State Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd of Oxford, who chaired the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families last year, wants to improve Mississippi’s First Steps early intervention program. “We’re not doing a good job on this,” she said on SuperTalk radio.
“The statistics came out that we were one of the worst in the country,” she said, pointing to just over 1,500 children served when between 10,000 and 12,000 needed services.
The Senate has passed a bill Boyd introduced that would establish a special task force to propose changes to improve and expand the existing First Steps program.
Five years ago the University of Mississippi Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning, headed by the late Dr. Melody Musgrove and Dr. Cathy Grace (now retired) brought experts to Jackson to inform state leaders about the importance of early intervention.
“What one thing could Mississippi do to have a more competitive workforce, a healthier population, more college graduates, fewer welfare mothers, better school performance, fewer special needs children, less drug usage and pay for itself seven times over?” I wrote after attending the lectures.
The answer remains true today. “Improve cognitive development in at-risk children right from birth.”
Sound too good to be true? Science says otherwise. Cognitive development deals with fundamental brain skills that enable children to think, read, learn, remember, and pay attention. From these fundamental skills, children develop their capacities to speak, understand, calculate, interact, and deal with complex systems.
Long-term research has shown two things conclusively: 1) cognitive abilities get firmly set based on what happens to children during their first weeks and months after birth; and 2) targeted early interventions can make a profound difference.
This research was the life work of Drs. Craig and Sharon Ramey who began pioneering brain development research at the Civitan International Research Center at the University of Birmingham. By 2018 as distinguished research scholars and practitioners at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, the Rameys had pulled together over 40 years of scientific research and tracking to irrefutably show that "cognitive disabilities can be prevented in early childhood."
"The health, education, and well-being of children forecast the future of communities and states," said Dr. Craig Ramey. "If we don't get a significant sector of the population started early, it is hard to make a difference later."
Significant impacts from early interventions include leveling the playing field in educational performance for at-risk children, improving their college going rates by four to one, reducing their use of public assistance by five to one, and improving their average earnings by 50%. The cost-benefit analysis of these targeted interventions by Dr. James Heckman, Nobel Prize winning economist at the University of Chicago, showed a 7.3 to 1 return on investment by adulthood.
Hopefully, Sen. Boyd can finally spur action on this.
“Train up a child in the way he should go” – Proverbs 22:6.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
