Legislature(2005 - 2006)CAPITOL 106
03/02/2006 03:45 PM House HEALTH, EDUCATION & SOCIAL SERVICES
| Audio | Topic |
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| Start | |
| Overview: Early Childhood Development Task Force | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
| *+ | HB 430 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| *+ | HB 356 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED | ||
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE
March 2, 2006
3:51 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Peggy Wilson, Chair
Representative Paul Seaton, Vice Chair
Representative Carl Gatto
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Tom Anderson
Representative Vic Kohring
Representative Sharon Cissna
Representative Berta Gardner
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
OVERVIEW(S): EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT TASK FORCE
HOUSE BILL NO. 356
"An Act relating to consent for medical and dental services,
including bone marrow donation, for a minor."
- BILL HEARING CANCELED
HOUSE BILL NO. 430
"An Act making an appropriation for the construction of the
Palmer Senior Citizen Center; and providing for an effective
date."
- BILL HEARING CANCELED
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
IRA PERMAN, President & CEO
Alaska Humanities Forum;
Member, Ready to Read, Ready to Learn Task Force
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented information on the Ready to Read,
Ready to Learn Task Force.
ROB GRUNEWALD, Associate Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Minnesota
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented information regarding the Perry
Preschool program in Minnesota.
BRIDGETT CHANDLER
Washington State Governor's Early Learning Council
Washington
POSITION STATEMENT: Presented brain research data.
ACTION NARRATIVE
CHAIR PEGGY WILSON called the House Health, Education and Social
Services Standing Committee meeting to order at 3:51:05 PM.
Representatives Gatto, Seaton, and Wilson were present at the
call to order.
^OVERVIEW: EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT TASK FORCE
3:51:17 PM
CHAIR WILSON announced that the only order of business would be
an overview of the child development task force.
3:52:03 PM
IRA PERMAN, President & CEO, Alaska Humanities Forum; Member,
Ready to Read, Ready to Learn Task Force, explained that the
task force is a broad coalition with members from across the
state to help children across the state enter school ready to
read and learn. He then introduced Rob Grunewald and Bridgett
Chandler, who will present a PowerPoint to the committee.
3:53:57 PM
ROB GRUNEWALD, Associate Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of
Minneapolis, informed the committee that he has been
investigating the research on early childhood development, which
clearly illustrates that investments made in children before
they reach kindergarten has an impact on the economy. The
aforementioned is based on research, including that of James J.
Heckman, Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago.
What has been discovered is that because of the sensitive period
from birth to age five, whatever happens during that time
establishes the trajectory for kids. On average, by the time a
child reaches kindergarten, his/her course toward success or
failure in school is established. One of the key longitudinal
studies was the Perry Preschool study in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a
very socioeconomically distressed community. Children were
selected to participate in the study and randomly assigned to
the Perry Preschool program or the control group. The children
in the program had a daily classroom session and the teacher
visited the families' homes to work on parenting skills. The
children in both groups were tracked until they were 40 years
old. The researchers found significant effects in regard to the
children's achievement scores, whether they graduated from high
school on time, and whether they required special education
requirements as illustrated by slides presented by Mr.
Grunewald.
3:56:44 PM
MR. GRUNEWALD explained that at age 40, the researchers found
significant economic effects, including the percent of children
who later own their own homes and made more money in the
workforce. Furthermore, crime rates were essentially cut in
half [in the group that participated in the Perry Preschool].
He further explained that a number of benefits from the study
can be converted to dollars in order to evaluate the relative
benefits of the program as compared to the cost of the program.
The cost of the program in today's dollars is about $10,000 per
child on average. He noted that the participants of the [Perry
Preschool] program were three- and four-year-olds who attended
[the preschool] for about a year-and-a-half. Savings to the K-
12 system were found due to reductions in special education and
grade retention. There were also higher participant earnings,
most of which is a private benefit to the participant, although
some returns to the public in the form of higher tax revenue.
For the Perry Preschool program there were strong savings due to
the reduced needs of the criminal justice system and the cost of
crimes to victims. Once all the benefits of the program are
summed and evaluated relative to the cost, the benefit-cost
ratio is $17:$1. To better compare the return on this program,
the benefit-cost ratio was converted into an annual interest
rate, which amounts to 18 percent. Most of the benefits accrue
to the public; the public rate of return is estimated to be 16
percent. Further, the returns on investments to the stock
market for the last 25-30 years, adjusted for inflation, were
5-7 percent.
3:58:47 PM
MR. GRUNEWALD related that there are three other longitudinal
studies with cost-benefit ratios over $1. All of the programs
show significant savings and range from 7-20 percent. Mr.
Grunewald concluded by relating that some of the lessons learned
from the research was the importance of investing in quality;
reaching at-risk populations results in the strongest savings;
focusing on both numeracy and literacy skills as well as the
social and emotional components of the child's learning; and
bringing the programs to scale to reach large numbers of
children. Mr. Grunewald recalled that about a year ago in
Minnesota, a group of business and community leaders came to the
legislature representing about 100 different organizations and
requested that the legislature join them in a partnership in
identifying those practices and programs that can most cost
effectively provide early education to the children in
Minnesota, which is what he views is occurring today in Alaska.
4:01:07 PM
CHAIR WILSON mentioned that she and Representatives Gatto and
Seaton are members of the House Finance Education Budget
Subcommittee. She noted her excitement with regard to the many
ways in which the state can save money in education.
4:01:55 PM
REPRESENTATIVE SEATON asked if Minnesota has expanded this pilot
program.
