Even if they've never seen the statistics touting its benefits, America's teachers understand the value and importance of high-quality early-childhood education programs - they live the results every school day.
Research confirms the benefits of children attending these programs. Upon entering kindergarten, they have better language, reading, math and social skills.
They also have higher scores on standardized tests and higher graduation rates, and fewer grade retentions and less remediation.
Early-childhood education helps parents, too.
Access to high-quality child care translates into higher earnings and more job stability for employees, both single- and two-parent working families. And common sense tells us that a parent who is worried about his or her child during the workday is going to be distracted and experience higher rates of absenteeism.
In the five-county Philadelphia region, just 17 percent (1 in 6) of 3- and 4-year olds were enrolled in publicly funded pre-kindergarten in 2009.
Only 2 percent of children from birth to age 5 in this region have access to high-quality child care, according to the state's Keystone STARS system for rating quality child care.
Lyndon Johnson, the only 20th century president who was a teacher, recognized the importance of education before embarking on a career in politics.
Haunted by the "first lessons in poverty" he saw in his native Texas, Johnson created the Head Start program.
WHEN HE returned to that same elementary school some 38 years later, extolling the new reading, health and child-nutrition programs ushered in as a result of the legislation he championed, Johnson told the students, "If your education falters or fails, everything else that we attempt as a nation will fail. If you fail, America will fail."
