By Tom Ridge, Mark Schweiker, Ed Rendell, Tom Corbett, Tom Wolf
For more than two decades, Pennsylvania has been investing in our youngest learners.
Year after year, budget after budget, across party lines and administrations, we’ve taken meaningful steps forward in growing access to Head Start and Pre-K Counts to help more children thrive in their earliest years and setting the stage for future success.
To let that progress slip away now would be a big mistake.
Research has long shown the importance of investing in high-quality pre-K education for young children to improve short- and long-term outcomes in academic achievement and even lifelong success. This is especially true for children living in low-income families, children of color and others facing barriers to achieving academic success throughout their school years.
In 2020, The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill released an independent analysis on the effect of participation in the Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts program. The result: children who participated had significantly higher levels of language skills and math skills compared to non-participants.
These early positive gains put children on a trajectory of success making them more likely to graduate high school and better prepared for college, career, or even military service. In addition to the positive academic and social gains for children, for every dollar spent on quality pre-K, taxpayers see a strong return on investment in the form of reduced need for special education, social services, and other public support down the line.
Results like this are why Pennsylvania voters of all backgrounds, from all corners of the commonwealth, unanimously agree (98 percent) that early childhood education is important to helping our children lead healthy and productive lives.
It also explains why 73 percent of Pennsylvania voters support increasing state funding so more children can have access to pre-K.
Pennsylvanians should be proud of how far our commonwealth has come in providing pre-K to our youngest learners with more than 66,000 three- and four-year-olds having access. However, this represents only 44 percent of eligible children, leaving almost 85,000 children on the sidelines each year.
Better than anyone, we can appreciate the tough decisions that state lawmakers must make to balance the state budget. Given the strong research and public support, nothing should stand in the way of continued investment and strengthening of our commonwealth’s pre-K programs.
Lawmakers must work together to address challenges facing the system like the early learning teacher shortage that is jeopardizing the ability to serve additional children in pre-K and child care centers across the state
We must stay on the path of progress for our children, for our communities, and for the commonwealth we all proudly served.
