Thank you. It is a privilege to speak before such a powerful audience. Powerful, I say, because there is so much wherewithal here this morning to make a difference in the lives and futures of the children – and, in fact, all the people – of South Carolina.

Each of you is a leader, and from leaders much is asked. Teddy Roosevelt, one of my favorite Presidents, spoke of leadership as “to dare mighty things.” My message today speaks to doing “mighty things” and real investment toward a fully educated, fully competitive, high-skilled and creative state. I also want you to know that I deeply admire the leadership of United Way in this area, and so much more.

As a career-long journalist, I know that the greatest stories in human history are of individuals who made a difference. I also know that there is great power within each of us. That power means little unless we feel it within ourselves, then use it – assertively, prudently, wisely. Those who think they have the power to make a difference most certainly can. Or, to quote Henry Ford, “If you think you can do a thing, or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” And what is being asked this morning is for you, each of you, to speak up to accomplish something that speaks to the very future of children and of this state.

I have been to Charleston a number of times – indeed, have spoken about the topic of children here twice now in just these past few years. I see real progress for children. One good example is the progress you’ve made in providing 4K. You know the background – a judge’s ruling that a dozen rural counties were not providing adequate early education programs…followed by legislative efforts that came mighty close to passing a bill to provide increased funding for 4K programs for all “at risk” children in this state. This, then, becomes the year to get this done. And you are quite crucial in this.

So such is our theme this morning, but I want to share with you all this in a larger context. Moreover, when I was here in 2004, I focused on the tri-county area. This time I focus on all of South Carolina.

You have a state so special in so many ways. Your rich recorded history dates from Spanish explorers half a millennium ago. You are among the original 13 states. You were at the very core of the leadership in crafting the U.S. Constitution (which reminds me, of course, that John Locke himself, a philosopher for the ages, wrote the first constitution for the Carolinas). You set an early example for America in your respect for religious freedom and tolerance. You have been a key participant in every American conflict – from the American Revolution to the very moments that precipitated the Civil War to world wars and today’s struggles in the Middle East. You have felt the sadness and evil of slavery and segregation. You have an economy now expanded to a diverse mix of manufacturing, the military, energy and tourism – with a long history (to this very day) in agriculture: Cotton to cattle to chickens, and tobacco and much more. Your natural beauty ranges from white-sand beaches to moss-laden oaks. The Low Country to the rolling Piedmont to the Blue Ridge Mountains. How lucky you are to live here. The sort of state that can produce Mary McLeod Bethune, Ben Bernanke, Jimmy Byrnes, John C. Calhoun, Chubby Checker, Althea Gibson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jasper Johns, Eartha Kitt, Francis Marion, Dr. Ronald McNair, John Rutledge, Marion Wright Edelman and, yes, Vanna White.

But despite all your blessings, I see some other things. I must mention them. Indeed, I would cheat you this morning if I did not focus on them (while not forgetting all that makes you special).

How can it be that in this special state that that 45 percent of your third graders do not meet minimum reading-proficiency standards? How can it be that more than a third of your high school students don’t graduate on time? How can it be that your percentage of college graduates significantly underperforms the national average? How can it be that perhaps 100,000 of South Carolina’s children have no health insurance? How can it be that almost 23 percent of your children live in the full federal definition of poverty? How can it be that the median wage for your child care professionals is about $7 an hour, or less than you pay animal control workers? How can it be that only 4 percent of your licensed child care sites are accredited, meaning real evidence of a brain-stimulating environment within? If what I have just told you seems disconnected in any way, it is not. These are all inextricably part of the same problem…the same opportunity. South Carolina, for all its blessings, will never achieve its brightest future unless you place more emphasis on investment in the early years.
You do not have before you an “expert.” All you will hear from me is with my fullest sense that you know far more than I about the almost 4 ½ million people of South Carolina and the more than 55,000 babies born here each year.

Go with me, please, on a journey on which I embarked a little more than a decade ago. Back then, I knew practically nothing of which I am speaking today. I was simply a newspaperman who loved the business so much that in 35 years at seven newspapers as reporter, editor or publisher I missed not one day of work (which is, I must acknowledge, the mark of a truly obsessed human being!). Someone who met six Presidents of these United States and interviewed one of them on Air Force One, who met the Pope, who interviewed the good and the bad, who reported from many countries (including every nation in Latin America), a person who looked forward to the difference I and others could make every single day.

In those days, back in 1996, I was a newspaper publisher, recruited by then Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles to be on the Governor’s Commission on Education, a two-year civic mission. Our assignment: Look at six critical education issues for the future of our state. One of those issues, and task forces, was School Readiness…a topic about which I had never heard to that point. Yes, you have before you the father of five children and a grandfather. Yes, my children were raised according to the principles of high-quality health and education and nurturing, even if I didn’t realize there were “principles” undergirding the early childhood years. In any event, the Governor asked me to chair Readiness, and what I came to understand re-energized my life and led me to “retire” from a business I had loved so intensely.

