Everyone Loves Pre-K, But No One’s Asking the Key Question: How Do We Train Early Educators?

Conor P. Williams wrote for the 74 Million about early education policy:

As I’ve recently written, most of the hottest K–12 topics are already settled for the 2016 election cycle. But that doesn’t mean that education is going to be entirely relegated to the sidelines. Keep an eye on early education policy, where various candidates have strong interest in and credentials for making their mark with new, interesting (or, erm, “interesting”) proposals. If you’ve been a combatant in — or just an observer of — the last decade of K–12 battles, it’s time to get ready for a crash course in a whole new realm of edu-politics. So: here’s a guide to sorting serious early education programs (especially pre-K) from the campaign trail posturing.

The usual case for early education is already well established in American public discourse. Research shows that low-income children fall behind their wealthier peers’ language development almost from birth. By age three, the children from the poorest American families have heard an average of 30 million fewer words than children from the wealthiest families. These gaps only grow in the years before elementary school.