Southern Education Foundation reports that the South is leading other regions in the quality of pre-k programs and the number of children enrolled. The press release to the report says that "The report also analyzes the uneven development of Pre-K within the South and identifies common challenges that Southern states will face in taking Pre-K to scale across the region." The Foundation previously had done a number of studies of state programs in the region. The report received a lot of attention from both publications and television outlets.

Hilary Clinton's proposed federal investment in pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds comes the week after David Brooks argued in his New York Times' column that Republicans needed a set of big ideas on how to develop "human capital" if they were to have a chance of halting the party's "death spiral." Brooks called for a program of tax breaks for low-income workers, child tax deductions, encouragement of marriage, school choice and...wait for it...investment in preschool.

Here's Brooks' take on the politics: ...

politically, a human capital agenda exploits the divisions between liberal populists and independents. Liberal populists, about 26 percent of the country, believe in redistribution policies. Conservatives and independents do not. Liberal populists believe the global economy is so broken all the benefits of it go to the top 0.01 percent. Independents and conservatives observe that hard work still leads to success. Liberals emphasize inequality. Moderates and conservatives believe inequality is acceptable so long as there is opportunity.

Clinton's proposal is for "universal" preschool--free for the poor, sliding scale for the rest. Brooks was talking about free preschool for what he called the most "disorganized" poor families.

Clearly, the politics of preschool are interesting and worth exploring by journalists. It's not as simple as liberals wanting a social program and conservatives opposing it. The details of the proposals matter--a lot.

Joel Waldfogel, a business prof at the Wharton School, bases a commentary on Slate on the James Heckman/Dmitri Masterov analysis of the economic returns of preschool from high quality programs serving the disadvantaged. He says government programs are needed to make up for the weakness of many families, which makes them unable to function as caregivers and nurturers of children. He concludes:

A sales problem remains: These programs invade the traditional province of the family, and in Heckman and Masterov's conception, they would target disadvantaged populations that are disproportionately minority. Wanted: a credible and sympathetic pitchman. Paging Barack Obama

Obama, the Illinois Senator running for president, has yet to announce his position on expanding the federal role in pre-kindergarten. Hilary Clinton, the New York Senator and presidential candidate, though, supports phasing in a $10 billion federal fund to match new state investments in high quality preschool.

"> Anyone who pays attention to the unfolding debate over the propriety and educational effects of public investments in preschool and child development has encountered fears of "government" brainwashing. Though not all such fears emanate from the dark imaginings of the far right, that crowd is certainly far more vocal. (Never forget that the seeds of dreaded liberalism tomorrow find fertile ground in the preschool sand tables of today!).Judge Roy Moore, (left, at a younger age), the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted after refusing to remove stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments from his court room, demonstrated this once again in this Internet column.

The column is a mish-mash of references to studies and research that he misapplies and misinterprets for his purposes. In addition to the usual rhetoric, however, the good judge added a new leap of logic that I've never seen anywhere. The "founding fathers," reared in 18th century colonial America, did not go to public schools and they did pretty well. Americans back then were the "most literate and well-informed in history," he contends, and "poetry, religion, and history flourished...without support from the state." I know that many critics of public education claim, without much foundation, that student achievement has been sliding the past three or four decades. But I had no idea that the zenith of U.S. education was in the 1750s! Sure, recreating slavery, ridding ourselves of 300 years of technology and medicine, and reclaiming our true heritage as colonies would be problematic, but is there any other way to be competitive in this global economy? Let's turn back the clock three centuries before it's too late!

Advocates for universal pre-school have to be careful about overselling. And media skepticism should help the advocates avoid that. Police chiefs seem particularly prone to this behavior. In Pennsylvania, where there's $75 million in new preschool monies being debated by the Legislature, the state's police chiefs have been among those leading the charge. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story the other day quoted Pittsburgh Asst. Chief Paul Donaldson saying, "Quality pre-kindergarten programs are our most effective weapons in fighting crime." Really? More so than community policing?
The story also said the $75 million would generate a 17-to-1 return on investment, which is a figure that's tossed around far too easily.

