PR- March 2, 2005: NORTON INTRODUCES BILL ON READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 2, 2005

NORTON INTRODUCES BILL ON READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY TO BRING
UNIVERSAL FOUR-YEAR-OLD KINDERGARTEN TO D.C. AND NATIONWIDE

Washington, D.C.-- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today chose Read Across America Day to introduce the Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 2005 (Universal Pre-K Act) 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 pre-school years which can best prepare them to do so,” Norton said. Her bill would provide a breakthrough in elementary school education by taking a first step at the federal level to provide initial funding specifically to encourage school districts themselves to add a grade to elementary schooling at age four as an option for every child. The District of Columbia

“I often read to kids on Read Across America Day,” Norton said. “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.” Norton, a graduate of the D.C. Public Schools, said the problems of D.C. children and millions of others who get to high school but read many years below grade level inspired her bill.

The Universal Pre-K Act responds both to the huge and growing needs of parents for educational child care 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 day care 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 a part of public school education. 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 the Norton 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.

In her statement of introduction, Congresswoman Norton said: "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.

Norton compared the cost of daycare, most of it offered today with an inadequate educational emphasis, at an average cost of $6,171 per year with 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, including mothers leaving welfare, who also have no long term access to child care.

The Congresswoman concluded in her statement of introduction: "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." is able to provide this schooling to only half of its children from local tax revenue.