Massachusetts Advocates
Launch Latest State Early-Education Campaign
On October 23, 2002,
a coalition of early-childhood-education leaders in Massachusetts announced
their intent to launch a campaign for statewide universal preschool
and kindergarten for three-, four- and five-year-olds. The Early
Education for All Campaign, which is coordinated by Margaret A.
Blood, President for the non-profit Strategies
for Children, Inc., plans to unveil draft legislation calling for
improvement of Massachusetts' already-existing pre-school and kindergarten
programs.
The legislation,
which outlines a ten-year plan to coordinate the efforts of public and
private programs and calls for a state commitment to improve the training
and raise the salaries of early-childhood workers, is designed in part
to counter Acting Governor Jane Swift's recent budget cuts to full-day
kindergarten. Even in a time of budget shortfall, Blood argues, Massachusetts
should be planning for the future. Though 72 percent of the state's
244,464 children currently attend preschool, Blood says that programs
are too fragmented, and a 2001 Wellesley
College study found that 66 percent of private preschool classrooms
"do not provide the type of rich learning environment essential to children's
language and cognitive development."
While Barbara Gardner,
the Massachusetts Department of Education's associate commissioner of
school readiness, has expressed concern about the Campaign's plan, she
admits that Massachusetts is falling behind other states in early-childhood
education.
Activists in many
states are advocating for early-childhood education. In August 2002,
New Jersey's Education Law Center and Rutgers University Institute on
Education Law and Policy launched "Starting
at 3," a national project to promote early-childhood education,
and Los Angeles County officials voted to create a universal pre-kindergarten
program funded by a tobacco tax. Georgia
publicly funds pre-kindergarten with certified teachers for 70 percent
of its four-year-olds, and Florida voters will decide on November 5
whether to authorize state funding for universal pre-kindergarten for
four-year-olds by 2005.
Prepared October
23, 2002 |
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