Such statements have to be qualified and journalists have to do it--if the advocates are unwilling to do so. The 17-1 figure is based on the return over more than three decades from a program called the Perry Preschool Project that lasted for five years back in the 1960s. So, for Legislatures worried about balancing a budget today, the returns will accrue long after they've left public service. Also the program that would be expanded in Pennsylvania is not like the Perry Preschool, which was of much, much higher in terms of quality and cost. [See Update below] Plus, the Perry Preschool was aimed at very disadvantaged kids. It wasn't a universal program available to all. A universal program would not get rates of return anywhere close to these. Finally, it's true the Perry Preschool reduced crime but it didn't eliminate it. Those who went through Perry Preschool were, on average, likely to be arrested fewer times, not that they were not likely to have been arrested.

UPDATES: I checked out the Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts website. The state program looks to set quite high programmatic standards, relative to other states. Also, the new money that Gov. Rendell is pushing IS targeted to disadvantaged children. Still, the program wouldn't measure up to the Perry Preschool, which cost in 2007 dollars about $15,000 per child and had one teacher (trained in special education and early childhood development) for every seven children. (Pennsylvania requires one certified teacher and an aide for every 17 children.) It's true that most of the cost-benefits from the Perry experiment came from a reduction in crime: in fact, about $13 of the $17 return came from that source alone. A good, clear, dispassionate analysis of the economic returns of preschool programs can be found here. It's something every journalist who covers these issues should keep close as a resource.

The Washington Post's Maria Glod used Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's decision to downsize his "universal" pre-k program to a targeted one as a news hook for a solid roundup of what's going on with the expansion of publicly funded preschool nationally. The article, which ran on A-1, had a glimpse of a good classroom, regional specifics, national sweep, details of Kaine's new approach, research, and quoted the strongest voices on both sides of the "universal" vs. "targeted" debate.

All in all, a fine example of going beyond a news development to provide readers with a useful context in which to understand that event. It wasn't necessary to go into it in this story, but one aspect of it made me think about what the next story on this might be for the Post.

Kaine says he decided to scale back on his idea because he was advised to "take the existing network and focus on the goals of increasing access and increasing quality" rather than start a new program from scratch. That's inevitable when a state expands its spending on preschool. It's not as if three and four year olds are not already going somewhere. But Kaine also may have been responding to pressure, because it is often existing private providers that lobby the hardest against expanding public spending, for fear that they'll be forced out of business by the competition. But Kaine's public-private approach creates another challenge. The state has to figure out how to push existing low-quality programs to improve. That's a hard job. Money helps but, as in New Jersey, public money poured into private centers sometimes leads to more money in the pockets of operators without any improvement in quality. Kaine suggests a rating system that parents will be able to use in choosing a preschool, in effect trying to tap market forces to maintain quality. The fact is, though, parents usually want their young children as close by as possible so the market forces are going to be weaker than they would be if true competition were unleashed. Kaine's right that it's the quality of programs not necessarily who provides them that's most important. But it's harder to ensure that quality in the private sector.

The other article in the volume that should be of interest to journalists is by Harvard Grad School professor and economist Richard Murnane and is called “Improving the Education of Children Living in Poverty.” Despite the ambitious-sounding title, Murnane’s proposal is both more modest and less sanguine about the positive effects that can be expected. He proposes a number of changes to the No Child Left Behind law (some of which already are being discussed) that would make the law’s achievement targets more realistic and meaningful for teachers. He says the feds should provide states with strong incentives to make their high school graduation requirements better reflect the needs of the labor market and also promote interdistrict transfer programs, such as are in place in Boston, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. And, finally—and this is the big one—he says the feds must provide competitive, matching grants to districts and states to improve the quality of teaching through recruitment, compensation, preparation, and professional development. Cost? $2.5 billion a year. The piece does a great job of providing a clear, quick overview of what’s going on in education policy, context often missing from education reporting.

Two of the articles should be of particular interest to journalists interested in how education can help address issues of poverty. One, by economist Greg J. Duncan of Northwestern, Jens Ludwig an economist at the University of Chicago , and Katherine J. Magnuson of the School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, proposes an intensive two-year, education-focused intervention for all three- and four-year-olds that would charge fees on a sliding scale. The article is unusually specific. One key part of the idea is that the feds would offer incentives to states to participate rather than funding the program directly. The authors are more cautious than some advocates and researchers in that they don’t put a ratio on the return on investment. But they do say that the program’s $20 billion cost would be more than matched by the benefits—in the $2 or $3 per $1 spent range rather than the $7 to $14 that economists have calculated for other comprehensive programs in the past. They do, however, say such a program aimed at poor kids would reduce poverty by 5% to 15%, a very healthy gain.

