Pre-K Momentum from Business Leaders and Red States

The idea of expanding access to preschool and early learning programs received a big push this week. More than 300 companies and business leaders signed a letter to President Obama and members of Congress, asking them to put more focus on early childhood policy to ensure a “well-prepared workforce.”

“We see other countries investing in their young children both for the long-term benefits of a stronger workforce and the current benefits that come from enhancing the productivity of parents,” the letter says. “To compete, we have to do the same.”

The letter calls on policy makers to:

• Prioritize programs with proven benefits for children and society, such as quality early education for children ages birth to five, home visiting and health care
• Address children in the entire prenatal to age five spectrum, and their parents
• Focus first on children from low- to moderate-income families and other children at risk for school failure
• Give parents high quality options, using a variety of partners and settings that includes the private sector
• Encourage federal and state programs to meet higher quality standards, while also allowing state flexibility to deliver services in a variety of ways
• Include rigorous evaluations that document if resources are achieving improved outcomes for children and promote continuous improvement

The letter includes the names of insurance firms, banks, automotive and energy companies, and more. Also included are multiple Chambers of Commerce in cities that are the economic drivers for states with conservative credentials, such as Louisiana and Kentucky. (In fact, Kentucky’s business leaders are all over this letter, including Dave Adkission, CEO of the Kentucky State Chamber of Commerce.)

ReadyNation and America’s Promise Alliance coordinated the signatories and published the letter on Wednesday. (Full disclosure: My husband Rob Krupicka is a consultant to ReadyNation.)

The publicity from the business leaders came during a week in which the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continued to call for more investment in early childhood as part of reforming our education system and preparing the workforce of the future. Duncan spoke at The Brookings Institution on Wednesday, in an event hosted by the Center on Children and Families at Brookings and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and described the ideas behind the President Obama’s proposal to assist state-run programs that provide high-quality early learning to children from infancy through age 5, with a focus on children in low-income families. The conversation was wide-ranging, with some focus on how to elevate the quality of birth-to-5 programs, including but not limited to preschool for 3 and 4 year olds. Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, concluded the forum by sharing his research findings based on scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that show a positive correlation between NAEP scores and preschool attendance. (Video and audio from the event available here.)

Duncan continues the focus on preschool today with a visit to Georgia, another red state that has been lauded for its early childhood policies. He was scheduled to appear at Boyd Elementary School in Atlanta for a “town hall” with Gov. Nathan Deal and Mayor Kasim Reed to highlight the President’s proposal.

In the next week, child advocates hope to keep the momentum going with an Early Learning Day of Action on June 5, organized by a coalition of early childhood organizations called the Strong Start for Children campaign.  ChildCareAware, a nonprofit organization focused on improving access to high-quality child care, will host an online conversation on Twitter @usachildcare with Duncan (@arneduncan) from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET. that day, using the hashtag #PreKForAll.