Fed Sponsors Forum on Early Childhood Education

More than 125 early childhood practitioners, community leaders and business professionals attended "Successful Children Build Successful Communities: An Early Childhood Forum" that featured Rob Grunewald, associate economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The forum was one of the events held in honor of Metro United Way's 90th Anniversary, in conjunction with Success by 6 and sponsored by the Louisville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Success by 6 is a public and private partnership committed to ensuring that every child in our community is healthy, safe, nurtured and ready to succeed in school by age six. Success by 6 representatives note that the first six years of children's lives shape their futures, and the success of a community depends on the success of its children. The Success By 6 initiative provides a structure to encourage people and organizations to work together for the benefit of children. Metro United Way is the catalyst of this community initiative.

Grunewald is the co-author of the groundbreaking "Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return," an economic policy paper featured in the media, legislative hearings and seminars throughout the United States. His paper puts forth a pragmatic proposal for economic development at the state and local levels that capitalize on the high returns that investment in early childhood education can yield.

During the forum, Grunewald discussed that, by investing in early childhood education, governments—in partnership with private firms and nonprofit foundations—can reap extraordinarily high economic returns, benefits that are low-risk and long-lived. He stated that "it's time for policymakers to start thinking in these economic terms and in particular to start thinking of early childhood development as economic development."

Grunewald noted that early childhood development programs are rarely portrayed as economic development initiatives and that he feels that is a mistake. Such programs, if they appear at all, are at the bottom of the economic development lists for state and local governments. They should be at the top, he contends. Grunewald said that most of the numerous projects and initiatives that state and local governments fund in the name of creating well-focused investments in early childhood development yield high public, as well as private, returns.

Metro United Way also held an anniversary dinner that evening, where Grunewald spoke to more than 600 attendees.