To underscore my own later-in-life education, I give you just five sentences from a book called “Scientist in the Crib” – and I quote: “What we see in the crib is the greatest mind that has ever existed, the most powerful learning machine in the universe. The tiny fingers and mouth are exploration devices that probe the alien world around them with more precision than any Mars Rover. The crumpled ears take a buzz of incomprehensible noise and flawlessly turn it into meaningful language. The wide eyes that sometimes seem to peer into your very soul actually do just that, deciphering your deepest feelings. The downy head surrounds a brain that is forming millions of new connections every day.”

I also came to understand not that the only learning years of one’s life are to be found in the earliest years – people do learn all their lives -- but rather the windows of learning are wide open in those early years, and never again will they be open quite so wide. I also came to understand that it was not only about intellectual and physical growth, but matters, too, of social and emotional development.

Over these past few years, I have had so much to “unlearn,” including any sense that this was about children learning to read, say, by age 3. I read a great deal, visited places like France and Italy and China to learn more, came to know the research, and continue to follow it closely: One example being the national study in our own country that told us that if 50 first graders have problems reading, then 44 of them still have problems reading in the fourth grade.

Armed with such knowledge, I came to believe the tragedy of early childhood unpreparedness was preventable. I came to believe that however good our intentions, we would never make more than incremental change unless we could create real "public will" for real change, most particularly the public awareness on the part of parents for what their children really needed. I came to believe that we must work on many fronts because children need all the basics – and all must be high quality because only real quality makes a difference in real outcomes for children. I came to believe that our greatest work must be on the local stage because, finally, we are not France; here in America the greatest power is local. I came to believe that we must, community by community, build a movement for everyone’s child -- poor, rich and in-between. Finally, I came to believe that the wisest path to genuine public education “reform” -- knowing that public education is the real world for 93 percent of South Carolina’s children – is to deliver those children to formal school in far better shape than so many children are now. Or to quote James J. Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics: “The best way to improve schools is to improve students sent to them.” Should you and we achieve that, I promise you that the first-grade teachers in South Carolina’s 2,600 first-grade public school classrooms will be eternally grateful because you will have given them the ability to spend most of their time teaching and much less of their time managing and controlling and triaging.
State by state, community by community, good and wise people are building an early childhood movement and seeking to embrace every child. A movement for everyone’s child is basic American fairness. Most people – good people, so well intentioned – focus on one corner of the community, or another. Then the rest of the community says, “Oh, I understand it is about those children.” But, in fact, building a “movement” – rather than a “program” – is about everyone’s child. The poor need more help, of course, but the way to help them the most is to help everyone. The American dream embraces all children because all children need all the basics. This is not “socialism.” This is not the forerunner to a “nanny state.” This is not one-size-fits-all thinking. This is simply plain old-fashioned decency and fairness – the same sort of thinking that led to public schools in the first place.

And I give you just two examples of “building a movement” from Miami and Florida:

No. 1: We passed “universal prekindergarten” in Florida – a state that has made some educational gains but, like yours, is far from well known nationally for educational achievements – and we passed it because it was about everyone’s child. This year 125,000 Florida 4 year olds are sitting in free-to-every-family pre-K seats. When Floridians saw it was about fairness and the future for everyone’s family, they passed it overwhelmingly.

No. 2: Here’s a second example of the thinking-about-everyone approach: Florida has a law that lets voters in counties decide if they want to raise their property taxes by a half-mill or a mill to provide a dedicated funding source for children. My own community tried to go that route back in 1988. Good people led the campaign, arguing that the community ought to help the most needy. It failed, 2-1. In 2002, it was back on the ballot. This time we made the case that this would be about everyone’s child, while certainly acknowledging and understanding the obvious: That is, certain children and families do need more help. We passed it, 2-1. This year we will spend more than $100 million extra dollars, administered by an independent private-public board (called The Children’s Trust), on early intervention and prevention. Just by way of examples of the difference that this Trust can make, I note the health teams that will be going into every single one of the 350 public schools in my community, the fourth largest system in America…the 41,000 children who will have higher-quality after-school and summer care…the investing of millions of dollars in incentives for higher-quality child care…the further millions we are spending to offer “home visiting” to every first-time mother-to-be in my community.

Our work is all about partnerships, and what we can do together. I come from a childhood where my parents warned all nine of us about trying to “save the world.” In the very next breath, they made it clear that we were obliged to contribute to making the world a better place, and that we should do so in collaboration with others.
Your greatest test, and my own, is where we live. The place where I live is on the very cutting edge of America: 60 percent Hispanic, 21 percent African American or black (not interchangeable as they would be most places in this country, 19 percent non-Hispanic white (but just 15 percent of the 32,000 babies who are born each year here). That compares to 67 percent non-Hispanic white in the Palmetto State, 30 percent African American, perhaps 3 percent Hispanic. My community alone – Miami-Dade County – is larger than 16 states. More than half of us were born in another country – the highest such percentage in urban America (compared, I note, to 7 percent of the people of South Carolina). Yet for all our challenges of bigness and poverty and language and culture, the people of Miami have found a way to rally around children – all children.

