Latest Pre-K News

The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announced that 9 states– California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington– will share in the $500 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge fund.  A total of 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico submitted  applications for the competitive grant program to improve early learning and development systems in states.  For more information, including applicants’ scores and comments, please see: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-earlylearningchallenge/awards.html.

The coalition has released The Importance of Aligning Pre-K Through 3rd Grade. The policy brief highlights effective P-3 strategies and best practices in states and districts throughout the country, and makes recommendations for how the federal government can help to support these efforts. In particular, it suggests federal policymakers: encourage the development of P-3 teaching credentials, support joint planning and professional development between early childhood providers and P-3 teachers, reduce parallel sets of regulations and reporting requirements across federal funding streams, and allow blending of federal and state early childhood education and care funding to strengthen systems building efforts.

The Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions committee approved a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on October 20 by a bipartisan vote of 15-7. The long-awaited bill is the product of months of negotiations between Chairman Tom Harkin and Ranking Member Michael Enzi. While the legislation falls short of the coalition’s goals to integrate pre-k into the nation’s public education system and establish a strong federal-state-local partnership in this effort, the bill does include a number of notable early education provisions. These include some of the Coalition’s own recommendations such as: the integration of pre-k and early education planning into school improvement strategies, greater focus on the alignment of K-12 and early learning standards, and the use of professional development funds for joint professional development for teachers, principals, and early childhood education and care program staff. A more detailed analysis of the early education provisions in the bill is available here.