President’s 2010 Budget Request Highlights Early Education

Today, the Obama administration released the President’s fiscal year 2010 federal budget. In most years, the administration releases a detailed budget request–including proposed funding levels for individual programs–in February. But because this is the first year of a new administration, the budget released today is a more general document, with few details about funding levels for discretionary programs. We’ll have to wait until April to see what the administration’s requesting for most early education programs.

That said, the budget released today does make clear that the administration is making early education a budget priority. Early education programs are highlighted in both the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services sections of the document, with promises for increased federal investments in these programs.

Specifically, the budget states that “through funds from the Recovery Act and this Budget, the President will provide funding to double the number of children served by Early Head Start and expand Head Start.” In addition, the budget includes new investments in Nurse Home Visiting programs to support new and expectant mothers of at-risk youngsters–although we’re not sure how large that investment will be.

In addition, the Department of Education section of the budget proposal calls for “new initiatives aimed at ensuring that early childhood programs yield strong results for children,” by investing resources to “encourage State and local investment in early childhood education; support coordination among local, State, and Federal partners and a seamless delivery of services; and provide better information to parents about program options and quality.” This sounds a lot like the Early Learning Challenge Grants to states that President Obama proposed during the campaign. Since this would be a new program, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered about what exactly it would look like, as well as how large an investment it would involve. We’re looking forward to hearing more details about this from Secretary Duncan and other administration officials in the coming months.