The opportunity gap is growing. Seventy-five percent of Washington’s young adults aged 17-24 are ineligible to serve in the military.
Why? Too many do not graduate from high school, have criminal records or suffer from obesity.
We need our young people to succeed in school, stay out of crime and become healthy, fit adults. Parents and children must have the support they need to build strong families and strong futures.
One solution is clear: early intervention and early learning.
Eighty-five percent of a child’s brain is developed by age three. If we can get families the help they need in those crucial early years, their chances of success are greatly improved.
Study after study shows us the incredible power of early learning:
- A 44 percent boost in high school graduation rates for children in the Perry Preschool project.
- Children in the Nurse Family Partnership Program are 50 percent less likely to be abused or neglected and 33 percent less likely to have a teen pregnancy.
- In a Chicago program, children not enrolled in the Parent-Child Centers were 70 more likely to get arrested for a violent crime than those in the program.
Early intervention is the right thing to do, morally. Education is the paramount duty of our state, per the state constitution.
It’s also the right thing to do economically. For every child that drops out of school, uses drugs and becomes a career criminal, he or she costs society an average of $2.5 million.
Prevention is much cheaper than clean-up. For every $1 we invest into early learning, the economic return for our economy is $16. You can’t get that kind of return in the stock market.
It’s time to boost our support for early learning, to give our kids the best possible start in life and to make sure tomorrow’s generation can protect and serve our country.