After Congress dropped the Early Learning Challenge Fund from health care reform one of the brightest remaining legislative opportunities to improve early learning this year was K-12 reform.  But, as legislative days pass, it is unclear what, if anything, policymakers will do.

So far this year there has not been a lot of public movement – a series of congressional committee hearings and a wish list from progressives are some of the highlights – and that inaction raises questions about what Congress will accomplish in 2010 on rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

While key policymakers want to introduce and hopefully move a bill this year, progress may become difficult.

“I think that’s a pretty ambitious timetable,” Kathy Patterson, a senior government relations officer at the Pew Center on the States who follows the issue, said in an interview.  “I am not sure I would bet on it, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

While Patterson wouldn’t rule it out, as someone who covered Congress for a decade, I know with annual spending bills and other legislative priorities backing up, the odds are not good.

Congress has taken some steps.

Last week, Politics K-12 reported the Congressional Progressive Caucus included expanded support services for pre-kindergarten in its wish list for ESEA reform.  
The Caucus list had an entire section on early learning, which included:

• “Include integration of quality early learning programs into the ESEA reauthorization process as one of the foundations of education reform.”
• “Low-income children and English Language Learners must be prioritized to receive both child care, preschool and full-day Kindergarten services.”
• “Make competitive grants available to states for quality early childhood education.” –

 CPC Principles for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congressional Progressive Caucus, 6/14/10.

But, when key education policymakers met earlier this month about the bill none of them would say to Politics K-12 that “the reauthorization will definitely get done by the end of this Congress, the time line the administration had originally been shooting for.”

(Check out the Education Week blog’s full stories on the meeting and the caucus, and check the blog to track K-12 reform work in Congress.)

Congress is getting to work and this legislative session could see another round of debate, and maybe progress, on early learning ideas, with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act at the top of the agenda.

The debate over the key federal K-12 law has the potential to create one of the most fundamental shifts in education policy in recent years, linking early learning with the first years of elementary school and the overall school system.

Nothing is guaranteed – the Obama administration’s blueprint was fairly quiet on early learning – but interest groups are ramping up the pressure on the Democratically-controlled Congress to add child care, preschool and pre-kindergarten to the bill.

 “The problem is that it (the Obama administration’s blueprint) ignores the most rigorously evaluated and effective education reform of the last half-century: high-quality pre-kindergarten,” Marci Young, director of Pre-K Now, wrote in a guest blog post in the Washington Post. “To close achievement gaps and prepare students for success in school and in college, the administration and Congress have a clear option: build funding and other incentives for pre-K into the nation’s major education law.”

Pre-K Now also launched an email campaign, asking readers to send this message to policymakers in the nation’s capitol.

Congress has also begun work on its annual spending bills, and Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd and Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe are asking for $1 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start and another $1 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Zero to Three reported.

 “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 infused funding into child care and Early Head Start/Head Start that allowed expansions in those programs within states. Since states created new opportunities for infants and toddlers to be served in child care and Early Head Start, it is important to maintain funding levels through appropriations that allow children to continue receiving services. – Zero to Three wrote in a request to readers to email their senators in another lobbying campaign.

Stay tuned for another busy year for early learning issues and advocates in the other Washington.

Congress has begun debating how to revamp the No Child Left Behind Act and one of the nation’s newest superintendents has an idea lawmakers should keep in mind: Education reform begins with child care, preschool and prekindergarten.

“If you want to reform high school, you need to reform early childhood. You don’t reform high school in high school, you reform very early on in life,” incoming Minneapolis Public School Superintendent Gregory Thornton told Milwaukee’s Business Journal.

This comment highlights the idea that early learning could play a pivotal role in the discussion about how to improve the federal law that governs K-12 education. As lawmakers begin to hold hearings, there are key questions about that role, including: Will the PreK-3rd movement translate its momentum into concrete changes that integrate pre-k with early elementary grades?  How will President Barack Obama’s commitment to quality early learning be reflected in any new law?

While preschool and prekindergarten ideas will likely be part of the debate, this is an opportunity for the Obama administration to translate its commitment into change. The test will not be how loudly Obama and his congressional supporters support any changes, but ultimately by how legislators weave early learning reforms into a final bill.

Will the bill strengthen links between pre-k and kindergarten, first and second grades? Will it contain new support for early learning teachers to get training and earn college degrees? Or, will these and other efforts be drowned out by battles over how to measure teacher effectiveness?

Unlike other educational reform ideas, there seems to be wide support in Washington, D.C., this year for quality early learning. The legislative battles over No Child Left Behind should tell us how deep that support really is.

We will keep an eye on what should be an interesting debate.