Any journalist interested in understanding how policies related to poverty, health, mental health and education affect children should make sure they see the quarterly publication called “The Future of Children.” The theme of the current issue is “The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies” and it focuses on solutions and the progress made in reducing poverty over the past 40 years. Our current political climate downplays the potential for public policy and investment to address entrenched poverty. The articles in this volume are edited by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, both of whom are senior editors of the publication as well as scholars at the Brookings Institution. Here’s the web page.

I didn't know it and you may not have either but, in the blogosphere, yesterday was "attack John Edwards Day." At least, that's what I'm surmising from the deepening pond of bile and name-calling in right-wing blogs fed by an article in the Concord Monitor.

Here's the lede of the article:

John Edwards says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity. To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes.

Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone.

In reaction, cries of socialism and all manner of other sins suddenly appeared here, here, here, here, and here. The entries were rife with name-calling of Edwards, the most progressive of the three leading Democratic contenders for the presidency who is, according to media pundits and polls, running third behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Apparently they all got the memo that said Edwards' plans to address poverty would drive away investment capital, undermine the family, coddle those who are lazy or stupid or just plain unlucky, and result in brainwashing of the children. Note to the memo-writers, two red states--Oklahoma and Georgia--have universal pre-school programs that others are trying to emulate and Republican legislatures and governors support expanded investments in pre-k.

Talk to early education researchers for a few minutes and you're likely to hear an acronym that sounds like "eckles", rhyming with "freckles." What they are referring to is one of the sets of data known as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, that are gathered by the federal government's Institute of Education Studies. The latest in the series was released this month and it's a good statistical snapshot of U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds during 2005-2006.

Some interesting data:

* Only 20% of children are cared for only by their parents. (Therefore, the conservative cry that expanded public investment in preschool is equivalent to yanking kids out of their parents' hands is silly. The vast majority of children already are cared for outside the home.)
*Preschools and pre-kindergartens, public and private, serve more than three times the number of children than does the Head Start program. (So this sector merits more attention.)
*About two-thirds of these children are know their shapes, numbers, and colors when they go to school. But math proficiency is more highly correlated with income than is language development. (Makes sense. Math is primarily developed in school and the more money a family has the more likely they are to be in preschool centers and less likely they are to be in Head Start programs.)
*Hispanic children are least likely to be served in centers and most likely to be cared for by relatives. The numbers for white children show the opposite.

Good descriptive data to feed into political and policy stories on pre-kindergarten. Also looking at the data may give rise to questions that may, with a little more work, lead to good solid stories in your community.

Two reports within days about the South that, in a way, show two sides of the same coin. A report from the Southern Regional Education Board notes that the 15-state region leads the nation in offering publicly funded preschool and then quantifies that claim. Mississippi's Jackson Sun editorialized about the report. The Southern Education Fund this week issued a report saying that a majority of students in the region are poor. Seems like one is related to the other.

David L. Kirp, author of "The Sandbox Investment," a new book about the pre-school movement and what he calls "kids-first politics," gave the Virginia and Leonard Marx lecture last night at Teachers College. David is a UC Berkeley public policy professor but also has been a newspaper editorial writer. So, while he backs up what he says with research, he's also an engaging raconteur who gets his point across with stories and clever turns of phrase and is not afraid to be blunt. (Just the kind of source journalists need!)

He talked about the bipartisan politics behind the growth of state spending on pre-kindergarten over the past five years or so but he also noted, as others have, that the billions in additional dollars are being spread over far more kids so in many states the per-pupil spending has gone down. "The challenge," he said,"is to make sure the early education children get is not just a slogan." That's where journalists can help, of course. Just because a state or district has a program doesn't mean it's achieving what officials say it is and we can ask questions that get at the heart of the matter.

