Early Ed Watch

Yesterday, we asked why there hasn't been more attention focused on early education issues so far in this election cycle, noting that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have released detailed and ambitious early education agendas. Today we'll explore Senator Clinton's early education agenda. Tomorrow we'll look at Senator Obama's early education plan.

Supporting High-Quality Universal Pre-K

A recent story from Minneapolis shows how early education investments are suffering in the face of state and local belt-tightening. Two-thirds of kindergarteners in the Minneapolis Public Schools are in free full-day kindergarten classes. But in February, the school board there began considering a proposal to charge parents for full-day kindergarten according to a sliding-fee scale (parents pay different fees based on their incomes). Minneapolis officials say adopting the proposal would allow the district to expand quality early education programs to the city's 3,000 kindergarteners. But another motivation is the $500,000 the proposal would add to district coffers--in a year when the district faces a $13 million budget shortfall.

Early Ed Watch's colleague Lindsey Luebchow has a great post on the impact of cuts in Reading First funding, and the prospects for restoring Reading First funds in the fiscal year 2009 budget, up at our sister blog Ed Money Watch. Key points:

States and school districts are starting to feel the impact of major funding cuts to the federal Reading First program. Congress cut Reading First funding by 61 percent in fiscal year 2008—the unfortunate result of a serious federal-level management scandal. On the ground, however, the Reading First program is producing results in many schools, and school administrators and teachers have praised it.

President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget request would restore Reading First funding to $1 billion annually. As school districts scramble to look for other funding sources to keep Reading First programs alive this year, Members of Congress should reassure them by making a commitment to restore funding in the fiscal year 2009 budget. Congress has made its point on the scandal and should end the political games.

A growing number of charter schools across the country are offering high-quality pre-k programs, and charter schools can be a valuable source of pre-k capacity as states expand publicly funded pre-k. But in too many states a variety of policy barriers prevent charter schools from playing a role in state pre-k programs.