Early Education in the Democratic Platform

New America is hosting a forum today on the 2008 Democratic Party Platform. You can check it out and watch live streaming video (or archived video after the event is over) here.

We had a chance to look at a draft of the platform, and found some exciting changes to the education section. Most importantly for early education, the platform gives increased prominence to early education. While the 2004 platform mentioned school readiness, preschool, and Head Start in passing, the 2008 platform has a section specifically focused on early childhood education:

Pre-school
We will make quality, affordable early childhood care and education available to every American child from the day he or she is born. Our Children’s First Agenda, including increases in Head Start and Early Head Start and investments in high-quality Pre-K, will improve quality and provide learning and support to families with children ages zero to five. Our Presidential Early Learning Council will coordinate these efforts.

We are not exactly thrilled that the platform’s language maintains a sharp division between preschool and K-12 schooling, but we’re still very pleased to see a greater recognition of the importance of preschool and early childhood education prominently highlighted in the Democratic platform.

A couple other developments are also worth mentioning briefly. This platform has a stronger reform focus than the previous one, emphasizing that we need both reforms and resources to improve our public schools. It also has a new paragraph supporting educational innovation:

We will promote innovation within our public schools–because research shows that resources alone will not create the schools that we need to help our children succeed. We need to adapt curricula and the school calendar to the needs of the 21st century; reform the schools of education that produce most of our teachers; promote public charter schools that are accountable; and streamline the certification process for those with valuable skills who want to shift careers and teach.

Other noteworthy additions include new language supporting transitional bilingual education programs for English language learner students, who the 2004 platform did not mention, and an increased emphasis on importance of parental responsibility for student learning. Perhaps most strikingly, though, the platform no longer contains language expressing opposition to private school vouchers–in fact, the word voucher doesn’t appear anywhere in the document!

We’re looking forward to hearing what others think of these changes, and also to seeing what the Republican platform says about education when we have a chance to see it. Check out today’s event at New America, and stay tuned here for updates on early education in the campaign.

UPDATE (1:27): While speaking at today’s New America event, Obama adviser and Platform author Karen Kornbluh specifically calls out early childhood education as an important part of Obama’s and the Democrats’ education policy agenda to keep students from dropping out of school! (1:33) Ben Allen from the National Head Start Association asks Kornbluh about Obama’s vision for Head Start and Early Head Start–an excellent question at a time when Obama is proposing both increases in Head Start funding and new, separate pre-k investments. Kornbluh says Head Start and Early Head Start are “very central” to Obama’s plans for early childhood education, but doesn’t elaborate further. Kornbluh got five questions on education during this event–more than on any other topic–so there’s plenty in the video for folks interested in education to check out. (1:40) Kornbluh comments that some of the education policy ideas in the platform might have seemed “edgy” four or eight years ago (we’d guess she’s referring to support for charter schools, support for teacher incentive pay, and some other ideas related to innovation), but are largely consensus ideas in the Democratic party today.