Washington's missed opportunity for school readiness

WASHINGTON'S decision-makers missed an exciting opportunity this year to address what is a serious learning gap: only 50 percent of our young children are ready for kindergarten.

All parents want their children to succeed in school, but family income and a child's age often present stumbling blocks that make this difficult to achieve.

Children who turn 5 by Sept. 1 are automatically enrolled in kindergarten. Since Washington's Constitution declares that basic education is our state's paramount duty, we take for granted that any family, rich or poor, can send their child to public school for free. Public education is considered a key ingredient of American democracy.

But for children who are not 5 by Aug. 31, parents are usually on their own in helping their child prepare for success in school. Some kids get to go to a part-day preschool, at parent expense. But for many families, preschool is often too expensive.

In fact, since fewer and fewer families can afford to have a stay-at-home parent anyway, more children are in full-day child care, typically at enormous cost to their parents. Low-income at-risk families can rarely afford either quality child care or preschool for their children.

In response to this gap, the federal Head Start program was created to help low-income parents get their children ready for school. Kindergarten teachers immediately noticed the difference. But Head Start has never been adequately funded to serve all eligible children, even though slots are available only to families earning less than about $18,000 a year.

In response, Washington created its own state-funded program, Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP), to serve more of these at-risk children. Even so, Head Start and ECEAP programs fill up fast. Children then languish on waiting lists, often never served. We cannot imagine such a thing happening at our local elementary school. Whether a child comes from the poorest or richest family, schools are required to provide space to all children, entirely at taxpayer expense.

The 2008 Legislature created a Joint Taskforce on Basic Education to overhaul public-school financing. Republican and Democratic legislators, supported by a wide array of children's advocates, led the task force to recommend that preschool for at-risk children become part of our state's basic-education responsibility. Since numerous studies show that children unprepared for kindergarten are much less likely to succeed in school, assuring this readiness for at-risk children was deemed a crucial state priority.

A bipartisan coalition led the Legislature to pass the Education Finance Reform Act, sending the bill to the governor for signature.

The legislation allowed the state years of lead time to implement this reform, which mandated that all at-risk children eventually have voluntary access to preschool. Waiting lists for Head Start and ECEAP were to become a thing of the past, a giant step toward assuring that all children succeed in school.

But in a surprise move, Gov. Chris Gregoire, a strong supporter of early learning in the past, vetoed this entire section of the education-reform bill. She promised instead to propose legislation next year to create a state-supported preschool program for all children. This will be a tough battle.

The 2010 Legislature faces a very tight budget, and may hesitate to pass a major new program not financed through the basic-education-funding formula. The governor, joined by parents and other children's advocates, will have to work hard to bring their proposal to fruition.

Meanwhile, too many of Washington's preschool children will be told this September, "Sorry, this isn't your year." But if helping parents raise children who can succeed in school is one of our state's prime duties, we need to make it a reality for all our children.