Nebraska Policymakers Reach Bipartisan Consensus on Early Childhood Legislation, Based on Scientific Findings

Sometimes lawmakers really do see eye-to-eye. Add the impartial testimony of some of the nation’s leading scientists, and you have a potent recipe for long-term planning. In 2005, the Nebraska Legislature reached across party lines to pass, by a vote of 42-0, a bill ensuring funding for early childhood education programs for children in most need.

The legislation, drafted as LB 577, was approved by Gov. Dave Heineman on June 3, 2005. This bill supplemented legislation passed earlier in the session, nearly doubling Nebraska’s previous commitment to early childhood programs. Lawmakers’ eyes were focused on the future.

“This changed the paradigm of how we will begin to incorporate 4-year-olds into the state’s funding for public schools,” said Helen Raikes, a professor of family and consumer sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a member of the board of the Susan A. Buffett Foundation. Raikes’s husband, Nebraska Senator Ron Raikes, chairman of the education committee, was the chief sponsor of the legislation.

The process that led to the law’s passage drew praise from legislative analysts. “Nebraska demonstrated what can be accomplished through a combination of good timing, key legislative leadership, and credible research provided at the right time,” said Steffanie Clothier, program manager for the Child Care and Early Education project for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Too often, the common good has to take a back seat to other pressing issues. This time, it became part and parcel of the state’s plan for its own long-term economic growth and stability. To be sure, state coffers were in better fiscal shape than had been projected, but this was no guarantee of success; there were— as always—many competing interests for any budget surplus, Clothier pointed out.

“There were both humanitarian and strong fiscal reasons to make this investment,” said Dan Pedersen, president of both the Buffett Early Childhood Fund and the Susan A. Buffett Foundation. For months, Pedersen worked closely with the Raikeses and others who supported the legislation. “But the case for it, as sound economic policy, as clear-eyed and science-based legislation, had to be made and communicated in a way that does not always happen in the nation’s legislatures.”

The groundwork began years ago, said Pedersen, when advocacy groups began to marshal their evidence, determined to speak with a unified voice. But the tipping point was reached when reliable scientific data—based on studies that consistently verified the value of early childhood programs—became part of lawmakers’ vocabularies, according to Pedersen.

He described three important influences in the evolution of lawmakers’ thinking: citizens organizing to speak out through the Nebraska Children & Families Foundation and other advocates; skillful work done inside the legislature by concerned lawmakers themselves; and, he said, “the scientific message, getting facts in front of lawmakers, clearly presented in language lawmakers could relate to.”

Legislators were also encouraged to visit successful programs. “It’s difficult to demonstrate to state legislators what excellence looks like without showing them.” In this case, legislators got to see the difference a program can make.

One illustrative model, he said, is Omaha’s Educare Center, which provides programs for children from birth through age 5. Such centers are noteworthy for the quality of care children received from college-trained teachers and assistants. Enrollment is available year-round for economically disadvantaged children.

During the legislative session, the combined testimony of both local academic experts and a national group of scientists was essential, according to Helen Raikes. “The testimony by Nebraska’s experts, including Ph.D.’s from our local university, advocacy groups, schools and others from the early childhood community, attested to the seriousness of the problem and the viability of solutions, ” Raikes said. “However, Nebraska legislators needed to understand early child development in a way that only nationally prominent scientists could explain, so we called in the scientists who had been examining evidence for the National Academy of Sciences and who had lately formed the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.”

Raikes and others helped establish a bipartisan forum for hearing the scientific evidence,
enlisting support from legislators, their staffs, and lobbyists. As a result, in March
2005, Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child and director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, addressed Nebraska legislators at a reception held at the governor’s mansion. Twenty-one state senators attended the event.

Shonkoff, who is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education, presented recent scientific findings on early childhood development and the relationship between brain architecture and the ability of children to gain competence and positively affect the country’s economic base.

The effect of testimony from Shonkoff and other scientists and medical professionals from Nebraska was considerable. “Later, when lawmakers spoke on the floor about the measure,” Helen Raikes said, “they would often begin with the statement, ‘The research is there.’”

To Shonkoff, who is also Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston, the Nebraska experience also illustrated that “science is most effective in the policy arena when it is communicated in an understandable, nonpartisan way and delivered to the right people at the right time. Scientists can play an important role in making sure that communication occurs, particularly when they respect the value context in which decisions are made.”

Clothier agreed. “The goal of legislators is, after all, effective decision-making, which requires the timely application of knowledge,” she said.