Early Childhood Education

Floor Speech

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION -- (Senate - January 16, 2009)

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I began my career as a preschool teacher back in my home State of Washington. That background has given me valuable insight into how important early childhood education is throughout a person's life.

As a preschool teacher, I could tell from the first day which kids in my class had parents at home who read to them. At 4 years old, those kids were already ahead of their classmates because they had been introduced to words and books, and they were interested in learning.

I have been proud to work here in the Senate to support education programs like Head Start that help more kids get an equal start in school. So I rise today to talk about two bills I reintroduced this week with my colleague on the other side of the aisle, Senator Bond, as well as Senator Clinton.

The bills--the Education Begins at Home Act and the Ready to Learn Act--are a pair designed to help prepare children for school by focusing on their learning at home and at preschool and childcare programs.

Both of these bills are based on research, and they expand on programs and efforts we already know work. They also have one component I especially like--they don't just focus on teachers--they support parents learning how to give their kids a healthy start. So I would like to spend a moment describing them.

The first--the Education Begins at Home Act--would create the first Federal stream of money to help teach parents how to care for their kids, starting at birth.

The bill would enable State and local governments to create programs that teach parents about healthy parent-child relationships, about boosting child development, about the demands and stress associated with caring for babies, about how to deal with difficult behavior, and about how to recognize postpartum depression.

Most of us here know how difficult it is to be a new parent--especially when you are under stress because of work or military service. The programs this bill would create will help prevent child abuse and teach parents about how their children grow and develop emotionally and intellectually.

I know how important the Parents as Teachers Program is to families in Washington State with young children, and I believe we need to expand on the success of this program and others around the country.

The second bill builds on the first by creating a competitive matching grant program within No Child Left Behind. It would fund high quality early childhood programs aimed at promoting school readiness for low-income children, particularly 4 year olds. And it would help reduce class sizes, increase teacher salaries, and require States to report regularly on the effectiveness of these programs.

Research shows that children who get good prekindergarten education are less likely to fall behind or need special education services--and they are more likely to graduate from high school.

To give you just one example, kids who learn the names and sounds of letters before they enter kindergarten are 20 times more likely to read simple words by the end of kindergarten. And children who don't learn the same skill before they start school often fail to catch up--ever.

In other words, the early childhood education programs--like those we fund in this bill--are a great investment that will pay off in dividends later. They save money in the long run and help kids get the best possible start in life.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I have been a strong supporter of early childhood education for my entire career. But given our economic crisis, investments like the ones I am talking about today are more important than ever before.

I believe that strengthening our schools and making sure our kids are prepared for tomorrow's workplace are going to be the keys to economic recovery. We need to build a workforce that is the most competitive in the world so that we can recruit and hold onto good-paying jobs. And we can't do it unless all of our children get the strongest possible start in life.

So I urge my colleagues to support these bills and help our kids get on a path to learn and succeed.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Source