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Supporters of universal pre-K and other early-childhood programs often point to the growing evidence that young children develop cognitive skills well before school age. Indeed, study after study has shown that by the time they get to kindergarten, kids from families that don’t provide education at home can’t catch up with peers whose parents, say, read a book to them every day from infancy.

while i support early intervention, i think the children might be better served if this support was directed at them and their families before they start school and even after they start school during all the hours they are home. they don't necessarily need to be snatched out of their homes earlier and earlier. many need less time in front of a t.v. and more time with an adult who reads to them and spends time with them.

I'm confused - I thought HeadStart was the pre-K for the poor. Is Hillary talking about a brand new type of Headstart for all children to attend?

In our county, Headstart is pretty much a joke, is it different for you all in the close in suburbs? What we have here are kids that can either sit at home with an uneducated parent to go to Headstart and stay there with an equally uneducated parent who is being paid a touch over minimum wage.

There are almost too many issues in this article to address in one short post.

The article is correct, many students do begin school very far behind their peers - research shows it to be true, and the teachers on the board know this. If there is little conversation at home, if no one reads to the children, if they haven't learned colors or numbers or associated the written word with the spoken word before they begin school, they will certainly be far behind.

Intervention in the home would certainly be preferable, if you could come up with an intervention program that would be effective with teenaged single mothers who are likely uneducated and put little value on education themselves. (Add in the likelihood of substance abuse in the home, and where do you go?)

I know that in some states, such intervention programs exist and serve children and families from birth, but they are voluntary. A young woman of my acquaintance has participated in such a program, but she & her husband are college-educated and would have read to and educated their toddlers at home even without such a program. Do the parents who really need the program, and for whom it is designed, participate? I don't know.

Your mistake is getting into a debate with these left wing commies in the first place,once you do that you lose .
Let the kids be kids .Sending them to school at 5 is soon enough maybe even to soon ,giving them over to government schools pre Kindergarden and left wing indoctrination is insanity ,if you cant prepare your children for school at home you should not have them . I guarantee when you send your impressionable pre kindergarden out to these Brown shirted thugs they will be sending home little Eichmans