INTRODUCTION OF THE UNIVERSAL PRE-KINDERGARTEN AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION ACT OF 1999 -- HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (Extensions of Remarks - September 14, 1999)

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HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1999

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to introduce the Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 1999 (Universal Pre-K), a bill to begin the process of introducing universal pre-kindergarten into the nation's public schools by adding an additional grade in elementary school as an option for every 4-year-old child, and in some cases under 4, regardless of income. I seek to include my bill in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is scheduled to be reauthorized during this Congress. The authorization task will be to reshape the federal government's role to fit the challenges of the next century, which parents and school systems are already experiencing. In particular, the new science on brain development, decades of successful experience with high quality Head Start programs, and definitive data from an array of the best experts all indicate that the expansion of universal pre-kindergarten is the next frontier in education.

The bill I introduce today adds a section to Title X, Part I of ESEA, entitled the 21st Century Community Learning Centers, aimed at
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using schoolhouses as centers of neighborhoods. Under this new program, any school district in the United States may apply to the Department of Education to fund pre-kindergarten educational classrooms. Grants funded under this § 10905 of the ESEA totaled nearly $100 million during fiscal year 1999, at an average of $375,000 per three year grant. Universal Pre-K grants will seek to rapidly encourage school systems to permanently add pre-kindergarten classrooms to the elementary school grades and to their own school budgets, using the experience they acquire from the federally funded program. The bill will allow school districts throughout the United States to systematically begin organized 4-year-old classes to demonstrate how children respond to earlier child education. Districts will craft models for capitalizing on the elusive window for early brain development, and the pre-kindergartens will provide an alternative for desperate parents who today are left to daycare with little, if any, educational component, or to the homes of people with no background in child development. Because the programs must be in regular school buildings with teachers equivalent to those who teach in other grades, widespread problems with unqualified aids, non-compliant building codes or inadequate facilities will be eliminated automatically. The program in this bill would not displace existing daycare programs as an option. Its purpose is to encourage local school budgets based on demonstrated experience provided by grants under this bill.

The new science shows that brain development determining lifelong learning begins much earlier in infants and children than was previously believed. The bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues held hearings during the 105th Congress, which were among the first hearings to explore brain development in children from birth to age 3. Experts testified to new scientific evidence concerning the critical need for early brain stimulation beginning in infancy to assure that the child develops the necessary cognitive, linguistic, emotional and motor skills. During the early years, a child's brain begins to develop the neutral connections that lay the foundation for the rest of life. According to experts, the longer the brain grows without sufficient stimulation during these critical first years, the less likely the child is to develop fully the neutral connections needed for a wide variety of higher brain functions later in life. To lose the irreplaceable years at the beginning of a child's life when the brain is forming is to miss periods of development that cannot be retrieved.

Early childhood education is not new, of course, but beginning education in the very first years has just begun to be deeply explored. As early as 1647, Massachusetts required that children as young as three years of age learn to read the Bible. German immigrants brought kindergarten, designed to be a ``play garden,'' to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and often included children younger than 5 years of age. As early childhood education spread in this country in the latter part of that century, states such as Vermont and Connecticut incorporated kindergarten into the public school system. For the most part, however, the kindergartens of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were supported by philanthropists as a way to free low-income mothers to work and to provide education as a way out of poverty. Today kindergarten is a universal option in the United States.

More recently, we have seen great success in many early education programs, including many Head Start programs, which target low-income children beginning at age three through third grade. 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 who have the resources to take advantage of preschool opportunities and to poor families in programs such as Head Start, who may need extra help. Research on high quality early learning programs uniformly demonstrates that graduates are less likely to be arrested than other students; are less likely to be held back; are less likely to need special education; and are more likely to achieve a higher level of education attainment.

Parents of children under age 5 who attend daycare pay an average of $79 weekly, or $4,000 annually. Yet, undergraduate tuition at the University of Virginia is about $4,800 annually and about $6,000 at the University of Michigan. Over 60 percent of mothers with children under age 6 work, a proportion that is increasing as more women pour into the workforce, including welfare-to-work mothers now rapidly moving to jobs. For the average family, the need is palpable and the expense is exorbitant. The vast majority of families cannot afford the cost of childcare, with the result that parents place their children wherever an accessible place can be found, regardless of quality. Even subsidized early childhood education reaches only a small fraction of low-income children.

This bill seeks to demonstrate that we can achieve meaningful and significant gains in preparing American children for a lifetime of learning by taking fuller advantage of the early malleability of their developing brains at an early age. The absence of viable options for working families to educate their children at the most important stage in life demands our immediate attention. Considering the staggering cost of daycare, the inaccessiblity of early education, and the opportunity earlier education offers to improve a child's chances in life, 4-year-old kindergarten is overdue. I urge my colleagues to use the opportunity presented by the reauthorization of ESEA to make up for lost time by incorporating the Universal Pre-KindergartenAct.

H.R.--
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Respresentatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
This Act may be cited as the ``Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 1999''.
Section 10905 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 8245) is amended--
(1) by striking ``Grants awarded'' and inserting ``(a) IN GENERAL.--Grants awarded'';
(2) by inserting after ``may be used'' the following: ``to plan, implement, or expand pre-kindergarten programs described in subsection (b) or''; and
(3) by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(b) PRE-KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS.--A pre-kindergarten program described in this subsection is a program of a community learning center that provides pre-kindergarten curriculum and classes for students 4 years of age or younger and is taught by teachers who possess equivalent or similar qualifications to those of teachers of other grades in the school involved.''.

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