Researchers behind the “For the Sake of All” report held a forum at the Parents As Teachers national center in St. Louis on Thursday, March 12 to discuss the report’s recommendation that investing in early childhood education would address the race-based health disparities in the St. Louis region.
“If their parents have participated in PAT, we see higher test scores on standardized tests, much higher than non-PAT peers,” said Scott Hippert, CEO of Parents as Teachers.
“We see PAT kids reading at grade level in the third and sixth grade. Even in some of the most challenged communities, we see suspension rates in third and sixth grade that are one-third lower than their peers.”
Panelists included Erin Brower, of the Alliance for Childhood Education; Missouri state Senator Joseph Keaveny (Dist. 4-St. Louis); L. Carol Scott, president of Child Care Aware of Missouri; and Halbert Sullivan, CEO of Father’s Support Center of St. Louis.
Brower said that the state’s under-funding of programs for early childhood education is making administrators look elsewhere for funding.
“Out of the 40 states that have state-funded pre-K, we are the 38th worst,” Brower said.
Brower said her organization has been working about a year and a half on the effort, www.RaiseYourHandsforKids.org, to increase the cigarette tax to fund early childhood education.
“Missouri has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 17 cents a pack; our closest neighbor is Kentucky at 60 cents,” Brower said. “What we are looking at is a 50-cent increase, which would raise $250 million annually. That would bring $50 million to this region alone.”
Sullivan said that the social conditions impact what and how children learn.
“Are our communities family-friendly?” Sullivan said. “Not when I walk down Wells and Hamilton and see a whole block of vacant, deteriorating buildings, which is the festering point for drugs, crime.”
Effective learning environments are holistic, Scott said.
“They support physical health, including dental health; physical activity; nutrition; they support children’s mental health,” Scott said.
“They provide safety from harm, from trauma, from toxic stress associated with not only abuse, but just grinding poverty. And they support the cognitive or intellectual development, providing stimulation that is age-appropriate and temperament-appropriate.”
One statistic discussed at the forum struck Sharoddi Hudson, a grandmother who is raising her grandchildren: by age 4, children from low-income families have 30 million fewer words spoken to them than children who live in higher-income families.
“I should have had my grandchildren first,” Hudson said. “I would have done better.”
The “For the Sake of All” report released last year was developed by researchers from Washington and Saint Louis universities. Jason Q. Purnell, associate professor of the Brown School at Washington University, is the lead researcher of the project. Read the report at http://forthesakeofall.org/.
