Center Outlines Plan for Improvement

Decades of childhood research now outline an evidence-based framework for improving juvenile learning, behavior, and health, according to a report released this week by a Harvard center devoted to childhood development research and policy-making.

Spurred by appeals for research-based recommendations on early childhood education from state legislators and recent findings in neuroscience, the report’s authors developed six recommendations for revamping childhood policies in an effort to improve education, health, and productivity in the long run.

“What we hope to illustrate in this report is that the science of early brain development is really about the foundations of economic productivity and responsible citizenship and national security and lifelong physical and mental health,” said Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child.

The center, which launched in October of last year, is a joint venture between the Graduate School of Education, the School of Public Health and the Children’s Hospital in Boston.

The authors state that policies targeting early childhood development “can generate benefits to society that far exceed program costs,” provided they satisfy certain “effectiveness factors,” which, according to Shonkoff, “predict for us which programs influence positive outcomes for children and which will be less effective.”

The factors cited in the report include accessible medical care for expectant mothers and newborns, small classroom sizes in schools, high adult-child ratios, minimal exposure to neurotoxins, and work-based income supplements for low-income parents.

At a press conference on Monday to release the policy framework at the National Conference of State Legislatures, the presenters all stressed their hope that legislators would seize on these recommendations to provide research-based programs for their constituents.

The report “is a user-friendly organization of scientific data and economic data that gives us ideas that we can actually work on and move forward on,” said Melvin J. Neufeld, Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, at Monday’s conference. “It’s more than theory, in other words.”

According to Shonkoff, the policy framework was developed at the urging of legislators.

“This report was actually put together at the instigation of our colleagues from the National Organization of State Legislatures, who basically asked us to make this information more available in a way that was both understandable and credible,” he said.

Neither Neufeld nor Ruth L. Kagi—a representative in the Washington State House of Representatives who also spoke at the conference—promised implementation of the report, but both promised to try to make it part of the legislative process in their states and others.

“I think this report makes it so explicitly clear what the impact of not taking action is and so we have a real obligation to act on it,” Kagi said.

Neufeld echoed these sentiments, and, citing longterm effects of childhood development on economic competitiveness, crime rates, and health care costs, stressed the importance of grounding policies in research.

“When I looked at this report...I realized this isn’t rocket surgery, it’s brain science,” Neufeld said, prompting laughter from the audience. “In Kansas, we’ve put a pretty good emphasis particularly on the health care side and the policies we do are scientifically and data-driven policies, and this document helps us get there.”

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.