Will Dayton act to strengthen early education?

Friday could be a very good day for nearly half of Minnesota's workforce-to-be. Those future teachers, lawyers, doctors, personal care attendants, public safety officials, bridge-builders and more will likely be swimming in the kiddie pool tomorrow, blessedly unaware of what the future, or dinner, will bring.

But plenty of grown-ups are waiting anxiously to find out whether Gov. Mark Dayton will confirm his long-standing commitment to quality early childhood education throughout Minnesota.

For six years, the state's top business leaders, with strong bipartisan legislative support, have worked to determine what factors give kids in poverty the best educational boost from age 3 to kindergarten.

With $20 million in private funds, they created four pilot programs serving 650 families in St. Paul's Frogtown, Wayzata, North Mankato and Minneapolis' North Side. Keys to kindergarten readiness, they found, included a quality curriculum, consistent interactions with children and progress-sharing with parents. Plus patience. "Dosage and duration," said Duane Benson, executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (www.melf.us), a nonprofit school-readiness program leading the quality charge. "If you take a child who is underserved, you don't make a lot of improvement during the first year. After the second year, you can't tell them apart from other kids."

From those promising results, MELF and business leaders from Best Buy Co., UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Cargill Foundation, General Mills, plus the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Business Partnership, asked the Legislature to support a quality ratings system they call "Parent Aware." The voluntary system would award early education programs one through four stars.

The Legislature failed to act on the proposal last week, something Benson said "is difficult to believe."

"We know these kids are better prepared. Their achievement is higher. Parents are more involved. Providers call and say, 'How do I get the PA seal?' And it's all outside state government."

They hold out one more hope this year: that Dayton will take executive action to expand the quality rating system and require that the $4 million be tied to it. The July 29 deadline, while not set in stone, was requested to give MELF adequate time to meet deadlines to apply for federal Race to the Top dollars.

"To not [support] this means we're not eligible to compete for up to $50 million in early education dollars," said Art Rolnick, a MELF board member and senior fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Rolnick notes that every dollar invested now in high-quality early education can return up to $10 later, through savings in prisons, unemployment and a lost tax base. Benson noted that two of the groups most enthusiastic about Parent Aware's early success are kindergarten teachers and police officers.

And, of course, parents. "Once parents get their kids into a successful program, they don't move," Benson said. "Parents are parents, no matter what their socioeconomic status."

All three gubernatorial candidates supported the MELF reforms last fall. But groups including Education Liberty Watch (www.edlibertywatch.org) remain opposed to what they see as a "government-approved indoctrinating preschool curriculum and increased regulation on private child care and preschool." They note, too, that it is too early to determine what, if any, impact these ratings will have long-term.

Dayton has long supported early education. "He put money in his budget for early education evaluation," Benson said. "He was out front of the Legislature. He understands high-quality programs and the return on the investment. He's deeply concerned about these high-risk populations. His sweet spot is jobs, and education is such a big part of that."

As of Wednesday, the governor was mum on his intentions, although a spokeswoman did reiterate his commitment to early childhood education and promised future initiatives on the issue.

On Aug. 8, representatives of the Fisher Foundation in Detroit will meet with MELF members to tour the Frogtown site. The group is considering bringing Parent Aware to its struggling Brightmoor School District, located in an area plagued by drugs and decay, and called "Blightmoor" by many.

"It will be ironic," Rolnick said, "if they use our ideas and we don't have the same quality early education standards here."