Early Education Pays Big Dividends

Early Education Pays Big Dividends
By Mav Pardee
Special to the Worcester Business Journal
August 16, 2010
________________________________________
Business and education leaders in Worcester met recently to consider the impact of early childhood programs on economic development across the region. This small business sector is an essential part of the socio-economic infrastructure for employers and working parents. According to the National Economic Development and Law Center, two-thirds of children in Massachusetts live in families where all parents are in the workforce.
Without good, affordable child care, parents can’t work and employers face absenteeism and reduced productivity.
Early childhood and after school programs are an economic driver in their own right as well, employing 30,000 people in Massachusetts and generating $1.5 billion in revenues.
Pipeline Development
But most importantly, good early childhood programs are a vital investment in workforce development. Studies on the impact of high-quality early childhood education consistently show a 7 to 16 percent return on investment in better school performance, reduced special education and social welfare spending, higher educational attainment and lifetime earnings.
Interest in the potential impact of early education on the economy continues to grow because of concerns about the lagging academic performance of American students and the long-term impact on U.S. competitiveness. We’ve learned that merely focusing on K-12 schooling may be too little, too late.
The lag in language development and pre-literacy skills begins at a very young age. Brain research shows that infants are born ready to learn if they have appropriate interactions with their parents and caregivers. Learning to talk is a necessary precursor to learning to read.
Education researchers calculate a 30-million-word gap by age 4 between children of mothers on welfare and children of college-educated parents. Lower income children hear less spoken language so they have smaller vocabularies, and consequently, learn new words at a slower rate.
Why does this matter? It turns out that a child’s verbal ability at age 3 is a reliable predictor of reading ability in third grade. Third-grade reading ability is a reliable predictor of future academic success, high school graduation and workforce readiness.
In Worcester, 65 percent of third graders are not proficient readers and will likely face challenges in developing those skills. The data shows that we should invest earlier in their education, particularly for young children from low-income families. Staff qualifications, curriculum and program leadership are crucial elements in program quality, but there is strong evidence that the space where a program operates is too often overlooked. A well-designed and equipped environment supports learning, while poorly adapted, makeshift space can undermine it. One study showed that with no change in teaching staff, child population or curriculum, a move from inadequate space into a new, carefully designed early childhood facility led to a seven-fold increase in teacher-child interactions. Those interactions are critical to language development, attitudes about learning, and children’s social and emotional development.
The business community understands the impact of good workspace on employee morale and productivity. We are increasingly convinced that good work and play space is critical to educational program quality. To that end, the Children’s Investment Fund is conducting a statewide inventory to assess the condition of early learning and after school facilities across Massachusetts. There are 14 Worcester program sites in the sample. We will know by early 2011 how we might improve the physical environment for these centers, so that we can help improve education outcomes for the third graders of 2015 and beyond.n
Mav Pardee is program manager for the Boston-based Children’s Investment Fund, an affiliate of the Community Economic Development Assistance Corp.

Hyperlink: http://www.wbjournal.com/news47063.html

SourceWorcester Business Journal

A New Kind Of Playground

By Adam Ragusea
Published July 13, 2010

(Courtesy photo)

If you’ve been to a shiny new playground lately, you’ve probably noticed all kinds of metal and plastic gizmos, crazy slides and climbing structures. It looks like fun, but some child development experts have been advancing an alternative in recent years. They’re called “natural playgrounds” — play spaces that use natural materials and leave it up to the kids to decide what to do with them.

Last year, Boston’s non-profit Children’s Investment Fund put out a quarter-million dollars in grant money for local schools and early childhood centers to build a handful of natural playgrounds. We checked out one that caters to a very special population.

Guests:

* Tamar Warburg, an architect at Studio G architects and one of the park’s designers
* David Elkind, professor emeritus of child development at Tufts University

SourceWBUR - Radio Boston

A New Playground for Kids to Play Naturally

A New Playground for Kids to Play Naturally
YOUNG: There’s a new kind of playground in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. It’s designed to bring a small part of the great outdoors to the inner-city. The natural playground just opened, and it’s already turning out to be more than just child’s play. Ebony Payne of our sister program Planet Harmony reports.
[KIDS PLAYING]
PAYNE: It’s morning recess at the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center in Boston’s inner city neighborhood of Dorchester. Preschoolers aged one through six are having fun but in an entirely different way than what they’re used to.