Kirp said he feared that "we'll do preschool on the cheap and researchers will come along in 10 years and find no effect. Then, conservatives will say, 'See, we told you so. The Nanny State can do anything.' " He said his nightmare is that conservatives will then "say quietly, see, those kids really can't learn," referring to poor and non-white children.

As the attention of those wanting to run for president shifts to South Carolina, it's worthwhile to review their positions on early childhood education and preschool. Here's a link to an earlier post that will help.

South Carolina, like Tennessee, is seeing a partisan fight over whether to expand the $17.1 million pilot program serving 37 low-income school districts to higher income students throughout the state. Story from the Post and Courier gives the rundown here.

Editorial writers in Mississippi in recent weeks have been pushing for increased spending on statewide early childhood education, noting that while Mississippi has the highest percentage of working mothers with children, it’s the only Southern state that doesn’t provide state money for pre-kindergarten.

A Jan. 5 editorial in the Clarion-Ledger noted that many pre-K programs in the state are “purely custodial, not educational,’’ and complained that too many children in the state are already behind when they start.

The Clarion-Ledger editorial urged lawmakers to approve the Quality Education Act of 2008, which doesn’t ask for statewide pre-k but calls for a continuation of a pilot program they consider “a modest step toward quality.’’

Like the Clarion Ledger, The Daily Journal of Northeast Mississippi also noted its support for a statewide advocacy organization of 36,000 known as The Parents Campaign which supports a $5 million increase to develop effective learning programs in child care settings and help improve the educational content.

The smaller steps are being considered a year after Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Haley Barbour told the Associated Press that he did not see Mississippi having a statewide, 4-year-old, state-funded pre-kindergarten program in the near future. The Southern Education Foundation, headed up by Lynn Huntley , an ES (EarlyStories) education hero, last year came out strongly in favor of universal pre-kindergarten in Mississippi last year as well.

Mississippi is ranked 48th in the nation in per pupil spending and 48th in student achievement; over 60 percent of Mississippi children are at risk of failing or dropping out of school due to poverty, The Parents Campaign notes on its website.

The editorial writers don’t have to look far to notice other ways Mississippi is falling behind in its approach to early childhood education. Neighboring Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican, has announced a plan to triple state spending on pre-kindergarten, and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, invested $80 million for the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program during the 2007-08 school year.

(Virginia Governor Tim Kaine during State of the Commonwealth address Jan. 9)

David Harrison of The Roanoke Times did a good job Sunday pointing out the obstacles to expanding pre-kindergarten programs in Virginia.

These are issues well worth exploration by reporters. Harrison found problems filling slots and finding space for pre-kindergarten classes in two areas of Roanoke and Roanoke County, and noted that it meant state money had to be left on the table. The issue is particularly important in Virginia because it comes at a time when Democratic Governor Tim Kaine is pushing to make preschool available to an additional 7,000 children over the next two years, at a cost of $56 million.

In his state of the state address on Jan. 9, Kaine noted that children who attend high quality preschool “are more likely to finish school, find good jobs and are less likely to commit a crime.’’ Kaine has already taken a step back from campaign promises to provide pre-kindergarten for all, after facing skepticism among Republicans in the General Assembly and state budget problems.

Kaine instead said he would focus on the neediest children in the state. Virginia now provides preschool for almost 19,000 Virginia low-income children. But Harrison found that some school districts can’t afford to pay for their share of the costs, or don’t have enough room for all the children who are eligible. Another district has problems getting parents of high-risk 4-year-olds to fill out the paperwork and come to the sites for screening.

Harrison went beyond making a few phone calls and told his readers why pre-kindergarten matters by visiting a classroom, watching what took place and interviewing parents. One father delighted in the fact that his son came home from pre-school and asked to be read to. It’s an example that gives readers a clearer sense of why early childhood education matters to parents rather than simply covering what the politicians have to say.

With the economy fizzling and the U.S. appeared headed for a recession, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls for good pre-schools, small class sizes and higher quality education in low and moderate income communities.

Reich, now a faculty member at Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, made his remarks in an op-ed that appeared in Tuesday’s New York Times, entitled “Totally Spent’’.

