Campaign Watch: Democratic Candidates Push Early Ed In Indiana and North Carolina

Voters in Indiana and North Carolina cast their presidential primary votes today–a big day for Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are battling it out for the Democratic presidential nomination. Over the weekend, both Clinton and Obama gave significant speeches in a final push to make their case for the presidential nomination to Indiana and North Carolina voters. Both mentioned early education.

At the North Carolina Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Raleigh, N.C., Hillary Clinton said:

When I say solutions, I mean giving children of all backgrounds access to world-class education. Education must remain the passport to opportunity. We’ll start with universal pre-kindergarten. We’ll go all the way to affordable college. And I will end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind.

And here’s Obama at the same event:

When I say that I want to make sure that every child gets the best education this country has to offer from the day they are born until the day they graduate from college, investing in early childhood education to close the achievement gap, paying our teachers more and giving them more support, and giving a $4,000 tuition credit to every student every year in exchange for national service so that we invest in them and they invest in America, we need to let the American people know that it is not just rhetoric.

Speaking in Indianapolis, Ind. about the economy, Obama also said:

And if we want our children to succeed in this global economy–if we want them to be able to compete with children in Beijing and Bangalore–then we need to make sure that every child, everywhere gets a world-class education, from the day they’re born until the day they graduate college. That means investing in early childhood education. It means that we need to recruit an army of new teachers by not just talking about how great teachers are, but rewarding them for their greatness with better pay and more support. and it means that in this country–in this global economy–we will not create a small class of the educated few by allowing thousands and thousands of young people to be priced out of college year after year.

Ironically, Obama highlighted early childhood education as a response to global competition in Indiana–one of just 12 states nationally that doesn’t have a publicly funded pre-k program! Governor Mitch Daniels hasn’t proposed increasing spending for pre-k, either. All in all, Indiana doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to early education. But the state is making some progress, providing $58.9 million for the full-day kindergarten grant program for the 2008-09 school year.

In contrast, North Carolina is well-known in early education circles for its Smart Start early childhood program, started under the leadership of then-Governor Jim Hunt in 1993. Smart Start is a public-private partnership that provides local partnerships in every county in the state with funds they can use for a variety of activities to improve childcare quality, access, and early learning–a model that has much in common with Obama’s state early learning challenge grant proposals. Because Smart Start was one of the first such initiatives nationally, North Carolina became known as a national leader on early education. In 2001, the state added a “More at Four” state-funded pre-k program to complement Smart Start by providing high-quality pre-k to at-risk four-year-olds; today the program serves 15% of North Carolina four-year-olds and is one of only 2 states to meet all 10 of the National Institute for Early Education Research‘s state pre-k quality standards. It’s also one of only 9 states that guarantee universal access to full-day kindergarten.

Because of its leadership on early education, the Tar Heel state would be well-positioned to take advantage of both Obama’s and Clinton’s early education proposals, should one of them become president. The Hoosier State, in contrast, has a lot of work ahead on early education.