Empowering Parents and Scaling Preschool Success (with Art Rolnick)
With Katharine B. Stevens | Art Rolnick
Center on Child and Family Policy
October 11, 2023
Katharine Stevens interviews economist Arthur Rolnick, former senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis, about his longstanding work with the Minnesota Early Learning Scholarships (MELS) program. Launched 20 years ago, the MELS program now provides scholarships to parents with children from ages prenatal to five throughout Minnesota.
Dr. Rolnick explains MELS’s core principles: 1) Target the most at-risk children, 2) Empower parents, and 3) Start prenatally. He also highlights the exceptional scalability of the MELS approach to expanding early education, which uses market forces to drive the expansion of high-quality programs. Finally, he calls for federal support and incentives to adopt this model nationwide.
Key Takeaways
Investing in early childhood development is a more effective economic development strategy than many conventional approaches.
Targeting the most at-risk children and empowering parental choice is essential to obtaining a significant return on investment.
The MELS approach utilizes market forces to drive the availability of quality programs and is easily scalable.
Federal support and incentives are needed to adopt this model on a larger scale across the US.
About the Guest
Art Rolnick is an economist, who's been on the faculty at the University of Minnesota since 2010 He previously served as Co-Director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and, before that, worked for 40 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as a senior vice president and director of research.
Art’s main expertise is in pre-Civil War banking, but he is well-known for his decades of work in early childhood and especially the Minnesota Early Learning Scholarships program, which he launched 20 years ago in Minneapolis. His work on early childhood development has garnered numerous awards, including those from the George Lucas Educational Foundation and the Minnesota Department of Health, both in 2007; he was also named 2005 Minnesotan of the Year by Minnesota Monthly magazine.
Subscribe to Early Matters on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other major podcast platforms.
FAMILIES AND PARENTING ECONOMIC MOBILITY FEDERAL AND STATE POLICY
See Also
Op-Ed ~ May 12, 2015
Blog ~ October 15, 2018
Op-Ed ~ March 9, 2015