Children play on top of their new grassy hill. (Photo: Ebony Payne)
[KIDS PLAYING]
CHRISTIAN 1: I call it an oasis in the middle of the city.- an experience that urban children don’t usually have.
[KIDS PLAYING]
PAYNE: That’s Leslie Christian, President of Crispus Attucks. She proudly shows off the results of the preschool’s three year project. It’s a natural playground and it just opened. Kids are rolling down a grassy hill and catching bugs…
[KIDS PLAYING, “HEY, I GOT ONE”]
PAYNE: …climbing wood poles, and all over a fortress made of logs, and playing with water…
[KIDS PLAYING, “OH”]
PAYNE: …soon, there’ll be a butterfly garden
CHRISTIAN: Before we did this playground it was a traditional playground with plastic structures, climbing things. There was very little green. And so what we tried to do was develop something that was green, beautiful.
PAYNE: What use to be here at the Crispus Attucks preschool was your average metal jungle gym and a plastic slide. There were no shrubs, few trees, not much shade. And just next door, a rusty fence surrounding an overgrown field where somebody dumped a shopping cart. The city was supposed to develop the land… but never did. Leslie Christian had enough. She decided the time had come to bring nature to her playground.
CHRISTIAN: We took out a lot of the brush, we opened this up, we re-grated. Eventually what we’re going do, is we’re going to be planting Virginia Creepers along the fence so that they’re will be privacy, and it will be completely green and the noise level from the street will be reduced.
[KIDS PLAYING]
PAYNE: Natural playgrounds like this can be found in suburbs, but this is the first of it’s kind in Boston’s inner city. It’s an environment designed to stimulate the senses. Discover smooth stones, and sweet smelling plants. The goal is to foster interaction and create a sense of intimacy with the natural world.
CHRISTIAN:
Over here to the left you’ll see the vegetable gardens.
[KIDS PLAYING]
PAYNE: Each preschool class gets their own little plot where they dig in the dirt and plant veggies. Kids and plants grow. At the end of the season they’ll harvest and cook them up.
CHRISTIAN: And it’s really helpful to these children who don’t see things growing and think that all fruits and vegetables come from the Stop and Shop. So they’ll learn where they come from and then they’ll appreciate eating them.
PAYNE: A third of these kids are already considered obese …and they’re not even 6 years old. Many will go on to develop diabetes.
CHRISTIAN: If we can start them off to think in more healthy ways, to think not about fast food so much, about fruits and vegetables, and about exercise. If you develop it early, its just natural, it comes natural to them.
[KIDS PLAYING, “THAT’S BECAUSE I’M LITTLE”]
PAYNE: But Leslie Christian says the new playground its more than just food and games. The natural environment is meant to stimulate cognitive development and is a learning experience for kids and their teachers.
CHRISTIAN: Oh, they love it! They are spending so much time outside now where as before it was a struggle both to get the teachers to get them outside. And, they love it, they love being in the green.
[KIDS PLAYING MUSICAL BANGING]
COX: Music and movement, that’s what we’re doing here, music and movement.
PAYNE : Teacher Diane Cox and her class of terrible twos have learned to love the new natural playground.

