Washington, D.C.-- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced the Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 1999 (Universal Pre-K), to begin the process of providing universal, public pre-kindergarten education for every child, regardless of income. The Congresswoman hopes to make her bill a part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), when it is re-authorized during the 106th Congress. Her bill would provide a historic breakthrough in elementary school education by encouraging school districts to add a grade at age four as an option for every child.

The Universal Pre-K Act responds both to the needs of parents for educational childcare and to 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 will provide a beneficial educational environment in existing school systems, adding a new grade for four-year-olds similar to five-year-old kindergartens now routinely available in the United States.

The Universal Pre-K Act encourages school districts across the United States to apply to the Department of Education for grants to start four-year-old kindergartens. Grants of various kinds funded under Title X, Part I of the ESEA totaled nearly $100 million during fiscal year 1999, with a median grant of $375,000. The grants seek to encourage school systems to use the experience acquired with the federal funding provided by the Norton bill to adopt four-year-old kindergartens for all children in the district in regular classrooms with teachers equivalent to those in other grades as part of 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 the new scientific evidence concerning the importance of brain development in the early years should compel the expansion of early childhood education to all of our children. Traditionally, early learning programs have been available only to the affluent . . . and to poor families in programs such as Head Start." The Universal Pre-K Act will 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 said that day care, most of it with an inadequate educational emphasis, costs an average of $4,000 per year while undergraduate tuition at the University of Virginia costs about $4,800 per year. Yet, over 60% of mothers with children under age six work, a proportion that is increasing as more mothers rapidly enter the labor force, including mothers leaving welfare, who also have no long term access to child care.

Norton 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."

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