Tulsa experiment: Can investing in children early reverse poverty cycle?
On the sunny side of a red-brick building, Alexis Stephens extracts a dusty pink stroller from beneath a black-iron staircase. A quick wipedown, and Addison, her impish daughter, is inside, waiting to be pushed the length of the fenced-in yard.
Across town, Mikaleah Moment sits in a well-worn leather armchair in her living room, as sunlight filters through black curtains. She comforts R’Myah, her infant daughter, who's still recovering from a trip to the doctor the previous day. Ms. Moment’s shift at Family Dollar starts at noon, but she’s not sure if she’ll show up.
At a rented house further north on a dead-end lane, Hayezetta Nichols, a working mother of two in her last month of pregnancy, moves slowly past a dish-clogged sink. She moved her family into the house a month ago, gaining an extra bedroom for Loyal, the daughter she’s expecting, but it’s all she can do to keep the place tidy with two small children underfoot.
These three mothers are raising young kids in Tulsa, a city of uneven wealth and deep poverty, delineated by race and class and geography. All are part of a grand experiment rooted in the belief that investing early in children can help close the gap when they start school and set a path out of straitened upbringings. Behind the experiment is George Kaiser, an oil-and-banking billionaire. His local philanthropy has made Tulsa a testbed for innovation in fighting poverty and injustice, along with civic renewal and music heritage.
Over the next decade, Mr. Kaiser’s foundation aims to match tens of thousands of low-income families with the social services they need, from nursing and birth control to childcare and early education. Some are publicly funded programs, vulnerable to Oklahoma’s perennial budget crises; others
