High-quality early childhood education matters.
It supports brain development, prepares children for school success, fosters social and emotional skills, closes achievement gaps, offers long-term benefits, provides economic returns, and supports families.
What is early education?
Babies are born with an innate desire to learn. They learn through play, exploration, and, most importantly, through interactions with the adults in their lives.
Early childhood education is early well-being. During the first five years of life, children are developing social, emotional, physical and cognitive skills that will develop into deep, or shallow, roots for learning, health, and lifelong success.
National Association for the Education of Young Children defines early childhood education to include any part- or full-day group program in a center, school, or home that serves children from birth through age eight, including children with special developmental and learning needs.
What is high quality?
High quality early childhood education sets the stage for how well our children learn, how they think of themselves and how they interact with their world. We as parents, child care providers, educators and citizens have a responsibility to make sure all of our children have the very best experiences they can.
Arkansas Better Beginnings is designed to improve the level of quality in childcare and early education programs in Arkansas.
Each Center in Arkansas is required to follow the Minimum Licensing Requirements. Search for Arkansas early childhood education programs here, by county, locate their information, Better Beginnings status and a list of Licensing visits.
We are in the business of building brains.
Brain architecture is comprised of billions of connections between individual neurons across different areas of the brain.
The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. Simpler neural connections and skills form first, followed by more complex circuits and skills. In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections form every second.* After this period of rapid proliferation, connections are reduced through a process called pruning, which allows brain circuits to become more efficient.
The interactions of genes and experience shape the developing brain.
Although genes provide the blueprint for the formation of brain circuits, these circuits are reinforced by repeated use. A major ingredient in this developmental process is the serve and return interaction between children and their parents and other caregivers in the family or community. In the absence of responsive caregiving—or if responses are unreliable or inappropriate—the brain’s architecture does not form as expected, which can lead to disparities in learning and behavior. Ultimately, genes and experiences work together to construct brain architecture.
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Retrieved from: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/brain-architecture/
Brains are built over time, from the bottom up.
The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. Simpler neural connections and skills form first, followed by more complex circuits and skills. In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections form every second.* After this period of rapid proliferation, connections are reduced through a process called pruning, which allows brain circuits to become more efficient.
School readiness means each child enters school ready to build the cognitive and character skills needed to do well in school and in life, including attentiveness, persistence, impulse control and sociability.
Preparing a child for kindergarten requires a focus on five areas of development that begin at birth and are influenced by quality early experiences: physical well-being and motor development; social and emotional development, cognitive skills, language and developing literacy, and the ability to concentrate and follow directions.
Overwhelming evidence shows that children who enter kindergarten behind are likely to remain behind throughout their educational careers and beyond. These gaps in achievement are difficult and expensive to close with K-12 education alone, and they can last a lifetime, particularly for children from low-income families.
First Five Years Fund. Retrieved from: https://www.ffyf.org/why-it-matters/school-readiness/
Children’s Health
Everyone comes into contact with chemicals everyday, whether you breathe them, eat them, drink them, or they are absorbed through your skin. In fact, thousands of chemicals in the products we use and consume every day harm human health and the environment, including but not limited to phthalates, bisphenols, per- and polyfluorinated chemicals, heavy metals, and flame retardants.
There are over 2,500 chemicals on the market that are known carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxicants, neurotoxins, allergens, asthmagens,
endocrine disruptors, and/or skin and eye irritants and sensitizers. While a small number of these are regulated, only one group of these chemicals has been banned.
While adults may be exposed through inhalation, ingestion, or dermal absorption, children face the added risks of being exposed to hazardous substances through maternal transfer of toxics, in addition to their own pathways for bodily intake.
Economic Development
Today’s Workorce
In the state of Arkansas, 35% live in a single parent home, 59% of infants and toddlers live in low income families. Nationwide, 71% of women that have a child under the age of 5 are in the workforce.
Today our area continues to rank as a premier job growth region, but our community has identified access to high-quality early childhood programs the top quality of life concern.
Reliable, quality care is essential in recruiting and retaining the workforce necessary for growth. Working families that have children in a high-quality early childhood program are six times more likely to remain in the workforce, have higher household earnings and reduced dependency on social services.
Tomorrow’s workforce
Children who attend high-quality pre-k programs do better in school from the first day of kindergarten through their post-secondary years. Compared with peers who have not had pre-k, they are:
3 times more likely to enter kindergarten on target
3 times more likely graduate high school
more likely to attend college
Return on investment
According to Entergy economists, there is a return of $9.21 for every dollar invested in high quality early childhood education to Arkansas communities.