Today, The Daily Item publishes the first installment in "Smart Start," an occassional series of news stories and opinion pieces authored by local and regional experts on the importance of early childhood education. In a time of scarce public resources and increasing stress on home finances, there are few investments our state and our communities can make that will match the dividends of quality early childhood development.

We now have scientific evidence that nature and nurture work more closely together than most people had imagined in early childhood.

Failing to recognize the possiblities now will mean society will have greater challenges down the road. Brain development begins three weeks after conception and continues at a rapid pace right up through the toddler years. Children who come to school prepared to learn have a dramatic advantage, and researchers say it is substantially easier to help a child catch up if the need for intervention is discovered at a very young age. If developmental delays are not discovered until the child shows up for kindergarten, it may not exactly be too late, but the effort is more difficult. When schools are unable to help young people catch up, society eventually pays the price. Every $1 spent on high quality early education translates into $7 in reduced future expenditures for special education, delinquency, crime control, welfare and lost taxes.

Considering demographic and societal shifts, providing every child with an opportunity to learn and grow as well as possible will become increasingly important over the coming decades. When today's children are entering the workforce, twice as many people may be retiring. Someone is going to need to run this country as the rest of us while away our golden years.

Future generations will also face tremendous competition from around the globe. There are as many people younger than 18 in China as there are people of all ages in the U.S., and there are four Chinese children for every American child younger than 5.

There may be nothing more important to the long-term vitality of our nation, our state and our local communities than how well we raise our children. Failing to provide children with a boost in their formative years will be a short-sighted blunder that could haunt us for generations.

We invite you to follow along as experts explore the promise of investment in quality early childhood education in the series "Smart Start."