Building a movement in South Carolina might be done differently from the way we’ve traveled in Miami, but will have at its heart the same fundamental principle: That is, all children need all the basics. This is more than just a noble goal; it is, indeed, the essential component in building the brightest possible future for this state. You have before you a quite extraordinary opportunity to take a significant step toward making this principle a reality in the year to come, as legislation comes before your General Assembly to expand the existing 4K pilot program to all at-risk children statewide. This incremental but crucial step paves the path to expand 4K services to all children and families in South Carolina who wish to participate in them.

Please know that none of what we have been able to achieve in Miami is because we have elected a “children’s czar.” You won’t either. Our progress is because we have built genuine collaboration with the business community, the faith community, civic and political people, child care people, educators, health professionals, foundations and, most vitally, the school system.

Note that I mentioned first the “business community” because I think you in business have a special role in all this. Readiness is a matter of business investment as well as in the self-interest of all of us. Take note of this: While 85 percent of a child’s brain development occurs by age 3, less than 3 percent of South Carolina’s public investment in education and child development occurs by that time. An educated community is a safer, more prosperous, more optimistic community for everyone. The research tells us clearly that if we were ever to spend a dollar wisely up front -- from pre-natal to age 5 -- we would not have to spend seven dollars at the other end on police and prosecution and prison, and remedial education of all sorts. Truth to tell, either you and I will pay a few dollars more up front in children’s lives, or we will pay many more dollars when they get older.

Business people frequently complain about the quality of graduates – many of these business people simply not realizing that the path to hiring the most capable, most qualified employees begins with a child’s earliest years. You in business know more than anyone of the power of investment, and we have ample evidence that these early years furnish the optimum window for investment.

I turn to Miami as example of what is possible, fully respecting that you will do things your way. In these past few years, we in Miami have increased the number of accredited child care sites from 17 to 362… developed the best local early childhood website in the country, plus 24-hour phone lines for parents…deliver high-quality parent skill-building information plus babies’ first book to the parents every child born each year…distribute more than 25,000 parent skill-building newsletters each month…have a special emphasis on children with special needs and how to identify, and help, them early. And all we do is in three languages.

I am not ashamed to be an optimist and idealist. And I am reminded that you have two state mottos, one of which is apropos here: “While I breathe, I hope.” You are hearing today not some far-out progressive, but rather someone of old-fashioned values, who believes what I recall from eighth grade civics back in Bradenton, Florida – that is, our country has the potential to live up to its great promise to embrace all Americans and, most especially, all children. Yes, this is tough to do. Then again, suffrage wasn’t easy. Social Security wasn’t easy. Diminishing racial barriers certainly hasn’t been easy. Medicare wasn’t easy. And for all those who say that we’ll never get to “universal health coverage,” exactly that is already a key issue in the presidential campaign.

The case I make is in the self-interest of South Carolina. Because so many parts of this state are so prosperous and beautiful for so many, it may be easy enough – too easy – to overlook the pain and the poverty in which some of your neighbors live every day. For leaders to ignore such pain imperils ultimately everyone. Everyone wants to be in a place where people feel safe, where people have a chance for a wonderful education and to enjoy a bright future. You cannot ultimately achieve such if some problems and some people are permitted to fester. This great state has its best chance for its brightest future if everyone has a real chance to succeed.

Way back in 1931, Herbert Hoover told us: “If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish. We would assure ourselves of healthier minds, in more vigorous bodies, to direct the energies of our nation to yet greater heights of achievement.” Or to use the words of your second state motto: “First, prepared in mind and resources.”

Where you live you have the opportunity to support activities to help all children succeed. You have the opportunity to offer all children learning experiences that lay the groundwork for academic and other achievement through all their lives. “4K” is key to that.

You do not need to depart this morning and make miracles. But you can make this a moment where you commit yourself to this great state taking the next step to ensuring all children have a real chance to succeed. Commit yourself in more than words; commit yourself in deed. “A commitment to do it,” in the words this morning of your distinguished mayor. Call or e mail your legislative and make your voice heard. Engage your colleagues in support of this crucial public policy. Look around you and see who isn’t here this morning; commit to contact them and enlist their support around this issue. Give of your time and other resources to get this message out: 4K for all South Carolina children. And do all this with the sense of urgency about which your state school superintendent spoke this morning.

To make a difference in the future of children I do not first turn to government. I turn to you, and to myself. Only then can we turn to our servant, which is our government. I believe so strongly in what people can do…together. I believe deeply in a vision that embraces all children. I believe deeply in the practical imperatives of giving all children the best chance to become contributing adults. I believe deeply in the power within each of us. Most of all, I believe in you.

Thank you, and God bless you all.