“Over the longer term, inequality can be reversed only through better schools for children in lower- and moderate-income communities,’’ Reich wrote. “This will require, at the least, good preschools, fewer students per classroom and better pay for teachers in such schools, in order to attract the teaching talent these students need.’’

Reich, whose remarks drew nearly 200 comments to the Times website, also called for increasing the wages of the bottom two-thirds of Americans. He noted that while the number of working mothers with school-aged children has almost doubled since 1970 to more than 70 percent, “there’s a limit to how many mothers can maintain paying jobs.’’

Reich maintains his own blog at http://robertreich.blogspot.com/

PreKnow, the advocacy group for universal pre-kindergarten, this week launched a letter-writing campaign aimed a pressuring Congress to increase what the organization says is a paltry Bush Administration budget request for Head Start. The Head Start program was reauthorized at the end of November, nearly five years late, and the compromise bill was hailed by all sides. The bill is designed to improve quality, increase accountability, and expand the population eligible to participate. But advocates contend the additional $150 million in funding requested by Bush is not enough to keep up with inflation.

It's interesting that the pre-k crowd is getting so involved in this fight. Normally, they don't see Head Start as their issue. Head Start and advocates for pre-k have even squared off in some states, leading to closed door discussions to find a way that everyone can play nicely in the same sandbox. Wonder what deals may have been struck to get everyone on the same side.

A group calling itself "Americans for Prosperity-Kansas" gets today's star sticker for one of the more creative anti-preschool arguments I've encountered. The group's model budget contends that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' proposal to increase spending by $3 million on pre-kindergarten for low-income children is a "'hidden' subsidy for public education." The group says an unnamed study had found that children attending pre-k or day care the previous year do not gain socially or cognitively and "in some measures end up lagging behind their peers who enjoy the attention of their parents exclusively." The money, the budget says, would be better spent highlighting the important role of parents.

Couple questions to ask: What "study" are they referring to and is that the actual conclusion? Did the "study" control for income? Parents who can care for their children may be poor but more likely they are parents affluent enough to not have to work. That's not an option for most parents.

This is the Kansas arm of a national anti-tax group. Ideological consistency is sometimes difficult, however. To maintain its anti-public education stance, the group's Missouri arm applauds legislation that would give parents of children with special needs the final say as to whether their children are educated in public or private settings. This is certainly not an easy issue and the federal IDEA law governing special education gives parents a role in determining how their children are educated. But school districts across the country are struggling with the enormous cost of these private placements, which can cost upwards of $40,000 or more a year and which, by the way, are paid for with public money. It's a dilemma, to be sure, but one the group doesn't acknowledge.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen keeps stumbling into opposition as he pushes voluntary, full-day pre-kindergarten program for all county school systems in the state. On the surface, it would seem to be a natural extension of the state’s high quality program and Bredesen's already acclaimed efforts to expand pre-K.
But not so fast, the Tennessean reports. Bredesen, who invested $80 million for the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program during the 2007-08 school year, is facing opposition from Republican legislators who say the program’s success is untested and are making their voices be heard as well.
Bredesen wants to earmark another $25 million to pay for 250 new pre-kindergarten classrooms before opening it up to all 4-year-olds in Tennessee. The Tennessean last month reported that Bredesen has been surprised by the opposition of Republican lawmakers and their remarks likening pre-kindergarten to glorified day-care, an argument that has come up in several states. Bredesen is fighting back; last month he met with editors of the Times-News in Northeast Tennesse to defend his education program and budget requests.

Reporters covering pre-kindergarten often find obstacles to expansion programs, from budget cuts to lack of space that prevents all children who want a spot from getting one. Carrie Melago of the New York Daily News found another barrier this week, imposed by the New York City Department of Education: Language.

Nearly one third of the more than 1.1 million students in New York City public schools are immigrants and the proportion is rising steadily. Some 42% of New York City public school students reported speaking a language at home other than English last year.

Yet when directories and applications for a new, centrally managed pre-kindergarten process that requires parents to rank their top choices went out this week, they were posted online in English only. The action upset advocates for immigrants who worry that parents who can’t get the information won’t register their children for pre-kindergarten.

The New York City Department of Education promised to make the documents available in eight languages by next week: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. They also said their translation unit can help parents in the meantime.

