Syracuse Area Police Chiefs Visit Preschool, Back Early Education To Cut Crime
Police Chiefs stress need for high-quality early education; Call on legislators to boost quality of early learning programs statewide
PART OF A NATIONAL CAMPAIGN
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Ted Eismeier, ted@fightcrime.org
Cell: 315-335-9222, Desk: 202-464-5350
LIVERPOOL, N.Y., (April 26, 2011) Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler and Baldwinsville Police Chief Michael Lefancheck visited the preschool program at Country North Childrens Center to read to a classroom of young children and release a new report about the need for high-quality early care and education in New York State. The local police chiefs said high-quality early education not only prepares children to succeed in school, it also prevents crime and saves New York State taxpayers money.
The report, Quality Matters: High-Quality Early Education and Care Can Cut Crime in New York, details the research on the crime prevention benefits of early learning and the need for high quality programs to achieve these results, including good teacher student ratios, a well trained staff and curriculum for social as well as cognitive learning such as taking turns, listening to the teacher and getting along with other children. The Onondaga County law enforcement officials called on the Governor and Legislature to implement QUALITYstarsNYa new quality rating improvement system designed to ensure quality in all early care and learning settings across the state.
Research shows providing at-risk children with high-quality early education prevents crime. A long-term study of the High/Scope Perry Preschool in Michigan found that at-risk children excluded from the program were five times more likely to grow up to become chronic lawbreakers than those who attended the program. By age 40, those left out of the Perry Preschool Program were twice as likely to have been arrested for violent crimes, four times more likely to have been arrested for drug felonies, and seven times more likely to have been arrested for possession of drugs than those who attended the program.
Early education is one of the first opportunities to work toward our crime prevention goals, Chief Fowler said. Kids benefit from a strong introduction to learning, and we all benefit by making sure communities are safe in the future.
The State Office for Children and Family Services (OCFS) has just completed a 230-site field-test of the Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS) called QUALITYstarsNY (County North Childrens Center participated in the field test). The law enforcement leaders say this system will ensure early education programs are high quality, helping more at-risk children succeed and ultimately reducing crime in central New York communities. Fowler and Lefancheck urged policymakers to enact a plan to implement QUALITYstarsNY as the states quality system for all early childhood programs. They also encouraged OCFS, the State Education Department (SED) and the legislature to work together to forward this initiative.
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids New York State Director Meredith Wiley warned that some studies from other states show that children in low-quality care were more likely to display behavior problems and fail to show any academic gains. He stressed that in order to get the best return on investments in early learning, the programs must be high quality.
Adopting QUALITYstarsNY would go a long way towards creating the kinds of high-quality programs we know prevent crime, Wiley said. Providers would have clear guidelines and incentives to do what they need to do to improve the way they care for children. And parents would have reliable information on what a high-quality program looks like and where they are located in the community.
Chief Lefancheck stated that that New York State currently has no statewide, standardized system to assess the quality of the states early education system or raise quality standards. He urged all policy makers to adopt QUALITYstarsNY as the statewide quality rating improvement system.
As public officials, we call for good fiscal choices, Lefancheck said. Early childhood education for at-risk kids is a smart fiscal choice and can save us the unwanted costs of crime and corrections. Its a whole lot cheaper to give kids a solid chance at success through early learning, than to pay for the full cost of their failure.
Chiefs Fowler and Lefancheck are members of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids New York, a bipartisan anti-crime organization of 300-plus police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and violence survivors that advocates for programs and services that have strong research that shows they prevent crime. It is part of a national organization of more than 5,000 law enforcement members and victims of violent crime.
This event is part of a month-long, nationwide campaign by law enforcement leaders that is highlighting the crime prevention benefits of high quality early childhood education at early education centers across the United States.
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