FACT SHEET | Investing in Early Learning
2016 Budget for a Better Minnesota

To help understand the flaws in this document the reader should understand when children learn.

Child Development,
Timeline:
• Eighty percent of brain development happens by 3.
• At sixteen months, a difference in vocabulary can be seen between children of low, modest, and high-income children.
• By age two, scientists can predict 3rd-grade reading scores.
• Chronic stress impedes development; poverty is the primary driver of this stress.
• By age 3, children with college-educated parents or primary caregivers had vocabularies 2 to 3 times larger than those whose parents had not completed high school.
• All parties (scientists, MDE, etc.) agree kindergarten readiness is a prime determinate at how children will do in schools.
• “U.S. Dept. of Education Finds 6 out of 10 Kids Unprepared for Kindergarten”

Breaking down this document to see where it lines up with Research.
• Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten: Helping more Families Afford Early Learning.
 Discusses closing the achievement gap and moving the state closer to Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten.
 Research shows that this will have little impact on the Achievement Gap because age 4 is just too late for impoverished children and those not in poverty gain little from this.

• Tackling the Achievement Gap
 Poverty is the cause of the Achievement Gap. When it comes to graduation rates among children of color the statistics are alarming. However, the largest group, by number is whites (80,581). Although when the only metric used it would seem to be a race issue. To get a clear picture additional information is needed such as percentages of a race that live in poverty.

Race/Ethnicity	Count	Percent	% Graduate	% don’t Grad
Hispanic/Latino	82,275	9.30%	63.2%	36.8%
American Indian/Alaska Native	14,206	1.60%	51.0%	49.0%
Asian	60,101	6.80%	81.7%	18.3%
Black/African American	97,656	11.00%	60.4%	39.6%
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander	697	0.10%
White	588,186	66.50%	86.3%	13.7%
Two or More Races	41,731	4.70%
All Students	884,852	100.00%	81.2%	18.8%
Students Who Won’t Graduate	166,352

 

• Helping More Children Succeed in School and Life
 “Only 60 percent of kids from middle-income Minnesota families start Kindergarten fully prepared to learn. Even if every low-income child in Minnesota attended preschool and was fully-prepared for Kindergarten, approximately 30 percent of all Minnesota children would still not be prepared for school.” It is difficult to determine the validity of this statement as Minnesota Kindergarten Readiness Stats are not available to the public. The Legislative Auditors report of April 2018 indicates the MDE is not monitoring numerous programs. 

• “Catching Up to Other States – Programs across the country, including in Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, Georgia, Michigan, and Oklahoma, have shown that when families have access to high-quality, voluntary Prekindergarten, all kids benefit.”
 This statement leads to compare not only the states the Governor and Lt Governor suggested but a range of other states (the additional comparison is provided at the back of this document).
Results of UPK in other states

If UPK was successful, it would show up in statistics ‘further down the road’, such as standardized 3rd grade and 8th-grade testing.
Comparing states based on the following selection process:
Governor Dayton’s Fact Sheet/On Early Learning indicates Minnesota was falling behind other states and it lists. Those states are New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Michigan. I added Minnesota to this group to determine if we were behind or not.
For each state we compared:
• State rank
• Graduation Rate
• 4th Grade Scores
o Math
o Reading
• 8th Grade proficiency percentage
o Math
o Reading
Grad. Rate 4th g reading 4th G math 8th G math 8th G reading
Gov. Dayton’s Refer. Nation 229 Nation 240 Proficiency

	Grad. Rate	4th g reading	4th G math	8th G math	8th G reading
Gov. Dayton’s Refer.		Nation 229	Nation 240	Proficiency	Proficiency
New Jersey	90.1%	229	245	46.2%	40.6%
Maryland	87.6%	235	251	34.7%	37.4%
North Carolina	85.9%	226	244	32.6%	30.4%
Minnesota	82.2%	223	250	47.8%	39.7%
Oklahoma	81.6%	222	240	23th %	29.4%
Georgia	79.4%	222	236	28.4%	30.2%
Michigan	79.2%	223	236	28.5%	31.8%

 

• Saving Minnesota Families Money –
 “Minnesota has some of the highest childcare costs in the country. In Minnesota, it can cost over $11,000 to send a four-year-old to childcare for just one year.
 This may be correct; Pre-K is tied to the school year, which is 175 days and is only ½ days. Families that require full daycare would have to find and pay for the other ½ day.
 Is this a daycare program? If so it needs to be identified as such.

• Leveraging a Huge Return on Investment – Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis have found that every $1 invested in high quality early learning can yield up to a $16 return on the state’s investment.
 The operative word here is CAN. This is a blatantly misleading statement.

 ‘Nor does universal preschool provide a wise public investment. The oft-touted $16 return for every $1 invested in early education applies only to high-quality programs for at-risk children.’ Dr. Karen Cadigan was the founding director of the Minnesota Office of Early Learning.