Rauch Foundation Research On Government Spending & Early Childhood Published
The Rauch Foundation has had a longstanding commitment to children and families as one of its core priorities. Recently the Foundation conducted research on government funding of early childhood, early education and related programs. – across the U.S., in New York, and other nations.
The research was funded by a grant from the Rauch Foundation to the Fordham University Graduate School of Education, which provided technical support and research assistance to the project. Abraham M. Lackman served as Principal Investigator, while a Scholar in Residence at the Graduate School, along with Co-Investigators Martha Olson and Susan Knapp. Abe is a former Budget Director of the City of New York and is currently Senior Officer for Civic Affairs at the Simons Foundation.
“Current scientific research demonstrates that the first three years of a child’s life are the most important in terms of brain development. If we want children to start school prepared to learn, and to succeed, then we must support young children and their parents from the mother’s pregnancy on, especially those children and families living in poverty, whose life chances are threatened by deprivation,” Lackman writes.
Perversely, public spending has not caught up with what we know about child development and the explosive brain growth that takes place in the earliest years of a child’s life. Governments at all levels in the U.S. spend more than twice as much on a per-child basis for children ages 5–17 as on children 0–5, which is almost the opposite of the support given children and families in every other wealthy nation in the world. The lack of investment in our youngest citizens profoundly impacts children born into families with low incomes and severely limits their life choices.
The research results are contained in three key reports, along with state-by-state data and a bibliography and sources.