Pre-kindergarten

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Hearing of the Joint Economic Committee June 2007
On June 27, 2007, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) chaired a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee, which received testimony on the return on investing in high quality child care and early learning programs and took up the “Prepare All Kids Act of 2007” (S. 1374).Witnesses emphasized the value of investing early, and the dangers of assuming a single model for state early childhood program design. Highlights include:

Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman: “The longer we wait to intervene in the life cycle of the child, the more costly it is to remediate to restore the child to its full potential.”

Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS): “It’s important that any legislation promotes community-based programs as well as school-based efforts, just as we’ve done in Kansas. This is again because pre-K isn’t just an education issue, but a social, health and economic issue as well. The costs borne across the spectrum that result from a lack of quality early learning opportunities can just as easily become benefits, but only if we have a coordinated approach to the issue.”

Harriet Dichter, Deputy Secretary for the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning : “[W]e need a continuum of services that assures the educational and economic benefits from early childhood investment. This is as true for early childhood education as it is for other systems such as higher education or health care. This means that we can and should expect to make investments in programs with different names and labels—child care and Pre-Kindergarten are two that come to mind – and that we should expect to make investments in children in each and every year up to their entrance into school (and of course continuing investment in the school years).


“Necessary But Not Sufficient” Briefing on Capitol Hill, June 2007
The Pew Charitable Trusts and Rutgers University, home to the National Institute on Early Education Research (NIEER), hosted a Capitol Hill briefing, “New Research on Preschool Education: What Can We Learn from the States?” on June 18, 2007.  Sara Watson, Pew’s Senior Officer for State Policy Initiatives, emphasized that “if early education was a stock on Wall Street, it would be called wildly undervalued."  W. Steve Barnett, NIEER’s co-director, provided an overview of “New State Research on Highly Effective Pre-K” while Ellen Frede, William T. Gormley, and Vivian C. Wong described specific research they had conducted on the Abbott Preschool Program in New Jersey, Oklahoma’s preK program as implemented in Tulsa, and a five-state survey of preK.

According to Barnett, researchers have shown modest average effects – but much larger effect size – associated with programs requiring a Baccalaureate degree. The conclusion, staffers were told, is that to fill the achievement gap, a bachelor’s degree is a “necessary, but not sufficient requirement” for early education programs. But Kelley & Camilli note in their abstract that “the research underlying this effect size is correlational in nature. Thus it is possible that any number of factors, aside from having a bachelor’s degree, cause this effect. "In other words, research has demonstrated neither that a bachelor’s degree is necessary nor sufficient.


Telluride Summit: Financial Leaders Hear ECE Prospectus 
ECEC members represented early education providers at the invitation-only Economic Summit on Early Childhood Investment held in Telluride, Colorado, Sept. 9-11, 2007. The Summit was co-hosted by the Telluride Foundation and the Partnership for America’s Economic Success. Jim Greenman (Bright Horizons), Chad Dunkley (New Horizon Academy), and Sara Moleski-Rice (Learning Care Group) joined 125 business, finance, and policy leaders, including three governors, two mayors, economists, business leaders, foundation representatives, and early childhood professionals, to review evidence of proven investments in young children and proposed principles to advance “American youth human capital development.”

Speakers ably made the case for the value of and need for increased investment in children, but a number of voices emphasized stark realities. The Summit description and agenda, as well as selected presentations, are available from the Partnership’s website.