To close the achievement gap, the theory goes, a community must close the language gap. “We laugh about it when we bring it up: ‘You just had a baby! Let’s talk about getting them ready for kindergarten!’” she said.Īccording to oft-cited research, children from privileged families hear, on average, 30 million or more words by the end of age 3 than children from low-income families - setting higher-income kids on a path for greater success in school. The bag is a door opener with new parents, said Catherine Kovaleski, a labor and delivery nurse at Pensacola’s Baptist Hospital - a way to start a conversation to dispel myths and share the latest brain science. Last year, Pensacola’s three major birthing hospitals introduced a campaign centered around a gift to new parents: the “Brain Bag.” It’s literally a bag full of resources on brain development, based on a research program at the University of Chicago called Thirty Million Words. Led by an invigorated business community, Pensacola has taken up early childhood as its cause, dubbing itself an “Early Learning City” and rallying around a program to universally educate all new moms – 5,000 each year - on the importance of building their children’s brains from infancy. More than half of births are covered by Medicaid, while more than a third of pregnant women lack adequate prenatal care. Thirty-eight percent of its households are headed by a single parent. More than a fifth of its high schoolers fail to graduate. Much like New Mexico, a third of Pensacola’s children aren’t kindergarten-ready. But on paper - when it comes to child well-being - they could be first cousins. To the eye, this coastal community on the Florida Panhandle looks nothing like New Mexico.

Water shimmers around every curve in the road: an emerald beach, a blue bayou, a choppy bay. Pensacola, Fla., became one of the country’s first cities to dub itself an “Early Learning City.” With leadership from the business community, it linked up with the University of Chicago’s Thirty Million Words project to educate new parents on how to build their child’s brain - a project that could hold lessons for New Mexico. Editor’s note: Communities nationwide are trying to crack the same nut: how to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor kids.

Thirty million words book