David Lawrence, the former publisher of the Miami Herald, told business leaders attending a Nov. 30 regional economic summit in Green Bay that "the path to hiring the most capable, most qualified employees begins with a child's earliest years."

Now president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation of Dade County, Fla., Lawrence called for a public-private sector partnership aimed at making the health and education of the youngest children — newborn to age 3 — a top community priority.

Excerpts from Lawrence's talk:

This is my first visit to Green Bay and the 18 counties of northeast Wisconsin. I deeply value your growing appetite for leadership and collaboration in the early childhood arena. What a difference you can make in building families and communities and schools that lead to children with the aspirations and the skills to thrive and give to others.

So much in this community gives me optimism for your future. Your rich history builds from woodland Native Americans, French explorers, fur trappers, Jesuit missionaries and so much more. Jean Nicolet, who arrived in this area just 14 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, saw the woods alive with bear and deer and beaver — and waters full of perch and bass and walleye and northern pike.

Your recorded history begins with the French, followed by the English, and you became fully American after the War of 1812. Fur trading gave way to lumbering. The coming of the railroad propelled the paper industry. Transportation and health care became major industries, too.

You have learned to build on the foundation of the past — the Fox River and boardwalks being a very good example. You also know how to build for the future. And one should not come here and fail to mention the storied Green Bay Packers, and a quarterback named Favre who is as good as anyone has ever been at that position.

I see a beautiful place to live, and I also see pockets of extreme and unacceptable poverty. I see good-sized communities with good human values and an eagerness to find the right ways to grow.

Yes, you have some encouraging early childhood trends. Indeed, your state ranks near the top end of how the 50 states do by children. You can see significant gains in such indicators as infant and child mortality, the teen birth rate, the percentage of children living with fully employed parents.

Yet how can it be that, in this some ways rich and always special region, that hundreds of your fourth-graders cannot read at even minimal proficiency (though you do better than in most places in America)? How can it be that the median wage in your 335 licensed child-care centers is less than $9 an hour? Why is the rate of juvenile delinquency here increasing?

How can it be that more than one in five of your 18- to-24-year-olds haven't graduated from high school? How can it be that 15 percent of your 2-year-olds haven't had all of their shots? What does it tell us that there were more than 9,000 reported instances of child abuse and neglect here in the past year? ...

The crucial early years

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. …

I had much to learn, much to unlearn. Crucially, I 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 that the windows of learning are wide open in those early years, and never again will they be open 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-grader 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 more than 90 percent of Northeast Wisconsin's children and 90 percent of America's — is to deliver the 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 Northeast Wisconsin's 270 or so public elementary schools will be eternally grateful, because you will have given them the ability to spend most of their teaching and much less of their time managing and controlling and triaging.

Preparing the future work force

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. ...

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. None of this is because we in Miami have elected a "children's czar." Nor will you in Northeast Wisconsin.

Rather, ours is a collaboration with the business community, the faith community, the civic and political community, 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 5 percent of Wisconsin'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 prenatal to age 5 — we would not have to spend $7 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. ...

Greater heights of achievement

The case I make is in the self-interest of Northeast Wisconsin. Because this region is such a prosperous and beautiful place for 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 the general community, for the leadership of this larger community to ignore such pain imperils ultimately all of Northeast Wisconsin.

All of you want a community 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 community 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."

And that is exactly what I hope you will be working towards for all Northeast Wisconsin children in the early years. In each of your own communities, 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.