Kids run around the new track at the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center. (Photo: Ebony Payne)
COX: I think that I see a difference. The difference vs. always climbing a structure and swinging. They get to roll around; I see more rolling around in the grass. They want to look at the plants, and at the green habitat. So it’s a lot better, its something new for them, they’re not used to seeing something like this on an everyday basis…
PAYNE: Building this natural playground in Dorchester, didn’t come cheap. A traditional commercial playground goes for tens of thousands of dollars. Leslie Christian says this one costs a quarter of a million.
CHRISTIAN: Most preschools are in the business of just trying to survive in this economy and not much less spending money to develop something…No public funding sources are giving money for this kind of development. This is all privately funded, philanthropic money.
JORDAN: Oh it’s more expensive to develop. But the long-term effects are what we’re all looking forward to.
PAYNE: Theresa Jordan is project manager of the Children’s Investment Fund. The Fund provided the initial and largest loan to the Crispus Attucks’ natural playground. It’s a lot of money she says but it’s an investment in kids and a community, where gangs are a way of life and too often… death.
[TV SOUNDS] REPORTER: This crime that was committed in Boston last night was about as brazen a murder as you can imagine. It has left the community outraged and a mother heartbroken.
PAYNE: Amid the danger in Dorchester the Crispus Attucks natural playground has unexpectedly has become a green safe haven for families, says Leslie Christian.
CHRISTIAN: What happens is the playgrounds in the area, really, they’re really the domains of the gangs. And so then what happens is families send their children over here because this is safe.
[KIDS PLAYING]
PAYNE: This playground is the first of four natural playgrounds to be built in Boston’s low-income neighborhoods. The next is set to open later this month, giving kids with HIV/ AIDS a green place to play.
[KIDS PLAYING GO JOY GO]
For Planet Harmony and Living on Earth, I’m Ebony Payne in Dorchester, Massachusetts
[KIDS PLAYING]
YOUNG: Planet Harmony invites everyone to the environmental discussion and has special appeal for young African Americans. Log in and lend your stories, audio, video to our site at myplanetharmony.com.
Related links:
– Read more about the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center
– The Children’s Investment Fund sponsors projects here and abroad
YOUNG: Our crew includes Bobby Bascomb, Eileen Bolinsky, Bruce Gellerman, Annie Glausser, Ingrid Lobet, Bridget Macdonald, Helen Palmer, Jessica Ilyse Smith, Ike Sriskandarajah, and Mitra Taj, with help from Sarah Calkins, and Sammy Sousa. Our interns are Amanda Martinez and Meghan Miner. We had engineering help this week from Dana Chisholm. Jeff Turton is our technical director. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes. Steve Curwood is our executive producer. You can find us anytime at LOE dot org. – and check out our new Facebook page – PRI’s Living On Earth. I’m Jeff Young. Thanks for listening.
Living on Earth wants to hear from you! Email us at comments@loe.org, or call our listener line (1-800-218-9988). Our mailing address is:
Living on Earth
20 Holland Street Suite 408
Somerville, MA 02144-2749

Html: http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.htm?programID=10-P13-00024#feature8

