TELLURIDE – The Telluride Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust’s Partnership for America's Economic Success, hosted the second annual Economic Summit on Early Childhood Education on September 20-22, an invitation-only event on building human capital. Over 150 business, scholars and policy leaders participating in the Summit unanimously ratified the Telluride Principles for Investing in Young Children. These principles provide a national framework for public and private funders to decide on making strategic investments in proven strategies for young children.

Key speakers at the 2008 Summit include Dennis Lockhart, President and CEO of Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Colorado Lieutenant Governor O’Brien; 2000 Nobel Laureate in Economics James Heckman, and Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology. The Telluride Summit is unique in the nation in its focus on developing proven strategies, policies and practices that will generate the workforce needed by the country by helping young children grow to be successful adults – literate, numerate, job-ready and team-capable. The Summit presented the latest economic research and engaged some of the best thinkers on strategies to enhance adult productivity and, therefore, the enhance nation’s economic success in terms of GDP and job growth.

The development of the Telluride Principles began at the first Telluride Summit in 2007, when business, finance and policy leaders reviewed new evidence of proven investments in young children, such as data released by the Partnership for America’s Economic Success, showing significant economic impacts of early education, health care, housing insecurity and family income for young children. During the 2007 summit discussions, the need became clear for a set of principles to help guide policymakers, legislators, the business community and program managers and funders. Participants listed and prioritized the features they judged most vital to effective child development policies and programs using a table-discussion format.

These priorities were combined into five principles, each with several sub-principles, for review by Telluride Summit participants and distribution for comment to the over 1,400 members of the Invest in Kids Working Group of the Partnership for America’s Economic Success. Based on their input, the proposed principles were redrafted several times and then ratified unanimously by the Telluride 2008 participants.



The Telluride Principles



Long-term US economic strength and fiscal sustainability depends on our future workforce. Investing in children is a vital economic growth strategy and a priority of business, government and philanthropy. Private and public resources are limited and should be allocated based on evidence of effectiveness. To provide a framework for understanding and discussing how to allocate resources for investing in children, the Telluride Summit proposes the following principles:



1) Maximizing the life success of every child in America is our highest priority.



2) Involvement of parents, family and other loving adults are crucial to a child's life success.



3) Children are helped most and the economy is made strongest when resources are allocated on the best evidence of what will lead to positive child outcomes.



4) Sound performance evaluations can ensure goals are attained.



5) Child development programs that use private and public incentives and are scalable will be stronger.



The Telluride Summit is a forum modeled on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on building human capital through research-based investments in early childhood. The forum is co-hosted by the Telluride Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust’s Partnership for America's Economic Success. The Partnership for America’s Economic Success is a collaborative venture established to document the economic benefits of investments in young children and make children’s successful development the nation’s top economic priority. For more information see www.PartnershipforSuccess.org. or www.telluridefoundation.org.