Heard in the Forum: Getting the Most Bang for the 700 Million Bucks

In the Early Ed Forum online discussion space, we explain the budget bill that Congress recently passed to fund the federal government through September 30, 2011. The budget bill included $700 million in new funding for Race to the Top (RTTT), a highly visible education reform competitive program, and added early learning as one of five priorities that guide the RTTT competition.

While lauding the opportunity for additional funding for early learning, some early childhood advocates have expressed that they would like to see a significant portion of the $700 million set aside for a separate competition for early learning, akin to the previously proposed Early Learning Challenge fund.

In the forum, we raise salient questions about the advantages and disadvantages of a separate competition for early learning.

• Could a cohesive RTTT do more to encourage states to better align early learning programs – serving infants, toddlers and pre-kindergarteners – with the early grades of elementary school? Or would a RTTT with early learning as one of five priorities not do enough?
• Should there be an additional separate competition with a focus on meeting the needs of infants, toddlers and preschoolers?
• And if there is a separate competition, how can we continue to urge states and districts to craft policies that recognize early education as a birth through third grade continuum and avoid reinforcing the detachment that still exists between early childhood and K-12 systems?

We hope you will share your views by joining this conversation. Log on to the online forum to comment, start another discussion or explore the resources available. 

The Early Ed Forum is organized around topics like funding, teacher quality, family engagement, and more. Early Ed Watch hopes it can become a useful resource and gathering spot for interested parties at the local, state and federal level. We invite you to join the discussion and share resources you have found to be helpful.

You can do so by creating a login at http://earlyedforum.newamerica.net/forum. If you are already a forum member and would like to reset your password or username, click here.

Hope to see you online!