Referencing his wife Diane Patrick, who worked as an early educator in New York, Governor Patrick said that she has helped teach him “about the lifelong impact of quality early education in the lives of young people.” Governor Patrick committed to a funding increase to the MA UPK Program under his soon-to-be-filed Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) state budget and future state budgets, stating, “I pledge to you that we will increase funding further in the coming budget and we will stay on that path of annual increases until we have delivered on the promise of universal, high-quality early education for every child in this Commonwealth.”
Early education opportunities have a lifetime impact on young learners in terms of greater academic readiness, higher test scores, and improved social skills. On average, low-income children who attend high-quality early education programs are:
Currently, three states have universal pre-kindergarten, while 14 states and the District of Columbia are moving towards universal pre-kindergarten.
The specific goals of the EEA Campaign are to ensure a:
EEA is premised on the principle that “powerless children need powerful friends.” Since we began this work, EEA has built a statewide team of grassroots supporters to nearly 6,000 people and received strong support from newspapers throughout the state, including 88 positive editorials. We invite you to learn more about the Campaign and join us as we work with Governor Patrick and the Legislature to realize our shared vision of high-quality “early education for all” by visiting the Early Education for All (EEA) Campaign. Also, please feel free to email me directly at tweber@earlyeducationforall.org.
The Campaign is excited to reach out to the BMG community and looks forward to staying in touch. Thank you.
I think almost everyone will agree that full day K is the way to go. The big question is how do you fund it? It is not just teachers but facilities as well that will need to be expanded for cities and towns to go to full day kindergarten.
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p>More pressing problem is that many communities are going to be looking at cuts and layoffs in education this FY09 budget season. In addition the citizens are still looking for the property tax relief promised during the last election.
…it’ll be in the federal budget. It’s a politics slam-dunk, too, and so universal a plank among Democratic candidates at all levels that it’s almost taken for granted.
yet I am saddened by the concept of acceptance that the state is better suited to care for children than the family. I am pissed my grandchildren will have to endure early indoctrination in a rotten to the core society.
Full day kindergarten is to help kids be better prepared for future grades. Obviously there will be more time to make sure more kids are literate and numerate before they get to 1st grade, which to me is ideal.
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p>That being said, it is the unfortunate case that the state is better suited to care for children than some parents. I substitute teach and hear way too many stories in the teachers rooms that suggest various home situations including parents who cannot raise children to save their lives.
that in an increasing number of cases the state might be the better parent but I still adhere to the belief that the untold second part of Charolette Iserbyt’s story was the shift from education to indoctrination.
A structured full day does take them away from parents at an early age, thus making the good parents of lesser importance in the child’s mind.
You make it sound like we are just starting to do this and it’s bad for children but the fact of the matter is that we’ve been doing this for decades.
Massachusetts mandates that districts provide a half-day of kindergarten. According the MA Department of Education (DOE), 66% of kindergarten-aged children are enrolled in FDK, up from 38% in Fiscal Year 2000. DOE estimates that the figure will rise to 70% this year. EEA has a FDK policy brief that addresses the benefits, public support, MA policy, and challenges of FDK. As mentioned above, EEA supports voluntary, universally accessible full school-day public kindergarten for every child.
Parental choice is central to EEA’s vision for universally-accessible, high-quality pre-kindergarten (UPK). Of course, family members are ideally a child’s first and best educator – nobody is disputing that fact. But it is also true that many MA families are already choosing to enroll their children in pre-school programs and desire a high-qaulity experience for their children.
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p>EEA strives to ensure that all of our recommendations are research-based, including a 2006 survey of Massachusetts households. The survey found that 70% of preschool-aged children are enrolled in a formal early education and care program, attending pre-kindergarten in a private center, public school, private school, or licensed family child care home. Fully 85% of families with 3- and 4-year-olds express interest in enrolling their preschool-aged child in a universal, high-quality early education program like MA UPK. Therefore, the key is designing a universally-accessible pre-k system that takes advantage of the state’s mixed-delivery system of public and private pre-k providers in order to meet the needs of individual families and ensure that children are benefitting from the type of high-quality programming that will help prepare them for success and school and life.
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p>If you would like to learn more about EEA’s research, please visit the Research section of our website.
one that is worth the effort. There can’t be any more productive way to improve education in the Commonwealth. Now to solve the funding requirement. I would vote for creating a Foundation that was primed with State money, but really built on grants and subsequent earnings. It would require a slow phase-in of the program (start at the most needy communities) to keep the expenses behind the income curve in such a way that assets would eventually allow 100% participation.
Or is it optional? Is it mainly for kids with working moms, or do lots of stay-at-home moms also enroll their kids in full day early daycare/school? Are the statistics cited based on mainly working mothers who enrolled their kids so they could work, and therefore reflective of their parents extra income, or do they include the proportional number of out-of-work parents?
And where will the money come from?
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p>Those casinos are starting to look better and better, aren’t they?
This initiative has parent choice plus voucher written all over it. The biggest argument against Vouchers is that it will destroy the public system. Well, since there is no public system yet, there’s nothing to destroy. A voucher system would open up all the various private school to anyone who chose to attend.
I have been sucking hind tit for 10 years putting my two girls through parochial school in Lowell. (BTW, I lean Buddhist)
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p>Suffice to say, if parents are not willing to “make ends meet”, I would prefer that they stay outta the private school systems.
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p>We respect what we pay for. As long as parents think of their tax dollars as “lost money” then public schools will struggle.
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p>Our money is well spent and our girls get what we pay for.