PEORIA, Ill. — President and CEO of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce and the Peoria CEO Council Joshua Gunn joined four other business leaders of color from around the state as part of a Thursday Zoom call, in conjunction with a report by ReadyNation Illinois.
The organization, whose mission is “business executives building a skilled workforce by promoting solutions that prepare children to succeed in education, work, and life,” released the report entitled “Improving Equity & Opportunity in Illinois’ Workforce.”
The point of the report was to highlight inequalities in minority early childhood education in attempt to level the playing field by the time children of color reach the workforce.
“To ensure fairness in our workforce and full opportunity in our economy, we must act with our knowledge about the interconnected nature of cradle and career,” Gunn said.
“We know investments in early learning can help dramatically shrink the racial gaps we often see in those school entry skills that form the basis of our workforce skills. As a Black father raising two small Black children, I am particularly passionate about the need to ensure we have an equitable education system, and our children are prepared to learn on day one.
“Kindergarten readiness is directly connected to workforce readiness by the time those kids graduate. When it comes to early math, the National Institute for Early Education Research has reported a year of widely accessible, high quality preschool can reduce school entry learning gaps by 45% among Black children and 78% among Latinx children.”
According to the report, which can be viewed in its entirety below, kindergarten readiness was not just lacking among minority children.
Only 35% of white Illinois kindergarteners were deemed to be ready to start formal schooling in all three of early math, language and literacy, and social-emotional development.
That number was still significantly higher than the 23% of Black kindergarteners considered ready, and the 17% of Latinx kindergarteners who met the metrics.
“We know from still other research high-quality early learning initiatives can help boost participants’ future earnings. So we’re talking about an investment at the pre-K level making a dramatic improvement in their adult lives, by as much as 8% in the case of Chicago’s Child-Parent Centers program, or 11% in cases like Head Start,” said Gunn.
The full report may be viewed HERE.
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