Quality early education: Good for kids and the economy
– Joan Wasser Gish is a consultant in the Boston area. A former senior policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, she recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. The views expressed are her own. –
When the toys are put away and the last youngster is picked up for the day, early childhood education providers like all other entrepreneurs sit down to assess their revenues, account for expenses and make difficult business decisions. And though their services are rife with hugs and games and songs, their work has serious implications for the economy. The child-care sector is a critical driver of economic growth and workforce development. That is why financial leaders and policymakers should do more to support providers as both educators and small-business entrepreneurs.
There are more than 400,000 licensed child-care facilities across the country. They span the economic sectors, with the majority run as sole proprietorship home-based businesses, and the rest split between for-profit and non-profit centers offering early education and care. Most are run by women, and a significant proportion are owned and operated by members of minority groups. Because of the early education and care services they provide, they contribute to both short- and long-term economic growth.
Quality early childhood education is associated with improved worker availability and productivity. Early childhood education enables parents to participate in the labor force. Studies have shown that availability of good early childhood education can reduce employee turnover by 37 to 60 percent.
Conversely, breakdowns in child-care availability are associated with absenteeism, tardiness, and reduced concentration at work. One study estimates that unstable care arrangements leading to absences cost American businesses $3 billion annually.
Early childhood education establishments also contribute to the economy as employers and catalysts of community development. The Oakland-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development estimates that the child-care industry generates more than $50.6 billion in annual gross receipts and 1.85 million full-time equivalent jobs nationwide. When centers locate in low-income urban and rural communities, which many non-profits and some for-profits do, they hire from the local community, enable low- and moderate-income families to participate in the labor force, and purchase and renovate facilities.
But the greatest economic impact of high-quality early childhood education is its beneficial effect on enrolled children. Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman argues that high-quality early education provides “the advantage of an early start to their skill development improving their chances of successfully participating in the job market in later years.”
Getting a summer job: Entrepreneurship for teens
–- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-
It’s July, teen unemployment has risen to 24 percent, and you—or your teenage children—still don’t have a summer job. This is a peculiarly American problem.
In Nepal, according to Hudson Institute research assistant and Nepalese citizen Astha Strestha, “teens just hang around all summer and spend their parents’ money.”
In France, summer vacations are shorter, only 6 weeks, and teens try to stay with relatives outside the city.
In America, summer vacation lasts the better part of three months, and teens work either to earn spending money, contribute to college tuition payments, or simply because they think that they should have a job.
These days summer jobs are less plentiful due to the economy and to increases in the minimum wage.
It’s easier to be employable at a wage of $5.15, the 2006 minimum, than to find someone to hire you at $7.25, the new federal minimum effective on July 24. But just because no one has hired you, it doesn’t mean that you can’t earn money. You can start your own business. If it grows, you can employ friends and siblings, and perhaps keep it going for the rest of the year.
While it’s certainly tough out there for students, a bad economy can help to encourage teens to take alternate paths during summer months that can really bolster their resumes for job searches in the future and college admissions: volunteering, job shadowing, and interning. Colleges and future employers will appreciate the job skills acquired, while teens may get the opportunity to interact with people or in situations that they may not usually be exposed to–always a learning opportunity!
Here’s a great article from Monster.com about how volunteering can set students on the right path towards a career they want:
http://content.office.monster.com/job-se arch-essentials/entry-level-jobs/volunte er-work/Volunteer-for-Your-Career/home.a spx
A great resource to direct your teen to is the resume tips tab on the Office Live Students Facebook Page. It has advice on resumes, job searches, networking, interviewing, and career planning:
http://www.facebook.com/officelivestuden t#/officelivestudent?v=app_7146470109&vi ewas=7300773
Cheers,
Kate
MSFT Office Live Outreach Team
http://www.facebook.com/officelivestuden t
Sway and irrational VCs
– Jeff Bussgang is a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm in Boston. This post originally appeared in the Vox Populi section of www.peHUB.com. The views expressed are his own. –
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “Outliers”, with great interest and delight. Gladwell is a fantastic author: always thought-provoking on human behavior and a quick, entertaining read. But I confess this book did not resonate with me or strike me as relevant for the VC-entrepreneur dance in the same way his previous book, “Blink”, did (see: VCs Blink). It was intellectually interesting, but not professionally illuminating.
Instead, I have been even more taken by another book, which also analyzes human behavior in a thought-provoking way called “Sway”. Written by Ori and Rom Brafman, “Sway” was recommended to me by my friend and co-investor Howard Morgan at First Round Capital. It is a fascinating analysis of why human beings naturally fall into irrational behavior. The book has very relevant implications for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, particularly in today’s environment, as VCs are likely to allow irrational behavior to seep into their portfolio management decisions in the coming years.
“Sway” points to three central psychological tendencies that cause human beings to behave irrationally, despite the preponderance of facts pointing in another direction. The first is loss aversion, defined as our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid possible loss – even when it means taking outsized risks relative to the actual loss impact. The second is value attribution, where we imbue a person with certain qualities based on our initial impressions (or desired impressions!). And the third is the diagnosis bias, where we allow our initial assessment of a person or situation cloud any further judgment and, in effect, cause us to filter out any contradictory data.
As I look back on the good and bad investment decisions that we have made as a partnership, I see each of these three tendencies factoring into our discussions. It is not uncommon for a polished, confident entrepreneur to benefit from value attribution, when in fact a deeper analysis of their skills and previous experiences as a result of exhaustive reference checking will reveal a very different prognosis. We have tried to be more cognizant of identifying these tendencies in the partnership as we contemplate our future investment decisions with our (relatively) new fund.
As I look forward to managing the portfolio during the challenging times that we all face, I can see where loss aversion, in particular, holds sway in a VC partnership. Human beings prefer to avoid a loss, even if that loss is more costly than the price of continuing forward.
One of the dangers in the coming years for the VC business is whether VCs are going to continue supporting companies in order to avoid admitting defeat and taking losses. In many partnerships, the culture may naturally encourage covering things up. Many VC partners are eager to brag about their portfolio successes, but slow to admit when they have made mistakes or when they are in the midst of dealing with a poorly performing portfolio company. Further, partnerships as a whole are going to be loathe to admit problems and failures with their investors, the Limited Partners. Without any malice, portfolio “cover ups” will be common throughout 2009 and 2010.
Aren’t these venture capitalists being paid very large amounts because they are skilled at avoiding irrational attachments and conclusions? If they fail at that haven’t they failed in their primary mission which is to always be looking at the dynamics and flow within the developing enterprise and the relationship of that development and flow to needs and trends of the outside world.
It is interesting to come up with good descriptions of how failure takes place. But it is unwise to allow that to be an excuse for failure that VCs can then point to and say, “Well, everyone does it.” If VCs and entrepreneurs are making these kinds of mistakes, maybe they are in the wrong business.
Early childhood control of the child by the state will lead to state contol of the child’s future as well as of the child’s parents. State sponored humanism will more easily florish and the de-establishment religous values.