The state of Florida has the second-largest pre-kindergarten enrollment in the country, but that doesn’t mean journalists – and the public – should not be asking questions about the quality of the offerings.

The opinion pages of the Daytona News Journal online debated the issue this week, first with a piece by Monesia T. Brown, director of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

Brown touted the success of the program in a Florida Voices piece noting that the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten served more than 124,000 children last year.

Two days later, a piece by Roy Miller, president of the Children’s Campaign Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, noted that “quantity should not be confused with quality.’’

Miller contends that Florida’s pre-kindergarten program lags behind other states in meeting national standards of quality and that 4-year-olds are being expelled at a high frequency. Both pieces provide a roadmap for the kinds of questions reporters should be asking about Florida’s program as it moves forward.