Getting Serious About a Fair Start for Every Memphis Child

Here’s one of the most important – and disturbing – statistics about Memphis.

For every child in Early Head Start (or the city schools’ equivalent), there are 31 children who aren’t.   

In the wake of the valuable citywide discussion about the future of education that was triggered by the surrender of the Memphis City Schools charter, it’s time to place our serious attention where it belongs: to what can be done to really change the success rate of Memphis students.

There will be a tendency in the coming days for the focus to be on politics, talking points, and structure if there is no countervailing pressure from the rest of us to ask core questions about how to better educate the students themselves.  That’s why the high priority question for us is what it would take for us to have the highest possible number of children in Early Head Start.

Parents Are The First Teachers

As Doug Imig, a guest blogger from The Urban Child Institute, has written here, there is no scientific dispute that the first three years of life are crucial in shaping our futures, including our ability to learn.  That’s because by our third birthdays, 80% of our adult brains have been formed, and to top it off, our baby brains come into this world wired for learning, which means that we have to do whatever we can to make sure the learning is positive. 

In other words, the messages received at the earliest age have added impact.  So the question becomes, what kinds of messages are Memphis infants getting?  More to the point, what are we willing to do to make sure the message is positive and positions our children for success in school and in life?

Stress takes a toll on maximum development of a baby’s brain, and that can come from the harsh living environments for families in deep poverty.  Unfortunately, we have way too many of them in Memphis, and as a result, 40% of our children are living in poverty.

There is no one who plays a bigger role in a child’s life than parents, and although all parents want the best for their children, it doesn’t happen because of forces beyond their control – such as family instability, safety, and poor health care – and a lack of understanding about child development and the importance of nurturing emotional environments. 

Disgraceful

All of this is prelude to entering school and just how school ready a child is, especially with language comprehension and verbal skills. 

Before the global financial meltdown, things were difficult enough for these children, but in the midst of the recession, about 14,000 more people were added to the poverty rolls, proving yet again that when the economy sneezes, poor people catch pneumonia. 

With research showing that more than 50% of a child’s success in school is the result of factors outside the classroom, the environment of Memphis children in poverty becomes nothing less than a civic disgrace.  And it should now be nothing less than a top city priority.

That brings us back to Early Head Start, which was launched in 1994 by the federal government to provide comprehensive child and family development services for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers ages birth to 3 years who are not currently served by a Head Start program.

Early Start

Early Head Start was established to provide early, continuous, intensive and comprehensive child development and family support services on a year-round basis. The purpose of the program is to enhance children’s physical, social, emotional and intellectual development; to support parents’ efforts to fulfill their parental roles; and to help parents move toward self-sufficiency.

The nine guiding principles of Early Head Start are designed to nurture healthy attachments between parent and child, emphasize a strengths-based, relationship-centered approach to services, and encompass the full range of a family’s needs from pregnancy through a child’s third birthday. This federally funded program offers home- and center-based services as well as family child care services.

In 1998, Porter-Leath became the first Early Head Start program and like all of its programs, it has been characterized by its quality and effectiveness.  The program is about helping parents create better home environments for their children, and this is a major part of why Early Head Start is successful.  Most of all, it contributes to the optimal brain development that is possible by a child’s third birthday. 

Closing the Gap

That’s the good news. The bad news is that only about 125 children in Memphis are enrolled in Early Head Start when the need is 31 times larger.

One peculiarity of our present public funding is that the vast majority of money spent on student’s education is spent for K-12.  Meanwhile, only a thimble-full of money is being spent on children in the pivotal first three years of their lives, and as a result, too many of our students enter their first classroom not ready to learn, which sets them up for higher odds for dropping out.

We talk an awful lot in Memphis about how important our children are to us and our future.  If we are truly a city that cares about our children, we should be a city willing to pay for every child possible to be enrolled in Early Head Start.