Child care has bipartisan support But the culture war could wreck that newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Biden pitches free preschool and community college
New York could pay half the cost of president s plan
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Pre schoolers at Harmony Kids, a daycare and preschool at 1 South Pearl Street Wednesday March 5, 2014, in Albany, NY. (John Carl D Annibale / Times Union)John Carl D Annibale/Albany Times Union
WASHINGTON President Joe Biden plans to create a universal pre-kindergarten program that’s free for all 3- and 4-year-olds. He also has proposed offering free community college for anyone who wants it.
The group that won’t participate for free is states. Biden’s plan to pay for these programs requires some state governments to shoulder roughly half the costs for their residents.
In developing their plan, the Biden administration and Congress need look no further than New Jersey, where state-funded preschool has been rolling out across the Garden State for two decades. Today, the Abbott Preschool Program, serving over 50,000 3- and 4-year olds, stands as a pathbreaking model for the delivery of early education, proven effective in reducing pre-kindergarten learning gaps for children in high-poverty, racially isolated communities.
Preschool in New Jersey emerged through the Abbott v. Burke lawsuit, a challenge to inadequate funding in urban school districts, including Newark, Jersey City and Camden. After finding the state’s finance formula unconstitutional, the New Jersey Supreme Court in the 1990s pressed lawmakers to enact reforms, including funding for research-proven programs for students in high poverty communities. In 1998, the court in Abbott became the first in the nation to expand the right to education to pre-kindergarten children, convinced that
Nevada falls short in early childhood education, report finds nevadacurrent.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nevadacurrent.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Arizona has seen a drop in both enrollment in and spending on preschool programs; that’s according to new data from the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Its most recent edition of The State of Preschool Yearbook finds in the 2019-2020 school year, enrollment in preschool programs across the state dropped by almost 200 children and funding was down by nearly $400 a student. In addition, Arizona ranked 45th nationally in terms of access for 4-year-olds and 25th nationally in access for 3-year-olds.
While these data are generally from before the pandemic, early indications are that enrollment was also down this past fall, in part because some programs were closed, and some parents were hesitant to send their kids to those programs that were open.