Massachusetts Advocates Launch Latest State Early-Education Campaign

On October 23, 2002, a coalition of early-childhood-education leaders in Massachusetts announced their intent to launch a campaign for statewide universal preschool and kindergarten for three-, four- and five-year-olds. The Early Education for All Campaign, which is coordinated by Margaret A. Blood, President for the non-profit Strategies for Children, Inc., plans to unveil draft legislation calling for improvement of Massachusetts' already-existing pre-school and kindergarten programs.

The legislation, which outlines a ten-year plan to coordinate the efforts of public and private programs and calls for a state commitment to improve the training and raise the salaries of early-childhood workers, is designed in part to counter Acting Governor Jane Swift's recent budget cuts to full-day kindergarten. Even in a time of budget shortfall, Blood argues, Massachusetts should be planning for the future. Though 72 percent of the state's 244,464 children currently attend preschool, Blood says that programs are too fragmented, and a 2001 Wellesley College study found that 66 percent of private preschool classrooms "do not provide the type of rich learning environment essential to children's language and cognitive development."

While Barbara Gardner, the Massachusetts Department of Education's associate commissioner of school readiness, has expressed concern about the Campaign's plan, she admits that Massachusetts is falling behind other states in early-childhood education.

Activists in many states are advocating for early-childhood education. In August 2002, New Jersey's Education Law Center and Rutgers University Institute on Education Law and Policy launched "Starting at 3," a national project to promote early-childhood education, and Los Angeles County officials voted to create a universal pre-kindergarten program funded by a tobacco tax. Georgia publicly funds pre-kindergarten with certified teachers for 70 percent of its four-year-olds, and Florida voters will decide on November 5 whether to authorize state funding for universal pre-kindergarten for four-year-olds by 2005.

Prepared October 23, 2002