Pre-K: Thinking beyond the A-B-Cs A REVOLUTION IN LEARNING BEGINS WITH THE VERY YOUNG

When I first campaigned for governor, back in 2001 and 2002, one of my questions to teachers and parents and others I encountered in my travels statewide was this: "If you had just one dollar to put into education, where would you put it?" Almost universally, the answer was pre-K.

Over the past few years, there's been a revolution under way in Tennessee. A revolution in the way we think about learning--a revolution based on the realization that it is never too early to open the doors of education and opportunity to our young people.

Five years after those conversations on the campaign trail, Tennessee has gone from a small pilot project serving 3,000 students to a statewide voluntary pre-K program that, as of this school year, is serving 17,000 students in more than 900 classrooms.

The Old Testament Proverb says, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."

Preschool may have begun as a program for at-risk children, but today it is truly a program for every child. Too many children from families of all means just aren't ready for the rigors of school. One study found that almost half of all children who don't know their A-B-Cs when they begin kindergarten are from middle-class families.

Access to a quality pre-K classroom gives all children--regardless of race or family income--a leg up in school. Most importantly, it clears the way to an important "signpost" of a child who will do well in school--reading at grade level by the end of third grade.

In the years since we first proposed expanding access to pre-K, I spoke to hundreds of teachers and principals. To a person, they told me they can tell immediately which children have participated in a pre-K program and which ones have not.

Phil Bredesen is governor of the state of Tennessee.

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Date published: 2/10/2008