(New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson says pre-kindergarten is working)

Pre-kindergarten is not often a favored topic of business writers, and even reporters who cover K-12 are so often bogged down in covering district politics, test scores and the comings and goings of superintendents that they don't have much time to devote to pre-kindergarten.

That's why it's a nice surprise to run across stories in places like the New Mexico Business Weekly, which ran a piece on June 4 highlighting a study by the National Institute for Early Education at Rutgers University, which found the state's pre-kindergarten program helped boost math and reading scores for participants.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson hailed the study, noting that it highlights why the investment the state made in early childhood education in 2005 is paying off, as Sara Mead noted in Early Education Watch.