Newsweek's Nov. 12 edition has a short piece on the growth in preschool enrollments in both public and private settings, pegged to the release of a new report on participation data due out from the National Institute of Early Education Research. (on the web here. According to the article, NIEER says 69% of 4 year olds attend preschool, up from 59% in 1991. That's consistent with federal data released late last month.

Of course, Newsweek doesn't feature a free, state-funded pre-k. Rather it focuses on a $22,000 preschool in the affluent Boston suburb of Needham, Massachusetts where parents get a daily written narrative of everything their child did that day, including who he or she lunched with.