Hopa Mountain StoryMakers: Questions and
Answers
Q1. Who is developing this initiative? How is it funded?
A: Hopa Mountain StoryMakers is developed by - and will be administered
through - Hopa Mountain, Inc., a non-profit based in Bozeman
(www.hopamountain.org). Initial funding for StoryMakers is provided through
WORD, Women’s Opportunity & Resource Development, Inc.
(www.wordinc.org), of Missoula, which has recently received funding from the
U.S. Department of Education for a Parent Involvement and Resource Center
(PIRC). This early language/literacy initiative is one of several programs
supported through WORD’s multi-year PIRC grant.
Q2. You are inviting health care professionals to become part of this effort?
Why would they be interested in an early language/literacy program?
A: It’s true that most language and literacy programs emerge out of public and
private education efforts. In recent years, however, the importance of early
language experience has garnered the attention of health care professionals, as
well.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, now encourages
pediatricians, nurses, and other health professionals to make attention to early
language skills a standard part of adequate pediatric care. Their rationale?
Language experience, especially very early language experience, powerfully
impacts the structural and functional capacity of the developing brain, which in
turn affects learning potential. Several national and state pediatrician groups give
a children's book to every child at every well-child checkup, birth to age 5, along
with advice to parents on how to create the language environments in their
homes that will promote adequate brain development of their children.
The education-health connection also makes practical good sense. Most health
care professionals are, in a real sense, educators, and educators know that they
can fulfill the education mission most effectively when their students are healthy.
Additionally, healthcare professionals usually have access to children much
sooner in children’s lives than do traditional educational professionals.
Healthcare professionals may have wider access to children when it matters the
most.
Q3. Has anyone looked closely at the economic ramifications of increased
attention to early childhood programs?
A: Yes. Here is a sample of major voices from the economics perspective:
**Robert Lynch, Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in “Exceptional Returns:
Economic, Fiscal and Social Benefits of Investment in Early Childhood
Development” (2004):
“There is a consensus among experts of all political stripes that highquality investments in the education and health of young children would have
huge long-term economic payoffs both to our children and to society as a whole .
...
“Investments in high-quality early childhood programs consistently
generate benefit-cost ratios exceeding 3 to 1 - . . . well above the 1 to 1 ratio
needed to justify such investments.”
Total societal benefits of the most effective programs exceed 8 to 1 (based on
comprehensive government-financed programs for US children living in poverty,
with this return on investment beginning in year 17.)
This return on investment is achieved through
lower government expenditures for
 remedial and special education,
 criminal justice work, and
 welfare, including healthcare and higher government revenues through
 greater income earned, leading to more taxes collected.
**Steve Seninger, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, University
of Montana (2004):
“A significant new investment in our youngest children would not only
greatly reduce child poverty, it would actually help our state’s fiscal balance
sheet, reduce crime, and grow our economy over time.”
**The Committee for Economic Development (a nonpartisan research and
policy organization of 250 business leaders and educators), “Preschool for
All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society” (2002):
“Society pays in many ways for failing to take full advantage of the
learning potential of all its children, from lost economic productivity and tax
revenues to diminished participation in the civic and cultural life of the nation.”
“We need a strategy that “redefine[s] education as a process that begins
at birth and encompasses all aspects of children’s early development.”
**James Heckman (Nobel Prize-winning economist), “Policies to Foster
Human Development,” published by the National Bureau of Economic
Research (1999):
“In the long run, significant improvements in the skill levels of American workers .
. . are unlikely without substantial improvements in the arrangements that foster
early learning. We cannot afford to postpone investing in children until they
become adults, nor can we wait until they reach school age – a time when it may
be too late in intervene.”
Contacts
Hopa Mountain StoryMakers: Linda Y. Clark, (lyclark@gmail.com), phone # (406)
388-2953
WORD’s Jennifer Calder (jcalder@wordinc.org), phone # (406) 543-3550.