SourceLiving on Earh

New playground’s a ‘natural’ for children

Site was built with recycled material

By Stefanie Geisler
Globe Correspondent / May 25, 2010

The new playground at the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center in Dorchester has an obstacle course, a fort, a balance beam, and very little plastic or metal.
The playground, built from natural and recycled material, was unveiled and dedicated yesterday in a ceremony attended by Governor Deval Patrick, Councilor Charles Yancey, and community members. Organizers said similar playgrounds are popular in suburban areas, but it is the first of its kind to open in Boston.
“It’s a national movement mainly implemented in suburban areas to this point,’’ said Lesley Christian, president and chief executive of the center, which provides care for children from low-income families.
“The goal is really to get the children out and moving and enjoying nature,’’ said Theresa Jordan, project manager at the Children’s Investment Fund.
Last year, the Wiley Playground was flat and had manufactured equipment and no shade. Today, grass has largely replaced wood chips and sand, the old equipment has been recycled, and several new trees dot the area.
Wood was used to create a fort on top of a small hill, and two yellow slides are embedded below.
The site features specific play areas for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, and incorporates several sprinklers for water games, as well as an exercise path, a small vegetable garden, and a butterfly garden.
“Exercise doesn’t mean having to go to the gym. It can just be chasing butterflies,’’ said Christiana Unaegbu, 40, of Hyde Park, whose two children attended the center. “Having a place like this will encourage the kids to get out and play. For me, that is a plus as a mother.’’
The project cost about $270,000, Christian said. It was funded in part by a seed grant from the Children’s Investment Fund, which is affiliated with the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation, said Mav Pardee, program manager.
Although a natural playground is about half as expensive per square foot as a traditional playground, factors such as size can raise the cost, Pardee said.
“It’s not apples to apples,’’ she said. “The reason that this is so expensive is because we’ve got that whole campus, which you would never do with an ordinary playground.’’
More than 200 children from Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury spend about 261 days per year at the center, Christian said. They range in age from about 1 month to 6 years.
When they return home, the children often do not go outside, Christian said.
“The community area is not safe, so they’re sitting in front of the TV,’’ she said.
The playground’s ultimate goal is to encourage play and help curb childhood obesity.
“The CDC says outdoor play is the magic bullet for childhood obesity,’’ Pardee said. “Some research shows that kids move more in a natural playground because there’s just more to do.’’
Three other natural playgrounds are slated to open this year, including the SPARK Center in Mattapan, Viet-AID in Dorchester, and Nazareth Child Care Center in Jamaica Plain. Another playground is planned for ABCD Head Start’s site in Dorchester.
But the playground at the Crispus Attucks Children’s Center is not quite complete, Christian said. Other additions are still in the works, including awnings, an activity wall, a waterfall, and more climbing equipment.
“It’s really disappointing that our community is so bereft of green, of trees, of flowers,’’ Christian said. “There’s too much concrete and not enough parks and green spaces. It was really important to me that this be beautiful, and I think it is.’’

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
Hyperlink: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/05/25/new_playgrounds_a_natural_for_children/

SourceBoston Globe

Natural playgrounds are growing into a national trend

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Special for, USA TODAY

BOSTON — The playground of the future is beginning to take shape — and it looks a lot like the backyard of the past.
Designers of children’s play spaces are increasingly looking beyond slides, jungle gyms and other plastic-coated structures in their quest to create fun, safe, healthy environments. As a result, kids are running outside and discovering play areas dotted with old standbys: sand, water, boulders, hills and logs.
“This is an emerging national trend of some significance,” says Richard Dolesh, chief of public policy for the National Recreation and Parks Association. “Parents and other adults want natural opportunities for kids … The question is: how do you ensure safety with the inherent challenges that nature brings?”
Natural play spaces, as they’re called, are becoming more common as municipalities, schools and child care centers seek sustainable ways to invest in new or aging playgrounds. Seattle is adding at least six natural play spaces to existing city parks. Boston-area institutions have at least four in the works. Similar projects are either underway or recently completed in Phoenix, Chicago, New York and Auburn, Ala.
Kids seem to get the concept. Jada Horne, 4, knows just what to do one April morning at a new natural play area at the Boston Medical Center’s SPARK Center. She grabs a bucket of sand, adds water from a conveniently located spigot and gets to work.
“I’m making soup!” she explains, tossing in a few handfuls of woodchips for flavor.
Supporters of natural play spaces say they make sense on multiple levels. Child development experts say kids learn creativity and autonomy when they’re engaged with “loose parts,” such as mud and sticks. Funders in these lean-budget times are sometimes pleased to forgo five- and six-figure expenditures for manufactured play equipment. Some even argue that natural places are safer.
“They don’t get boring,” says Mav Pardee, program manager for the Children’s Investment Fund, a financier of natural spaces and other educational experiences for Boston-area kids.
But even some believers say built playgrounds are not going to become obsolete. They see equipment as an essential complement to natural play spaces.
In Seattle, natural play spaces have engaged children at city parks since the late 1990s. Though kids at first enjoyed playing with sand and a cave at Carkeek Park, they tended to get restless and be excessively hard on the natural features, says Randy Robinson, a senior landscape architect for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.
“Once they’d dug in the sand a little bit, they’d be running up and down the hill, but there just wasn’t enough for them,” Robinson says. “People who are promoting environmental education don’t want to hear that. (But) parents made a request to get some conventional play equipment installed nearby.” Now kids burn energy by swinging or climbing and then use the natural play space when they’re ready for creative downtime.
Makers of playground equipment say they aren’t opposed to natural play spaces, since kids benefit from nature. But playing only with natural elements isn’t adequate for a child’s healthy development, says Joe Frost, a retired professor of education and a paid board member for the International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association.
“Certain physical skills are established through built equipment that are difficult to provide through natural materials,” he says. “For instance, they need climbing structures.”
Natural play spaces may appear simple, but getting one launched can mean overcoming multiple hurdles. Municipalities often struggle to get insurance because insurers aren’t sure how to assess the risks involved, says Robin Moore, director of the Natural Learning Initiative at North Carolina State University.
Oversight boards sometimes resist proposals for natural play areas because they mark a departure from the playground norm, says Gail Sullivan, president of Studio G Architects, which designed SPARK’s area. What’s more, even natural play areas need money: SPARK’s cost $80,000 to design and build.
What’s involved in caring for them remains a matter of some debate. Maintenance costs can be minimal precisely because nature is the whole idea, says Ron King, president of the Natural Playgrounds Co., a designer and builder whose gross sales doubled from $139,000 in 2007 to $279,000 in 2009.
“Everybody says, ‘What about maintenance?’ ” King says. “Our response is: ‘It’s a natural area. Let it go.’… That’s nature. That’s what it’s all about.”
But Linda Cain Ruth, a building science professor and playground expert at Auburn University, says natural playgrounds need careful maintenance to remain safe.
“A lot of people think that because it’s natural there’s no maintenance, and that is not true,” Ruth said. “Wood rots. … You have to make sure you have a good surface for (kids) to fall on.”

