[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 14, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1873-E1874]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  INTRODUCTION OF THE UNIVERSAL PRE-KINDERGARTEN AND EARLY CHILDHOOD 
                         EDUCATION ACT OF 1999

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 14, 1999

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to introduce the Universal 
Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 1999 (Universal 
Pre-K), a bill to begin the process of introducing universal pre-
kindergarten into the nation's public schools by adding an additional 
grade in elementary school as an option for every 4-year-old child, and 
in some cases under 4, regardless of income. I seek to include my bill 
in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is 
scheduled to be reauthorized during this Congress. The authorization 
task will be to reshape the federal government's role to fit the 
challenges of the next century, which parents and school systems are 
already experiencing. In particular, the new science on brain 
development, decades of successful experience with high quality Head 
Start programs, and definitive data from an array of the best experts 
all indicate that the expansion of universal pre-kindergarten is the 
next frontier in education.
  The bill I introduce today adds a section to Title X, Part I of ESEA, 
entitled the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, aimed at

[[Page E1874]]

using schoolhouses as centers of neighborhoods. Under this new program, 
any school district in the United States may apply to the Department of 
Education to fund pre-kindergarten educational classrooms. Grants 
funded under this Sec.  10905 of the ESEA totaled nearly $100 million 
during fiscal year 1999, at an average of $375,000 per three year 
grant. Universal Pre-K grants will seek to rapidly encourage school 
systems to permanently add pre-kindergarten classrooms to the 
elementary school grades and to their own school budgets, using the 
experience they acquire from the federally funded program. The bill 
will allow school districts throughout the United States to 
systematically begin organized 4-year-old classes to demonstrate how 
children respond to earlier child education. Districts will craft 
models for capitalizing on the elusive window for early brain 
development, and the pre-kindergartens will provide an alternative for 
desperate parents who today are left to daycare with little, if any, 
educational component, or to the homes of people with no background in 
child development. Because the programs must be in regular school 
buildings with teachers equivalent to those who teach in other grades, 
widespread problems with unqualified aids, non-compliant building codes 
or inadequate facilities will be eliminated automatically. The program 
in this bill would not displace existing daycare programs as an option. 
Its purpose is to encourage local school budgets based on demonstrated 
experience provided by grants under this bill.
  The new science shows that brain development determining lifelong 
learning begins much earlier in infants and children than was 
previously believed. The bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's 
Issues held hearings during the 105th Congress, which were among the 
first hearings to explore brain development in children from birth to 
age 3. Experts testified to new scientific evidence concerning the 
critical need for early brain stimulation beginning in infancy to 
assure that the child develops the necessary cognitive, linguistic, 
emotional and motor skills. During the early years, a child's brain 
begins to develop the neutral connections that lay the foundation for 
the rest of life. According to experts, the longer the brain grows 
without sufficient stimulation during these critical first years, the 
less likely the child is to develop fully the neutral connections 
needed for a wide variety of higher brain functions later in life. To 
lose the irreplaceable years at the beginning of a child's life when 
the brain is forming is to miss periods of development that cannot be 
retrieved.
  Early childhood education is not new, of course, but beginning 
education in the very first years has just begun to be deeply explored. 
As early as 1647, Massachusetts required that children as young as 
three years of age learn to read the Bible. German immigrants brought 
kindergarten, designed to be a ``play garden,'' to the United States in 
the mid-nineteenth century and often included children younger than 5 
years of age. As early childhood education spread in this country in 
the latter part of that century, states such as Vermont and Connecticut 
incorporated kindergarten into the public school system. For the most 
part, however, the kindergartens of the late nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries were supported by philanthropists as a way to free 
low-income mothers to work and to provide education as a way out of 
poverty. Today kindergarten is a universal option in the United States.
  More recently, we have seen great success in many early education 
programs, including many Head Start programs, which target low-income 
children beginning at age three through third grade. The success of 
high quality Head Start and other pre-kindergarten programs combined 
with the new scientific evidence concerning the importance of brain 
development in the early years should compel the expansion of early 
childhood education to all of our children. Traditionally, early 
learning programs have been available only to the affluent who have the 
resources to take advantage of preschool opportunities and to poor 
families in programs such as Head Start, who may need extra help. 
Research on high quality early learning programs uniformly demonstrates 
that graduates are less likely to be arrested than other students; are 
less likely to be held back; are less likely to need special education; 
and are more likely to achieve a higher level of education attainment.
  Parents of children under age 5 who attend daycare pay an average of 
$79 weekly, or $4,000 annually. Yet, undergraduate tuition at the 
University of Virginia is about $4,800 annually and about $6,000 at the 
University of Michigan. Over 60 percent of mothers with children under 
age 6 work, a proportion that is increasing as more women pour into the 
workforce, including welfare-to-work mothers now rapidly moving to 
jobs. For the average family, the need is palpable and the expense is 
exorbitant. The vast majority of families cannot afford the cost of 
childcare, with the result that parents place their children wherever 
an accessible place can be found, regardless of quality. Even 
subsidized early childhood education reaches only a small fraction of 
low-income children.

  This bill seeks to demonstrate that we can achieve meaningful and 
significant gains in preparing American children for a lifetime of 
learning by taking fuller advantage of the early malleability of their 
developing brains at an early age. The absence of viable options for 
working families to educate their children at the most important stage 
in life demands our immediate attention. Considering the staggering 
cost of daycare, the inaccessiblity of early education, and the 
opportunity earlier education offers to improve a child's chances in 
life, 4-year-old kindergarten is overdue. I urge my colleagues to use 
the opportunity presented by the reauthorization of ESEA to make up for 
lost time by incorporating the Universal Pre-KindergartenAct.

                                 H.R.--

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Respresentatives 
     of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Universal Pre-Kindergarten 
     and Early Childhood Education Act of 1999''.

     SEC. 2. USE OF COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER FUNDS FOR PRE-
                   KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS.

       Section 10905 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
     of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 8245) is amended--
       (1) by striking ``Grants awarded'' and inserting ``(a) In 
     General.--Grants awarded'';
       (2) by inserting after ``may be used'' the following: ``to 
     plan, implement, or expand pre-kindergarten programs 
     described in subsection (b) or''; and
       (3) by adding at the end the following new subsection:
       ``(b) Pre-Kindergarten Programs.--A pre-kindergarten 
     program described in this subsection is a program of a 
     community learning center that provides pre-kindergarten 
     curriculum and classes for students 4 years of age or younger 
     and is taught by teachers who possess equivalent or similar 
     qualifications to those of teachers of other grades in the 
     school involved.''.

     

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