The debate over Head Start has died down with Democrats in charge of the White House and Congress, but a new report offers a long list of reasons why the 44-year-old program helps, including how it helps parents get involved in their child’s education.

The arguments about parental involvement are important because too often Head Start debates focus on fade out concerns and measuring achievement.  This time the National Head Start Association stresses critical and sometimes overlooked successes getting parents engaged. If parents aren’t involved even the highest quality child care educators will struggle to help a child.

For example, “a higher proportion of Head Start parents read to their children more frequently than those parents of children who were not enrolled in Head Start,” – Latest Research on Head Start and Other Early Learning Programs. “A higher proportion of parents with 3-year-old children in Head Start reported that their child was either in excellent or very good health as compared with those parents who did not have children enrolled in Head Start.”

Early Head Start parents also are more likely to hold down jobs, go to school or receive job training, the report claimed.

The PowerPoint is full of research citations about the benefits of Head Start. (Of course, the report’s author has an interest in promoting Head Start, but it’s still an interesting side of the story.)

The report also saved space for a hot congressional topic, home visitation, by citing research that found each dollar invested in the Nurse-Family Partnership Nurse Home Visiting Program saves between $1.26 and $5.70 for every dollar invested.

(Thanks to the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP for highlighting this PowerPoint.)
 
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I promise I’ll stop writing about Congress for awhile once it adjourns for summer recess in early August, but there is too much happening to ignore the most active early learning session in years.

For example, home visitation landed in the huge House health care bill, Early Ed Watch Blog reports. If you recall, President Barack Obama tucked $8.6 billion into his budget for home visitation over the next ten years. The House has smaller ambitions, according to the New America blog.

A large chunk of the home visitation program would become law with an amendment to the Social Security Act, which puts it under the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee.  That committee kept the program intact but dropped its price, authorizing it as a five-year, $750 million program instead of the $1.75 billion that was initially proposed. -- “Fate of Home Visitation Program Is Tied To Health Reform Bill, Early Ed Watch,” 7/30/09. (Anyone involved in home visitation work should check out Lisa Guernsey’s excellent and typically thorough post.)

I checked in with veteran early ed watcher Sarah Mead, who tracks federal developments for the Washington, D.C.-based New America Foundation, to get her thoughts on this session.

Mead points out a big reason the early learning community is making impressive progress is there are three legislative vehicles for its priorities actually moving through Congress: the health care bill, the huge budget reconciliation measure, which contains the Early Learning Challenge Fund and the annual Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill.

Any legislative strategist will tell you the key to an idea’s success is hopping a ride on the small number of bills that actually move through Congress. Every session far more legislative ideas die than become law.

Another critical development is that much of this proposed early education money is tagged as mandatory, not discretionary, spending, Mead says. That’s critical because these initiatives wouldn’t have to compete with Sen. Y’s new bridge or library every year for money. It also frees advocates to focus on other issues, and it could get harder to win big funding increases for child care, preschool or pre-k in the coming years, Mead adds.

“I think in a lot of ways this has been the best opportunity (for) programs on early childhood education since the mid-90s,” Mead said.

There are already signs of slowing. The Child Care Development Block Grant program would be essentially frozen and Head Start would receive a small $122 million increase in recent versions of spending bills for the coming fiscal year, according to Mead.

Congress’s appetite for early learning legislation appears to grow by the week, with a number of important bills entering the pipeline, including efforts to expand home visitation and child care construction, the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP reports.

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of interest in pre-k access – five bills in the WSA briefing list its expansion as a goal – but I am more interested in the targeted ideas because of the brutal yet promising budgetary climate on Capitol Hill.

Early learning advocates are working with a sympathetic Democratically-controlled Congress and an administration aggressively championing portions of their agenda, but also are confronting record-level budget deficits. There simply isn’t a lot of money.

In this climate, targeted ideas, such as the home visitation plan backed by Seattle’s own Rep. Jim McDermott are intriguing. The Early Support for Families Act would authorize $2 billon in mandatory funds to support “early childhood visitation programs,” WSA said.

Following up on yesterday’s post on building great child care centers, another bill would help providers construct, acquire or improve facilities.

Over at the House Education and Labor Committee, there is a bill designed to increase the number of early education teachers and assistant teachers with baccalaureate and associate degrees, according to WSA.

Pre-K access, though, remains the top dog among early learning issues. Former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is driving a bill that would help states establish universal pre-k and “ensure that all children age three through five have access to high-quality, full-day, full calendar year pre-k education,” WSA reports.

Now these bills are tall orders, sure to change, possibly shrink or die in committee. But, there is a lot for senators and representatives to chew on. It will be interesting to see what they create from this legislative stew.

Check out WSA’s excellent federal legislative summary on their website.