Copyright 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Hyperlink: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2010-04-22-EARTH_GreenPlaygrounds22_ST_N.htm

SourceUSA Today

More charity despite smaller pot: Boston Foundation to increase funding for certain grants

More charity despite smaller pot
Boston Foundation to increase funding for certain grants

By Sean Sposito, Globe Correspondent | June 27, 2009

The state’s largest community foundation plans to distribute more grant money during the next fiscal year, even though its assets are down more than 19 percent because of the slumping economy.

The Boston Foundation said it will disburse $17.2 million in discretionary grants for the 2010 fiscal year, compared with $16.9 million it spent on such grants in the fiscal year ending Tuesday.

Paul Grogan, the foundation’s chief executive, said the decision to increase grant funding was made by board members at their last two meetings.

“The board is maintaining its presence in the community,’’ Grogan said, adding that 6 percent of the foundation’s total assets will be committed to charity during the coming year. “It really wasn’t a big debate. The board has tremendous confidence in this institution that it is going to recover financially, eventually.’’

Discretionary grants – meaning the money is not earmarked for specific charities by donors – account for about a third of the foundation’s total giving. In fiscal 2009, the organization gave out $79 million overall.

Grants for the next year include $75,000 to the Children’s Investment Fund, which provides access to early-childhood care, and $150,000 to Family Nurturing Center of Massachusetts Inc., which supports a Boston initiative to promote school readiness.

Like other charitable organizations, the Boston Foundation has seen its assets shrink during the economic recession. At the end of the 2008 fiscal year, it had about $964 million, compared with about $763 million now.

Also, giving to the foundation is down, according to spokesman David Trueblood. During this fiscal year, money from philanthropists who want to fund particular charities decreased. Overall donations fell from $102 million in fiscal 2008 to $75 million this year, about a 25 percent drop.

The foundation has trimmed costs because of the economy, including laying off three of its 59 employees in February and leaving an open position unfilled.

In a survey earlier this year by the Foundation Center, a New York-based research group, 47 percent of 1,225 US grant-making foundations questioned said they reduced their giving in 2008, and about two-thirds said they would distribute less money this year. The center predicted that giving this year will decrease by “the high single digits to low double digits.’’

Miki Akimoto, acting president of Associated Grant Makers, an association for funders, said most Massachusetts foundations have less than $100 million in assets, making it less likely that they will be able increase grant giving during the recession.

“From an overall numbers perspective, it is rare that any foundation is increasing payout,’’ Akimoto.