– 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.”

Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that children who attend first-class early education and care programs are 40 percent less likely to repeat a grade, 30 percent more likely to graduate from high school, and more than twice as likely to go to college. It is estimated that universal access to voluntary, quality early education would add 3 million jobs and almost $1 trillion annually to U.S. GDP over the long term.

In short, investing in high-quality early childhood education is an efficient way to build human capital and strengthen the overall economy.

Few of these economic benefits, however, are achieved by warehousing children in sub-standard programs so that parents can work. The key is quality. To realize the positive economic impacts of early childhood education providers must offer first-rate services, and that means that they have to succeed as both educators and small-business operators.

Legislation pending in Congress and supported by the Obama administration would incentivize states with eligibility for grant funds if they improve educational standards, raise teacher qualifications, and develop a rating system that would provide parents a tool for selecting quality early childhood education programs. These policies would build upon existing state-level initiatives designed to strengthen the educational quality of early learning programs, and present important changes and promising investments.

Economists at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve estimate that there is a 16 percent return on every public dollar invested in high quality early childhood education.

Yet scant attention is being paid by state and federal policymakers to strengthening early childhood education through the existing network of entrepreneurial supports. The U.S. Small Business Administration works with lenders to provide $28 billion in loan guarantees to small businesses, has a robust network of technical assistance and business development supports, and is dedicated to fostering women and minority entrepreneurship. Relatively few early education providers, however, are aware of these small business supports. The SBA should do more to reach early childhood education providers with these resources.

Today, solitary initiatives to forge connections between the vast network of small-business resources and child-care providers are sprouting up from California to Massachusetts and many places in between.

Congress is beginning to address the capital needs of early childhood education providers with proposed legislation from my old boss, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and a separate bill from Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York. These initiatives are designed to help early childhood programs purchase and renovate facilities, an important contributor to program safety and quality.

But if this is all policymakers do, the nation is missing an opportunity.

Coordinated outreach to early education providers by those with entrepreneurial expertise would have compound benefits to the economy and prove to be an efficient use of public funds. For example, Small Business Development Centers could collaborate with Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and Family Child Care Systems to reach providers with technical assistance.

The federal government spends billions of dollars each year to both improve access to high-quality early childhood education and to support small businesses as engines of economic development.

Private-sector early childhood education providers are positioned to help our nation realize these goals simultaneously. If these providers are properly supported, the positive effects of early childhood education would grow, benefiting both our kids and our economy.

–- 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.

Computer assistance. You may not know it, but you have a comparative advantage in computers. This can be used by helping older adults, who grew up when computers were larger than cars and programming meant putting a pile of cards in a machine. You could help people set up email or social networking accounts, figure out their iPods, build a Web site, organize digital photos on a computer, or construct spreadsheets for bills and expenses.

Tutoring. You may not get straight As in school, but you probably know more about a subject than kids two or three years younger than you. And some of them might want to review material from last year, or get a head start on their classes for next year. Even more likely, parents might think their kids need help. Your slogan can be “Give Your Kids the Best—the Power of Summer Tutoring.”

Bicycle Repair. It’s remarkable how people throw out bicycles that–with a little cleaning, grease and tube repair—can be almost as good as new. Some people have old bikes in their basements that they would like collected, and some cities are even willing to have discarded bicycles removed from their dump. With the help of a bike repair manual you can mend them and sell them on Craigslist.

Yard Service and Car Maintenance. What people value most is their time, and some don’t want to spend their time mowing their lawn, weeding, or washing their cars. In suburbia there are endless opportunities which can carry over into the school year with leaf clearing and snow shoveling.

Summer Camp. One step up from babysitting is setting up informal week-long summer camps for small groups of neighborhood children. The themes could be sports, arts and crafts, reading and writing—wherever your skills may lie. In order to start a business, you need enthusiasm for a publicity drive through word of mouth; flyers through neighbors’ doors; notices with tear-off telephone numbers at grocery stores, houses of worship, community centers, and libraries; or internet sites, such as your Facebook page and Craigslist.

The object is to let everyone know that you’re available. Since businesses generally spread through word of mouth, you could ask the first few clients to act as references, perhaps even giving them a discount to do so. Valuable references and good will are some of the best assets your young company can have. That means always being courteous and cleanly-dressed.

Pricing can be a challenge. Until you find the right price, you might want to ask your clients to pick the price—“pay me whatever you like to mow this lawn”—so that people don’t think that you’re out to exploit them. In some cases, your clients might pay you more than you would have dared to charge on your own.

Just as large businesses collect information about potential customers, you want to keep a good database of your clients by recording names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses.

Then, if business is a little slow, or if you go on vacation and return to town, you can call your clients and politely ask if they need your services. The advantages of starting your own business are numerous. You work for yourself, not a boss. You set your own hours. You don’t have to put up with cranky co-workers. If you’re not interacting with your clients, you can dress as you choose: no one cares if you build a website in your pajamas.

On the other hand, entrepreneurship is unpredictable and has its ups and downs. You might need several tries to get clients. One teen I know intended to spend his summer tutoring full-time and fixing bicycles on the side, yet ended up fixing bicycles full-time and tutoring on the side, since he had more bike customers than students.

Teens, there’s a job out there for you. You just have to go out and make it.

– 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.

Loss aversion will thus cause VCs to throw good money after bad in 2009 and 2010. Loss aversion will also cause VCs to report overly optimistic quarterly valuations. I would estimate that many portfolios have valuations that are overstated by 20-30 percent. And, as I have discussed before (see: Why ‘Flat is the New Up’ and VC Funds Are Under-Reserved), it is also the reason why I think many VC firms are grossly under-reserved. These factors will be exacerbated by most portfolio companies failing to attract outside financings in the coming years and VCs, loathe to admit losses, continuing to support them well beyond the length that a rational investor would.

To be clear, it is not only VCs who are induced into irrational behavior due to loss aversion. Entrepreneurs clearly suffer from this tendency as well, particularly when it comes to hiring and firing key executives. How often have you heard an entrepreneur say that they should have acted 6-12 months earlier in firing an employee that was not working out? The reason – loss aversion.

Entrepreneurs are loathed to admit their own hiring mistakes and are fearful of the impact and magnitude of losing even a poorly performing team member. I know I certainly fell into this trap when I was an entrepreneur, and I see it is repeated time and time again.

Thus, I think the lessons of “Sway” are ones that all VCs and entrepreneurs would benefit tremendously from when evaluating how they make decisions. In an upcoming blog I might dive into the question of value attribution and the diagnosis bias, which are also a thought-provoking concepts that drive irrational behavior in VC partnerships. One entrepreneur identified another book for consideration on this topic called “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely, which I have not yet read.

What are other examples can folks think of that fall into these irrational categories?