PennLive: Pennsylvania needs to double-down on early childhood education:
A bipartisan polling team– Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews — share their findings on pre-k in Pennsylvania:
“Voters strongly value education and believe that pre-K education helps children arrive to Kindergarten (and beyond) ready to learn. Voters believe pre-K can improve a child’s social skills, which helps them through grade school. They see the long-term benefits in terms of better test scores, graduation rates, and lifetime earnings and employment.
They overwhelmingly agree that the more kids who have access to high-quality pre-k, the better it is for ALL students in kindergarten classrooms, so teachers aren’t stretched doing remediation and classrooms aren’t disrupted.
And voters are right: The benefits of pre-k, both short and long-term – for kids, for schools and for the economic benefits – are indisputable fact.”
Read the full guest column at pennlive.com.