It's nice to see reporters picking up on findings by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which released a report last week describing which states are meeting benchmarks. But it would be even better to see some follow-up that helps the public -- and policy makers -- understand why some states are lagging far behind and what the findings mean.

The San Antonio Express News carried a piece the day the NIEER report was released, noting that while the preschool program in Texas serves more 4-year-olds than any in the nation, the state "has a long way to go when it comes to quality.''

The piece had good background and perspective about pre-kindergarten in Texas, which enrolled about 170,313 4-year-olds last year, more than any other state-funded program in the nation.

It also pointed out that Texas and seven other states met just four of the 10 quality standards laid out by NIEER, including failure to limit its class sizes.

Remaining questions: Just how large are these class sizes and what number is optimal? If the quality is poor, who is to blame? Does it mean the teachers don't have the training they need, or are the facilities a problem?

Is there proper equipment and room to play? Is the atmosphere chaotic? Is there a curriculum or are expectations established about what children are doing and learning? Is any learning going on? Are there any high quality programs worth looking at for examples?

At a time when public investment in pre-kindergarten is growing, it's critical for reporters to visit classrooms, ask questions -- and give the public a glimpse of what is happening inside them.

In Texas, the need for follow-up is critical because the Texas Education Agency and the State Center for Early Childhood Development are in the midst of revising pre-k guidelines for the first time since their adoption in 1999, as Lindsay Kastner pointed out last week in the Express News.

Charles B. Reed, who oversees 46,000 faculty and staff and 450,000 students on 23 California campuses, weighed in on the future of the littlest Californians in an op-ed piece that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

Reed has his hands full managing young adults at the country's largest senior system of public higher education. His plea, though, was aimed on giving a better beginning to those he hopes will become future students. Reed noted that solid pre-kindergarten programs can pay long term dividends in the years to come -- and that only about half of eligible, low-income, preschool-age children in California receive a publicly subsidized pre-K start.

Reed noted two recent reports on this issue worthing taking a look at: the first from the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence and a second was convened by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

The report found that the achievement gap in the K-12 years begins when kids first enter kindergarten class -- and that those who start behind, stay behind. "Without a strong beginning, these children can only grasp at an elusive dream,'' Reed writes.

The Jackson Clarion Ledger published an editorial last week urging better funding for pre-kindergarten, noting that Mississippi is one of only 11 states without a state funded program.

The responses posted at the end of the editorial made it clear how much opposition remains in the state, ranked 48th in the nation in per pupil spending and 48th in student achievement.

“Government baby-sitting,’’ one individual wrote. “Early childhood indoctrination for the socialist USA. Get them on the big yellow buses to send them to the fascist-run propaganda factories ASAP. Sorry, send your children. Leave mine alone.’’

Such remarks should be worrisome to pre-kindergarten advocates in the state, where Republican Governor Haley Barbour has resisted funding expansions like nearby Tennessee.

Advocates who support the Quality Act of 2008 are now hopeful that lawmakers in the large rural state will include $5 million in the budget to improve existing centers. Money would be earmked for three programs approved in 2006 but never funded: an early childhood grant program, a child-care resource and referral effort, and a “quality step system,” which would pay bonuses to providers who meet higher-than-minimum standards, according to an article in this week's Education Week.

One person who responded to the editorial wanted to know what other states that fund pre-kindergarten are actually getting for their tax dollars. Another complained that the state can’t “get it right,’’ with its K-12 students.

The opinions expressed freely are a window into an issue that merits thorough coverage and exploration.

It's been interesting watching the coverage of the fight for pre-kindergarten funding emerge in two very different states, where advocates -- and taxpayers -- are keeping a close eye on the outcomes.

An editorial in The Tuscaloosa News noted Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's push for an additional $20 million for the Alabama's voluntary pre-kindergarten program, which would allow the state to triple the number of 4-year-olds in the program by 2001.

Earlier this month Riley asked 1,000 pre-kindergarten advocates in the state to walk up to the State House, find their representatives and senartors "and tell them to vote for this budget because pre-K is so crucial to the future of our state.''

Up in Massachusetts, where Gov. Deval Patrick came to office full of promises for an ambitious pre-kindergarten program, economic realities have hit home and derailed much of his education agenda. The Boston Globe pointed out last week that the House is likely to scale back some of Patrick's spending initiatives, including an additional 892 pre-kindergarten classrooms. Patrick no longer is making a big push.

