[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 125 (Wednesday, August 1, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1674]
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 2007

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 31, 2007

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I am introducing today the Universal Pre-
kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 2007 (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 ages three and four as an option for every child.
  We cannot afford to continue to 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 when children should begin their 
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 aged children are rarely 
able to afford the stimulating educational environment necessary to 
ensure optimal brain development. Universal pre-K education would be a 
part of school systems, adding a new grade for three-and four-year-olds 
similar to five-year-old kindergarten programs now routinely available 
in the United States. The bill would eliminate some of the major 
shortcomings of the uneven commercial daycare now available and would 
assure the qualified teachers and safe facilities of public schools.
  This bill's introduction is particularly timely here in the District 
of Columbia, where more extensive integration of early childhood 
education is planned as part of a larger effort to improve D.C. public 
schools. A recent report highlighted the economic benefits of early 
childhood education, generating $221 million each year in the District 
while starting early to expand job, career, income, and academic 
prospects of children, decreasing the amount spent on social programs 
to address teen pregnancy, crime, and the like.
  Compare the cost of daycare, 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 percent 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.
  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 three and four-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 three and four-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 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.
  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, three and four-year-old kindergarten 
is overdue. The absence of viable options for working families demands 
our immediate attention.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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