Early Ed Watch

Debates on preschool can sometimes devolve into misinformed squabbles over whether children can benefit and by how much. But a debate hosted last Thursday at the Fordham Institute was a refreshing exception. For 90 minutes, speakers and the audience reckoned with several important policy questions, especially on the extent to which the federal government should get involved to improve quality and access for families. The one thing missing was a serious conversation about how to build a strong, professional workforce of pre-K teachers.

During the media frenzy that followed President Obama’s unprecedented call for expanding pre-K to all four-year-olds in the United States, we estimated that the additional cost to states and the federal government, combined, to be somewhere between $10-15 billion per year. We estimate that the feds and the states currently spend about $9 billion on pre-K for four-year-olds.

We wanted to explain exactly how we came to that conclusion.

Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the political comedian and Comedy Central “fake news host” took on opponents to the Head Start preschool program. Amidst the ribbing, though, Stewart gets to the heart of the Head Start debate.

At an elementary school in Maryland last Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talked about the President's plan for expanding preschool. Today in a blog post for the Huffington Post, I report on some of the "working with states" language he used to make the case. It's important to make clear that the president is not proposing a new untested, federally provided program, but is instead proposing to assist states, many of which are hungry to improve the quantity and quality of what they already offer.