Patrick told reporters the economy has hampered his ability to expand spending, and that there is "no point getting frustrated about the economic times.''

Ann Doss Helms of the Charlotte Observer posed some interesting questions in a Sunday story on Bright Beginnings, a pre-kindergarten program in Charlotte-Mecklenberg schools with a big promise -- to transform the lives of at-risk children and help them succeed later on.

Her story found the $23 million a year program has not kept its promises and that the school system cannot say what its academic impact has been. The Chief accountability officer of the district told Doss Helms that analyzing the success of the pioneer class -- now high school freshmen -- isn't on their radar, at a time when long-term research on the impact of public pre-kindergarten is lagging. A sidebar to the story shows how little data a researcher hired to analyze the program has received.

As states and governors consider investing public funds in pre-kindergarten, it's critical for journalists to follow-up the way the Doss Helms has done and hold the programs and public officials accountable. The questions her story poses -- including what factors determine and shape a student's success, and what influence a strong pre-kindergarten program might have -- must be part of the public dialogue.

While some states are pushing for all day kindergarten, Texas and Florida are jump-starting pre-school, trying out children as young as 2 and 3-years-old with the help of a $6 million grant from the University of Texas.

A piece by Staci Hupp in the Dallas Morning News noted that pre-school is "moving to the potty-training set,'' and took a look at a new project coming to Dallas that aims at training child-care workers to connect with children early to help boost their success in school later on.

Dallas is home to a fast growing Hispanic population with children younger than 5 making up the largest age group. The city also has a disproportionate population of poor children who are more likely to start pre-school developmentally behind and the hope is that starting children younger by building their vocabularies and school routines will only help them give them a better academic start.

It will be interesting for reporters to visit these early start programs and talk to some of the caregivers and teachers. What kind of structures and curriculum are in place, and how is the program being evaluated and measured? What are the expectations, and what are the hoped for -- and achieved -- outcomes? Is anyone measuring progress once they do start school, and if so, how? What constitutes success for the potty-training set?

(Editorial writers in Mississippi are concerned about poverty and the lack of pre-K)

Editorial writers in Mississippi are continuing to notice and push for improvement in the state's dismal showing in important child development areas.

An editorial in the Mississippi Press noted the state's 50th overall rank in a the Kids Count study conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation , and pointed out that the state is one of the last to begin focusing on the critical early years of a child's education.

It's important for editorial writers to stay on top of efforts in Mississippi, where the states neediest children are served by Head Start but where there is no state funding for pre-kindergarten, even as neighboring states boost new programs and spending initiatives. Pre-K Now has kept an eye on Mississippi's laggard status as "the only southern state in the Pre-K Wilderness.''

Republican Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has been no fan of publicly funded pre-kindergarten, noting that he does not see it happening in the state's future. Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the country, and efforts to improve programs for young children have hit setbacks this spring, notes Sara Meade of Early Ed Watch.

(The debate, and questions over California pre-school quality remains)

The children most likely to benefit from pre-kindergarten in California are the ones who are not enrolled, according to a new study by the RAND corporation that found the quality of preschool in the state is inconsistent.

The report by the Santa Monica-based think tank, notes Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee, should be viewed as "the latest development in California's long-running political debate over the relatively poor academic performance of its K-12 students and whether more elaborate pre-school programs, especially those centered on children from poor and/or immigrant families, would generate better elementary, junior high and high school results.''

Interestingly, the study found participation is based primarily on the socioeconomic standing of the family, and that children from more higher income families were no more likely to experience high quality early learning environments than children from poorer backgrounds.

The Rand Corporation had previously wrote a report documenting the value of preschool education by concluding such programs would generate an estimated $2 to $4 in benefits to California society for every $1 spent, as the authors outlined in a letter to the Los Angeles Times.

The study comes two years after voters in California rejected a ballot initiative that would have funded voluntary preschool for every 4-year-old in the state through a $2.8 billion annual tax increase on high income earners -- and shows the debate over how best to provide early childhood education in the state is far from over -- and still well worth the attention of journalists.