Caleb Cantres-Maldonado was all of 6 weeks old and just stirring from a nap when his mother propped him up and pointed him in the direction of a picture book.
“Look what I have! See the book?” said Milenka St. Clair, a family support worker who visits Caleb’s Manassas home once a week. “It’s a drum! What else do you see?”
Caleb’s head flopped to one side. St. Clair tapped the page loudly, then moved it left and right and up and down. The baby’s eyes, still cloudy and a little crossed, followed her movements.
Educating children starting at an early age increases their opportunities and benefits the larger economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a video prepared to be shown Tuesday.
Effective education can help reduce poverty, increase lifetime earnings and boost personal satisfaction at home and on the job, Mr. Bernanke said in a prerecorded video prepared for a conference of the Children’s Defense Fund in Cincinnati. The Fed chief didn’t discuss monetary policy in his remarks.
The statement released by the Alliance as Connecticut found out it was no longer in the running for the third round of Race to the Top funding.