The National Education Association joined the ranks of educators pushing to add early learning to the debate over reforming the No Child Left Behind Act and called for mandatory all-day kindergarten and universal access to pre-kindergarten.

The 3.2-million strong teachers union outlined the economic benefits of quality early learning – children who attended quality preschool earned $2,000 more a month as adults according to one study – and endorsed professional development for child care educators, in a letter and materials sent to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The committee held a hearing today on early childhood in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or No Child Left Behind.

“NEA is concerned about the growing number of children who enter kindergarten already behind their peers socially and academically. Evidence suggests this “school readiness” gap begins before children enter school and places children at risk of failure in school. – Early Childhood Education and School Readiness, NEA Policy Brief. “Yet, even though early childhood education programs promise sure-fire returns, the country is not making this investment.”

The brief also brought up an encouraging finding from quality early learning champion and outgoing director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Art Rolnick.

“…A good preschool can offer a 12 percent annual return, after inflation. That’s better than the stock market, he notes, and any other social program.”

We were busy yesterday covering the opening of the University of Washington’s new MEG Brain Imaging Center, which promises to unlock the mysteries of how babies learn.

But, there were other interesting developments:

• England medical authorities took away the medical license of Andrew Wakefield, a leading voice behind the movement that believes the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism, Associated Press via MSNBC.com.  Wakefield then tells the Today Show “I’m not going away” and will continue his research.
• It was a vaccine-heavy day, as a study covered by Pediatrics this week reported “a comparison of children vaccinated on time with children whose vaccinations were delayed or incomplete found no benefit in delaying immunizations during the first year of life…” Check out the Reuters story on MSNBC.com.
• The Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP has a new Issue Brief on Pre-K to 3 “that outlines the basics of the Pre-K to 3rd Grade concept.”