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A new study by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, could prompt a reorganization of child and human services away from the current system that "treats" problems after the fact in favor of investment and prevention. Using the economic concepts of human capital theory and monetary "payoffs" from investments in early childhood services, a host of experts that includes business CEOs, Federal Reserve analysts, and Nobel Prize-winning economists has called for greater public spending on early childhood programs.

Programs evaluated according to these economic concepts show, for example, that increased investment in early childhood results in government savings by leading to less need for social services later in life and increased earnings by individuals — which in turn leads to greater tax revenue for the government. The Economics of Early Childhood: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children aims to serve as a primer for policy-makers in the use of cost/benefits/rate-of-return analysis in making early childhood policy.

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A new resource from Exchange is the Program Administration Scale by Teri Talen and Paula Jorde Bloom. It is an excellent field-tested tool for measuring early childhood leadership and management. Research consistently finds that high-quality administrative practices are crucial for ensuring beneficial results for children and families. This valuable tool incorporates data obtained through interview or self-report, document review, and observation to reliably measure the administrative practices of an early childhood program. The Program Administration Scale includes 25 items clustered in 10 subscales, which measure both leadership and management functions of center-based early care and education programs.

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