MR. GRUNEWALD answered that the community and business leader
group along with the State of Minnesota has pooled money to fund
pilot projects in order to determine the best path. In response
to Representative Gatto, Mr. Grunewald clarified that the Perry
Preschool program study was a 40-year study that began in the
early 1960s. Of the other three programs mentioned, one
surveyed the children at age 15 and the other two surveyed the
children at about age 21.
4:03:17 PM
BRIDGETT CHANDLER, Washington State Governor's Early Learning
Council, began by relating that this new brain data is showing
what is going on inside of the brain and confirming what
educators and parents have known and observed for years: "the
higher the quality of the relationship that children are in, the
more likely they are to learn and to remember and to thrive."
Therefore, it's all about parents and caregivers who set the
trajectory for a child's school and life success. She opined
that Alaska has an incredible opportunity with the task force.
She then presented images of brains to show how capable and
vulnerable young children are and how the early brain is growing
so dramatically quickly. She highlighted that there is a
difference in brain growth with regard to its actual physical
size versus development. In the last 10 years technology has
allowed one to observe operating brains in order to obtain a
sense as to how rapidly the connections form, how early learning
circuits are there for life, and how later learning builds on
top of those circuits.
4:06:34 PM
MS. CHANDLER said that neuroscience further relates that people
have an innate drive to discover the world. The human brain, as
compared to other brains, is hugely undifferentiated at birth
and thus most of a human's brain development occurs after birth
since humans are so adaptive. The old debate over whether
nature or nurture determines who a human will be can be put to
rest because it's the inextricable combination of the two.
4:08:23 PM
MS. CHANDLER related that learning is taking place in utero and
at birth. Furthermore, humans are adapting as they develop,
especially in the early years. With regard to the notion that
one has all the brain cells he/she will have at birth, Ms.
Chandler pointed out that there is new evidence that the brain
can recruit cells from other parts of the body and grow new
brain cells in response to damage, disease, and injury. All
this data illustrates that there is a healthy pattern in which
the proliferation of connections peaks early in life and tapers
as the brain becomes more selective and reinforces what
experience says is important to master. By nature one looks to
others to determine how to act, what is and isn't safe, and what
is and isn't rewarded and thus by our genetic structure humans
are very good at learning via imitation.
4:10:55 PM
MS. CHANDLER reiterated that humans are very adaptive and at a
certain point every brain is unique due to the unique
combination of genes and experiences by an individual. Still,
there are things that are known to be necessary for optimal
development of children. For instance, the physical body of the
child needs to be safe and in a situation of adequate nutrition
and health care. There needs to be a certain amount of
predictableness in the routine, particularly in regard to the
caregivers. Without the aforementioned, the body goes into an
automatic physiologic response in which the body is told its
survival is at stake. It is important to respond to the child's
basic need for care even if it is difficult to ascertain what is
needed.
4:14:44 PM
MS. CHANDLER, in response to Representative Gatto, highlighted
the importance in recognizing the difference between every day
stress such as not having a need met right away or being told no
or to share and manageable but large stress such as the death of
a pet or loved one, or a natural disaster versus chronic ongoing
stress resulting from abuse, neglect, substance abuse, or
depression. The nurturing relationships buffer children, she
noted. She then related research from Meghan Gunner (ph) who
reviewed what happens to children in terms of their external
behavior and their internal physiological response when they
experience a stressful event such as receiving a shot. For
instance, when a child with his/her mother present receives a
shot at two months of age, the cortical response skyrockets.
Two months later, at four months old the child, with the mother
present again, receives a shot, but this time the cortical
response is half what it was two months prior. The child has
learned that his/her mother will comfort him/her. Ms. Chandler
informed the committee that there is very compelling evidence
that when children are left to manage stress on their own, the
brain goes into survival mode and the child's learning is
compromised because the body is told that it's not safe.
4:17:13 PM
REPRESENTATIVE GATTO inquired as to when the fight or flight
response comes into play.
MS. CHANDLER said that the fight or flight response can be seen
in even a two-month-old as it's an innate response. If the
fight or flight response is triggered too often and early on,
the brain sets its "stress response thermostat" at a much lower
level than is optimal and thus such a child will be triggered
into a stress response more readily than a child in a nurturing
relationship. She noted that it doesn't mean that the child
can't learn good techniques to manage stress, it means that the
child has to work much harder to respond to normal stresses.
4:19:19 PM
CHAIR WILSON inquired as to the things that a parent can do that
will make a difference when the child goes to school.
MS. CHANDLER emphasized that everything matters and thus there
is a wide menu of things from which to choose. She opined that
public investment will do the most good when done early and will
result in the most dramatic gains when focusing high quality
resources where the need is the most vulnerable. Therefore,
resources can be invested across a broad population and send
generalized messages regarding the importance of the nurturing
bond for parents to provide to their children and to have
information with regard to early childhood development. Another
important role that government can play is to help parents be
wise consumers of child care and other learning opportunities.
She noted that in the State of Washington she is leading the
effort of its task force to develop a quality rating and
improvement system.
4:22:08 PM
REPRESENTATIVE GATTO remarked that it seems Ms. Chandler is
asking parents to know where to draw the line as far as
stimulating children enough without over stimulating them.
MS. CHANDLER said that over stimulation is a huge issue for very
well-intentioned parents. In further response to Representative
Gatto, Ms. Chandler reminded the committee that genes are half
the equation and experience is the other half.
4:24:45 PM
REPRESENTATIVE SEATON stated that it would be helpful to receive
input from the presenters as to what would be helpful in moving
programs forward. He encouraged the presenters to provide the
committee with an outline of specifics, such as specific
positions or tasks, so that it could be utilized when
considering funding for the budget. He indicated that the
information is needed within the next two weeks.
4:28:32 PM
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
Health, Education and Social Services Standing Committee meeting
was adjourned at 4:29:01 PM.
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