It is clear that Gov. Beverly Perdue intends to leave behind some kind of a legacy other than having the misfortune of leading the state during the aftermath of the nation’s worst recession in decades. Her announcement that her administration has allotted $20 million to enroll as many as 6,300 more children in pre-kindergarten programs will go a long way toward establishing her reputation as a champion of education.
Perdue’s action, announced Thursday, is a response both to an appellate court ruling that the state must do more to ensure that at-risk 4-year-olds have access to quality preschool programs regardless of income, and the Republican-led General Assembly’s 20 percent cut in pre-K funding this budget year.
The N.C. Court of Appeals ruling concerned a challenge to those cuts, and it affirmed Superior Court Judge Howard Manning’s mandate that the state must make pre-K programs available to all 4-year-olds at risk of entering kindergarten already behind their more advantaged peers.
Budget cuts hit other segments of the Department of Health and Human Services as well, including day care subsidies for younger children and Medicaid services. Critics of Perdue’s decision contend that the unspent DHHS funds allotted to pre-K should be used to fill those other gaps.
But in a meeting with the publisher and other members of the StarNews staff Thursday afternoon, Perdue called the pre-K program “the best money that we can spend.”
She noted that widespread access to quality preschool regardless of family income is an issue of economic development as well as education. How true.
A number of highly regarded studies have shown that children enrolled in strong preschool programs have a far better chance of entering kindergarten on a level plane with their peers, and that the boost makes it more likely that they still will be working at grade level through third grade. Studies also show that children who are at grade level in third grade have a better chance than their still-behind peers of graduating from high school.
And high school graduates are less likely than their dropout peers to frequent the prison system and/or rely on long-term public assistance. They are more employable and have more options, including higher education and other job-training programs, available to them.
In other words, instead of costing the taxpayers millions of dollars, they have greater potential to become responsible, taxpaying citizens than those who drop out of school because they cannot keep up.
North Carolina has been hailed as a leader in early childhood development because of the successes of Gov. Jim Hunt’s Smart Start program and Gov. Mike Easley’s More at Four. Each had slightly different focuses but a similar goal – to help ensure that preschoolers have access to strong early childhood programs and enter kindergarten healthy and ready to learn. The Honorables combined the two programs into one known as N.C. Pre-Kindergarten, and cut 20 percent of the available funds, which also reduced access.
Critics argue that there are other needs. The courts’ rulings are likely to be appealed, according to legislative leaders. But Perdue will go out able to claim that she did what she could to ensure that North Carolina’s children get a good head start on school.