Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe wants to spend $40 million more on state pre-school programs and he's looking to a study from the National Institute for Early Education Research to bolster his case. NIEER, which judges the Arkansas Better Chance pre-school program to be a good one, concluded that the program had helped the poor children it serves to make significant gains in vocabulary, math, and what's called "print awareness." In the past, the Arkansas program was funded largely with a 3 cent tax on beer. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee had said that tax had to continue to keep the program going or expand it. Beebe hasn't yet said whether he'll continue to tap the wallets of beer drinkers to give more kids a good start on their educations. By the way, the Committee for Economic Development has a helpful overview of how programs are financed here.