Posted on 09/19/2009 5:13:45 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.
The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.
Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television.
Oversight varies by state, but most lack any early childhood structure analogous to the state and local boards of education that govern public schools. A result is that poor children, even many who have access to government-financed early care or learning programs, tend to enter kindergarten less prepared for school than those with wealthier parents.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Is that where those lesson books they backed of on are going to go?
goo-goo ga-ga
The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
“serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers”
OR in other words, the government will be molding our infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to meet it’s vision of their lives.
No this is just a way to make more union jobs. It has nothing to do with education.
ping
Let’s see, another $8 BILLION wasted on layers upon layers of bureaucracy in an attempt to make all preschoolers act alike, think alike, etc. When will they need another $8 billion to find out that boys and girls are (gasp) different and that not everyone learns in the same way.
All this is, is a more open and authoritarian, and mega-financially backed by taxpayer funding, indoctrination.
They just want to start earlier...and also make us pay for them to take 16-18 years to do it, by also paying for college.
More of our tax dollars to indoctrinate our chikldren at a younger age. We need to pull all of our children out
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.