Pre-K for PA Lauds Continued Investment in High-Quality Pre-K
Harrisburg, PA (June 27, 2019)–In the final FY 2019-20 budget agreement, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania continued to make progress on behalf of its youngest learners by prioritizing expanded access to high-quality pre-k.
The principal partners of Pre-K for PA issued the following statement regarding the increased investment:
“The Pre-K for PA campaign, representing tens of thousands of Pennsylvania families, appreciate that lawmakers in Harrisburg understand the irrefutable value of investing in high-quality pre-k. We applaud Governor Wolf and the legislature for maintaining the political will to continue to invest in greater access to high-quality pre-k for yet another year.
“Research shows that high-quality, publicly funded pre-k benefits children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. From birth to age five is the most rapid period of brain development in a child’s life and the nurturing interactions that children experience in high-quality early learning programs are key to their future success. This is why in every corner of the commonwealth, across all demographics, an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians support investing additional state dollars to expand access to high quality pre-k.
“We all know that there is more work to be done, but today represents another milestone as we chip away at the number of children who are missing out on this once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.”
The goal of the non-partisan Pre-K for PA campaign is that by 2022 every at-risk child will have access to a high-quality pre-kindergarten program and that middle-income families will more easily afford these services for their children. High-quality pre-k is delivered in Pennsylvania in a variety of settings: school districts, Head Start centers, licensed private academic nursery schools, home-based care, and roughly half in STAR-3 and -4 Child Care centers.
Pre-K for PA is an issue campaign supported by individuals and organizations across Pennsylvania who believe that investing in our children is the right choice and an urgent necessity. Its vision is that every 3- and 4-year-old in Pennsylvania will have access to high-quality pre-k. For more information visit www.prekforpa.org.
Morning Call: Your View by retired Allentown police chief: ‘Spend more on potential, less on penitentiaries’
June 22, 2019 by Roger MacLean
If you happen to be looking for high school dropouts, check out Pennsylvania’s state prisons. Four of the 10 inmates sent there in 2018 did not have high school diplomas, according to Michele Hiester, the chief of research and evaluation for the state Department of Corrections.
And if you want to know about young people entangled in the criminal justice system, you’ll find that 13 out of every 100 arrests in Pennsylvania involves someone aged 17 to 24.
Those who commit property and violent crimes leave behind a trail of victims whose sense of personal security has been shattered forever.
Pennsylvania’s law enforcement professionals are tough on criminals because it is their job and their mission, but we know that safer communities start with diverting youth from lives of crime in the first place. We can fight crime by assuring that each Pennsylvania child earns a high school diploma and grows up to lead a productive, law-abiding life.
This path demands a continuum of public investment in childhood, building a foundation of success from birth through graduation. As Pennsylvania’s policymakers set priorities for next year’s state budget, they should seek to:
∗ Strengthen families through voluntary home visiting programs. In 2017 there were 4,836 substantiated reports of child abuse in Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. Children who are victims of abuse are more likely to become involved in crime later, most experts agree.
Home visiting is a proven and powerful prevention tool. Trained home visitors coach parents in healthy child development and how to manage the stress that often triggers abuse. Research shows that children are healthier and families are more self-sufficient.
∗ Grow access to early education. From birth to age 5, the brain builds 1 million neural connections a second. These connections are meant to encourage learning, impulse control and physical health, but first, they must be “hard-wired” in place. That is the role of high-quality pre-K and child care, especially when it helps at-risk children overcome the long-term consequences of hardship and trauma at home.
∗ Adequate and equitable K-12 education funding. High school dropouts are more likely to end up in prison. The seeds of dropping out are planted in early school years, when students fall so far behind academically that they never catch up. Many attend severely financially distressed schools, where classroom amenities are skimpy and career-exploration opportunities are scarce.
It’s time to spend more on potential, and less on penitentiaries. Our children will be better educated and our communities will be safer.
Roger J. MacLean is president of the Allentown City Council and a retired Allentown police chief.
View the article here.
PennLive: OpEd: Investing in early childhood education reduces crime and saves taxpayer dollars
June 1, 2019 by Dauphin County Fran Chardo, District Attorney
At-risk children face so many challenges throughout their lives. One of the greatest accomplishments they can attain that dramatically reduces their likelihood of engaging in criminal activity is graduation from high school.
We can help start them on the right path to a high school diploma and give their parents some of the skills that they may not have learned in their own childhood by providing these children with access to high-quality, publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs.
This access is not something that we here in Dauphin County or any single county can accomplish alone. Currently, we are only serving one-third of eligible high-risk children in the County. We can and must do more because this investment pays such tremendous dividends.
Quality pre-k programs return an average benefit to society of up to $27,000 for every child served. This is a measure of the benefits in both cutting crime and the cost of incarceration, reducing other costs such as special education and grade retention, and increasing participants’ future wages. Applying that research-based cost savings estimate to the 5,500 additional low-income Pennsylvanian children who would be served by the proposed $50 million funding increase for the Pre-K Counts and Head Start State Supplemental Assistance programs in 2019-2020 state budget, we could realize almost $150 million in societal benefits over their lifetimes.
Quite simply, increasing access to pre-k leads to more kids succeeding in school and saving taxpayer funds for years to come. When these preschoolers arrive in kindergarten and grade school classrooms, their teachers can focus more on teaching and less on classroom management because of fewer behavioral challenges.
Early intervention in the form of a high-quality pre-k program is a vital first step in providing a stable, nurturing environment for children living in adverse circumstances and developing strong parental support. If children lack early positive influences and see parents going to prison as “the way life is” rather than as a life-changing event, it can be easy for them to go down the same road.
