Click here to watch the video.

(Introduced by Ann Cramer, IBM Community Affairs)

Thank you, Ann, for that kind introduction and thank you to Voices for Georgia's Children for this incredible award.

I've always known I have a big mouth and I guess this proves it!

As you saw from the video, speaking up and speaking out is not a new thing for me. According to my late grandmother, the earliest example came at age four when I marched into Sunday school in July and announced, "Even though it's out of order, today would be a good day to sing Jingle Bells."

But my voice didn't find its best use until almost 11 years ago. On Valentines Day of 1997, Arthur and I welcomed with great joy and for me, great anxiety, our first child, Joshua, into this world.

I had been to school for 17 years, learning all kinds of useful and sometimes not so useful stuff, but nothing about raising babies. That first month I spent many nights wondering. "What the heck have I done, and how the heck am I going to do it right?"

Thank goodness for me, and Joshua, I have an incredible mother that I could model and who was there with love and support.

During the first four years of Joshua's life, I learned more than I ever expected but here are two big things that have stuck with me ever since.

1. If I could feel so anxious and overwhelmed after having a baby, with all the resources and support around me, how must a single, low-income teenage mom feel?
2. I'd always heard the expression that kids are like sponges, but I was constantly amazed at how much Joshua paid attention to and that he was always learning, even when I hoped he wasn't. How many times has a word slipped out of your mouth in front of a child that you think they didn't hear, only to hear it repeated at the most embarrassing moment?

Instinctively as a mother, I felt these first years of a child's life were critical but did they, in the scheme of things, make that much difference? The answer, as we all know now, is a resounding yes.

And what we also know is that brain development begins for the child during pregnancy and really never has to stop, doing away with the oft used excuse of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

But while brain development does occur along a continuum, there are particularly significant intervals along the way that forever impact a child's social, emotional, and cognitive learning ability. One such period is from zero to five years. By the age of three, 85-percent of a child's brain is hardwired, setting the groundwork for all future learning.

The best way to think of this is to imagine a blueprint for a building. Each child is born with a unique blueprint, or genetic make-up. The learning building that is created must start with a solid foundation, just as any structurally sound building also should. As any good builder or architect knows, if the foundation isn't solid, then the building will show cracks and fissures that eventually must be addressed (expensively, I might add) or the whole kit and kaboodle can collapse.

The exact same thing can be said for early childhood education. If we don't invest in building solid educational foundations, we are squandering later investments in high school, as well as increasing program costs to correct these early mistakes.

Great parents are certainly the most important part of developing successful children, but the reality is parents are not the only ones consistently touching our children. Over 60-percent of all children age four and under are in some form of regular childcare, often for eight or more hours a day.

So here in Georgia, we have several ways to address the issue of how our children are going to learn what they need to learn at an early age.

One, we can strengthen the standards and ratings for all forms of childcare, and we could talk about how to do this for hours, but we won't!

The second way and the one I want to focus on are Georgia's Pre-K programs. Our state is to be commended for its early commitment to universal Pre-K. We were way ahead of the rest of the nation in recognizing the importance of early childhood education. However, setting the program in motion and saying "oh, we have universal Pre-K" is not enough. Currently, only 52-percent of Georgia's eligible four year olds are in Pre-K. Part of the reason for this is that several of the state's largest public school systems (Gwinnett, Cobb, Douglas and Henry counties are examples) do not participate.

Having been married to an incredible businessman for almost 13 years, I fully understand the importance of making sound business decisions and investments that truly can give a great return.

And here's why investing heavily in programs like Pre-K is not a good, but a great idea.

1. If our kids start elementary school already behind other kids, the prognosis isn't good. In fact, children who fall behind in first grade have a one in eight chance of ever catching up to grade level. Seventy-four percent of kids who are poor readers in third grade remain poor readers in ninth grade. Also, approximately seven out of every ten students who will later drop out of high school can be correctly predicted from characteristics exhibited in third grade. And most frightening is that we have states in our country that use third and fourth grade standardized test scores to determine the future population of their prison system.
2. Investing in early childhood programs isn't an inexpensive proposition, but according to several major studies done in the past several years, we can expect that for every dollar invested in early education, we will receive a return of anywhere from four to seven dollars.

These returns manifest themselves through lower crime rates, less need for special education, higher wage earnings and tax payment, reduced teen pregnancy, greater home ownership and reduced welfare assistance.

Proof of this can be found in the studies like the Chicago Longitudinal Study, the Abecedarian Early Childhood program, and the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project.

Robert Grunewald and Arthur Rolnick, both of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, after thorough study of these and other programs determined that the return on investment for early childhood development is 14 to 15 percent compared to seven percent average on U.S. stocks.

One last cold, hard fact. Before entering kindergarten, the average scores of preschool children in the highest socio-economic group are 60-percent ABOVE the average scores of children in the lowest socio-economic group.

If we are going to level the playing field and create an educated, vibrant workforce for Georgia, we must start early and we must invest heavily, hopefully by allocating more of our lottery funds to Pre-K. College is critical, a good portion of our family foundation's work goes toward getting kids to college but it makes no sense to spend most of your money on the roof, when the foundation is shoddy!

In closing, I'd like to say how fortunate we are to have an advocacy arm like Voices for Georgia's Children to wrestle with this and many other issues.

I'd like to leave you with a quote as you leave this event and go out to continue your work on behalf of all our children.

"The charge to society is to blend the skepticism of a scientist, the passion of an advocate, the pragmatism of a policy maker, the creativity of a practitioner, and the devotion of a parent to ensure both a decent quality of life for all of our children and a productive future for the nation."
-Shonkoff & Phillips, Eds. 2000