[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E330-E331]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




INTRODUCING BILL TO BRING UNIVERSAL FOUR-YEAR-OLD KINDERGARTEN TO D.C. 
                             AND NATIONWIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                        of district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2005

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I am introducing today on Read Across 
America Day the Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood 
Education Act of 2005 (Universal Pre-K) to begin the process of 
providing universal, public school pre-kindergarten education for every 
child, regardless of income. The bill is meant to fill the gaping hole 
in the President's No Child Left Behind law, which requires elementary 
and secondary school children to meet more rigorous standards while 
ignoring the preschool years which can best prepare them to do so. My 
bill would provide a breakthrough in elementary school education by 
taking a step at the federal level to provide initial funding and, 
using such funding, to encourage school districts themselves to add a 
grade to elementary schooling at age four as an option for every child.
  I often read to kids on Read Across America Day. However, symbolic 
actions won't do as we blithely let the most fertile years for reading 
go by while we wonder why we can't teach Johnny to read. As the 
President presses No Child Left Behind into high schools, my bill asks 
him to begin at the beginning of a child's education.
  The Universal Pre-K Act responds both to the huge and growing needs 
of parents for educational childcare and to the new science showing 
that a child's brain development, which sets the stage for lifelong 
learning, begins much earlier than previously believed. However, 
parents who need childcare for their pre-K age children are rarely able 
to afford the stimulating educational environment necessary to ensure 
optimal brain development. Universal Pre-K would be a part of school 
systems, adding a new grade for 4-year-olds similar to 5-year-old 
kindergarten programs now routinely available in the United States. 
Norton said that the bill would eliminate some of the major 
shortcomings of the uneven commercial day care now available and would 
assure qualified teachers and safe facilities.
  Because of decades of refusal by Congress to approve the large sums 
necessary for universal health coverage, the Universal Pre-K Act 
encourages school districts across the United States to apply to the 
Department of Education for grants to establish 4-year-old 
kindergartens. Grants funded under Title IV of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would be available to school systems 
which agree in turn to use the experience acquired with the federal 
funding provided by my bill to then move forward, where possible, to 
phase in 4-year old kindergartens for all children in the school 
district in regular classrooms with teachers equivalent to those in 
other grades as part of their annual school district budgets.
  The success of high quality Head Start and other pre-kindergarten 
programs combined

[[Page E331]]

with new scientific evidence concerning the importance of brain 
development in the early years virtually mandate the expansion of early 
childhood education to all of our children. Traditionally, early 
learning programs have been available only to the affluent and to lower 
income families in programs such as Head Start. My bill provides a 
practiced way to gradually move to universal pre-school education. The 
goal of the Universal Pre-K Act is to bring the benefits of educational 
pre-K within reach of the great majority of American working poor, 
lower middle class, and middle class families, most of whom have been 
left out.
  In a letter to Congress last term opposing private school vouchers, 
City Council Member Kathy Patterson suggested that instead of vouchers, 
Congress should fund a number of unfunded D.C. public school 
priorities, including pre-K education for all 4-year old children. She 
said that although universal 4-year old pre-K was a top D.C. priority, 
the city has been able to provide this schooling to only half of its 
children from local tax revenue.
  Compare the cost of day care, most of it offered today with an 
inadequate educational emphasis, at an average cost of $6,171 per year 
to the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Virginia, which 
costs $6,785 per year. Yet, more than 60% of mothers with children 
under age six work. That proportion is rapidly increasing as more 
mothers enter the labor force, including mothers leaving welfare, who 
also have no long term access to child care.
  Considering the staggering cost of daycare, the inaccessibility of 
early education, and the opportunity earlier education offers to 
improve a child's chances in life, four-year-old kindergarten is 
overdue. The absence of viable options for working families demands our 
immediate attention.

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