "struggle," and of them lacking the soft skills necessary to be good employees.

We at 4Cs (Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County) would like to offer one high-impact, long-term solution to this crisis: early childhood education. As providers of subsidized preschool services to low-income families, we experience every day how important it is that children start their school careers prepared. This may sound strange to those of us who are now adults and may remember a kindergarten very different from today's fast-paced classroom for 5 year olds.

The fact is that children who have not yet experienced functioning in a classroom setting start kindergarten already behind their peers. They spend their first months learning how to sit quietly in a circle, to raise their hand and wait their turn, to follow two- and three-step directions, to get along with others and to be away from their parents for a stretch of four to five hours. Some children enter kindergarten not knowing how to cut with scissors or hold a pencil. Disadvantaged children start kindergarten with half the vocabulary of their affluent peers and often lack the character skills to thrive in school.

Studies have shown that high-quality early childhood education increases employability by 23 percent and that a child educated in her first five years is 70 percent less likely to be arrested for a violent crime. Analysts of the Chicago Child-Parent Center study estimate $48,000 in benefits to the public per child from a half-day public preschool for at-risk children. Other studies have found that the estimated return on investment is $7 for every dollar invested.

We hear a lot of talk these days about the achievement gap or opportunity gap. We hear that the difference between the "haves" and the "have-nots" continues to increase. We also hear that in California, 50 percent of children never go to preschool. The key issue is that the children who need it the most are the ones who don't have the opportunity to have a positive education experience before kindergarten. These children begin their school experience behind, and many never catch up.

If we were to prepare these children to be ready to succeed from the beginning, their chances of successfully making it through their education increases exponentially. This would help bring a group of young people into the mix of our future workforce, young people who are not in the usual "have" group and who have experienced their share of struggle.

But it's not just the children who need an education. Family engagement is an essential component and is provided in currently existing subsidized preschool programs. All parents want the best for their children. Parents who have never themselves received support or been successful in their educational careers will benefit from guidance on how to help their children succeed in school and how to be an active participant in their child's education. And when is the best time to provide that guidance? The earlier, the better, of course.

And just think, the children in our preschool programs today will graduate high school in only 14 years.

Lara Magnusdottir is resource and referral director for the Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County.