I have spent my career serving our citizens through the criminal justice system. But I believe that we cannot arrest or prosecute our way out of the problems we face here in Dauphin County.
We need to use all resources at our disposal to give parents the tools they need to do the best job they can, while also investing in education to set our children up for a bright future to start a career, serve in the military or go college rather than facing the inside of a courtroom or a jail cell.
For these reasons, I believe that public investment in our youngest learners must be a continued budgetary priority. During this graduation season, let us turn our attention to the state budget and increase our investment in pre-k.
Read the oped here.
Pennsylvania Capital Star: Pennsylvania’s kindergarten teachers ask state lawmakers for more pre-K funding
May 29, 2019 by Elizabeth Hardison
The fight to secure more funding for high-quality early education in Pennsylvania has a new ally: the state’s kindergarten teachers.
A survey by the Pennsylvania State Education Association found nearly unanimous support for publicly funded pre-kindergarten education among the union’s members who teach children that age.
The results were released Tuesday by Pre-K for PA, a coalition of educators and education advocates that seeks to expand access to early education programs for Pennsylvania’s preschool-age children.
Members of the campaign appeared at Hamilton Elementary School in Carlisle, Cumberland County on Tuesday to tout the findings of the survey and call for additional funding for early education programs.
Ninety-six percent of the teachers surveyed by PSEA agree that students who attend pre-K are more prepared for kindergarten, they said. In addition, 98 percent said that high-quality, publicly funded pre-K is an important tool for preparing at-risk children for kindergarten.
A report that detailed the results did not disclose the survey’s methods or sample size.
According to a state Department of Education report, more than 115,000 children living in deep poverty did not have access to publicly funded pre-k programs in the 2016-17 school year.
Teachers say that children who arrive in kindergarten without pre-K experience have lower literacy and emotional readiness than their peers who did attend pre-K.
Read the full article here.
Kindergarten Teachers Survey Backs Research Showing Social-Emotional Benefits of High-Quality Pre-K
Report Highlights Unmet Need and Makes Case for Funding Increases for
High-Quality Pre-K in the 2019-20 State Budget
Harrisburg, PA (May 28, 2019)—The Pre-K for PA Campaign today released Ready to Succeed: Kindergarten Teachers Support Investments in High-Quality Pre-k, a report based on findings of a survey conducted with campaign partner the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), seeking the perceptions of kindergarten members about the role that access to high-quality, publicly funded pre-k plays in school readiness.
PSEA Treasurer Jeff Ney says the results show resounding support for high-quality pre-k among those surveyed, with 96 percent of elementary school teachers agreeing that students who attend a high-quality pre-k program are ready for success in kindergarten, and 98 percent agreeing that high-quality, publicly funded pre-k is an important tool for preparing at-risk children for kindergarten.
“Phrasing quality pre-k as ‘an important tool’ was intentional in this survey,” Ney said. “Kindergarten teachers know and understand that a quality pre-k experience provides each child entering kindergarten with a growth mindset and a readiness to succeed. Their personal experiences mirror what researchers have uncovered – that children who attend high-quality pre-k have a solid foundation for learning, which promotes increased student growth and achievement.”
Research shows that access to high-quality, publicly funded pre-k benefits children socially and emotionally, helps cognitive development through physical activity, promotes healthy brain development through positive interactions and helps them develop early literacy skills.
Responses from the kindergarten teachers surveyed support this research. The top three skills kindergarten teachers found to be most important for early learning programs to focus on to ensure incoming students are ready for a successful kindergarten year were physical well-being and motor development, emotional development and social development.
Miranda Clash, a kindergarten teacher at Hamilton Elementary School in the Carlisle Area School District in Cumberland County who took the survey, said, “Students who attend high-quality pre-k programs come into kindergarten ready to succeed. They have already practiced essential learning behaviors, know how to regulate their emotions, interact appropriately with peers, and have a solid foundation of language and background knowledge onto which they can add new learning. For students who have had a high-quality pre-k experience, I don’t have to spend as much time teaching these prerequisites to academic learning.”
Kari King, President and CEO of Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a founding member of the Pre-K for PA Campaign, said that while it’s no surprise that kindergarten teachers support programs that help students succeed in their classrooms, their collective voice is important.
“Almost immediately, kindergarten teachers can determine the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in their classrooms – or those children who have had access to high-quality pre-k and those who have not,” she said. “Investments in high-quality pre-k have a significant return on investment for our children, schools and communities. However, the state is not investing enough to ensure access for the children who need it the most.”
More than 97,000 – or 56 percent – of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds do not have access. The Pre-K for PA Campaign is calling for a $50 million increase in the 2019-20 state budget; $40 million for Pre-K Counts and $10 million for the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program (HSSAP). This investment will provide access to an additional 5,500 children.
The report notes that the Commonwealth still ranks 18th of the 30 states investing in high-quality pre-k, and aggressive steps must be taken to put Pennsylvania children on a level playing field with their peers in those states.
Ready to Succeed: Kindergarten Teachers Support Investments in High-Quality Pre-k is available at http://www.prekforpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/PPC-Pre-K-Report-Online.pdf.
Pre-K for PA is an issue campaign supported by individuals and organizations across Pennsylvania who believe that investing in our children is the right choice and an urgent necessity. Our vision is that every 3- and 4-year-old in Pennsylvania will have access to high-quality pre-k. We will not endorse nor oppose candidates, but rather we will advocate on behalf of this vision for Pennsylvania’s children, schools and communities. For more information www.prekforpa.org.
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