About Us
Recent news and reports on business and early learning
Early Childhood Development, Economic Development with a High Public Return. by Art Rolnick and Rob Gruenwald.
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Minnesota Early Learning Foundation Annual Report
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Who is MnBEL?
We are Minnesota Business for Early Learning; founded in 2004, we are an organization of business leaders focused on improving the school readiness of pre-kindergarten children.
We believe the state is at a critical juncture. Our economy depends on an educated workforce but we are losing our competitive advantage. Improving kindergarten readiness can have a very positive effect on school performance and will impact Minnesota’s future workforce.
MnBEL emphasizes awareness of early learning issues, promotes best practices in the workplace and seeks to engage businesses in fixing this problem. MnBEL collaborates with other business organizations, including the Itasca Project, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota Business Partnership, Capital City Partnership, and the University of Minnesota.
Minnesota will need twice as many college graduates as we have today.
According to the Minnesota Department of Education, only half of our 5-year-olds are ready for kindergarten. Parents think they will catch up, but all too often they don’t. Only 70% of our third graders are reading at grade level. Today, if a third grader cannot read, they will have a very difficult time in school. That leads to graduation rates as low as 60% in some Minnesota communities. Bottom line: We are losing about a quarter of our workforce.
Here’s an analogy that resonates with business people:
Imagine a manufacturer’s dilemma if half of the company’s raw material was not ready for production. What kind of quality product could they expect? How many people and processes would be needed to correct the problem?
How Businesses Can Help Improve Early Learning
There are two elements in the MnBEL plan that distinguishes it from all the other worthy efforts in early education.
1. We use the employer channel to reach working parents. Minnesota has one of the nation’s highest percentages of parents in the workforce. Employers are the best channel to reach working parents. We’ve been working closely on these efforts with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. We will engage employers with a speaker’s bureau of business leaders who are well-informed advocates for early education.
2. Next, we take advantage of the growing power of the Internet and social media. All parents want their child to succeed in school, but too many don’t know what the experts know. There have been game-changing advances in what we know about brain development in very young children— 80% of brain development takes place before age five. Too many parents don’t know this and don’t know about the developmental milestones that lead to school success. They don’t really think about school readiness until their child is four-years-old, then, as the Pearson Foundation notes, too many wrongly count on the school to close the gap.
Today, there’s an obvious new way to reach working parents. Over 70% of working parents are already using the Internet on a regular basis either at work or at home.
So, we’ve created this Internet tool for parents, called IsYourChildReady.com to give them the tools to help make sure their child is ready. We’ve partnered with the Minnesota Department of Education to create an interactive questionnaire that covers all the developmental milestones that predict school readiness for ages two through five. Once a parent completes the questionnaire, he or she is given links to other online resources vetted by the Minnesota Department of Education.
Minnesota Business for Early Learning is a registered 501 (c) (3) organization with the Internal Revenue Service. We rely primarily on the volunteer time of business people. Minnesota Early Learning Foundatiion (MELF), Quest, and Little and Company have made generous grants to fund development of the website. Several companies have generously donated time and talent : Sierra Bravo for web programming and design, Straightline Theory for information architecture, Ginger and Fallon Worldwide for marketing strategy.
We need your help
If you are a business who would you like to join MnBel, here’s all you do: Put a link to IsYourChildReady.com on your company’s website, then fill out this form and return it to us. We will keep you posted on and let you know what other companies are doing to improve kindergarten readiness in their firms and in their communities.
If you are a business leader interested in the joining our speakers bureau, or joining us in some other way, click on ”Contact us.”
Credits
Minnesota Business for Early Learning thanks the following organizations for their contributions of time and talent: The Nerdery, www.nerdery.com; Straight Line Theory, www.straightlinetheory.com; Ginger Brand Consulting, www.gingerminneapolis.com; Fallon Worldwide, www.fallon.com; Marti Erickson, Ph D; the Minnesota Department of Education; and Working Family Resource Center, www.workingfam.org. For start up funding we thank Qwest Foundation, Little and Company and the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation ( MELF). For the Spanish edition, we thank Target Corporation and bilingual education specialist, Virginia Kalaswad.