Department of Education -- Proposed Budget

I printed out the Department of Education budget proposal that Dr. Pope forwarded to us and researched further into the particulars of early childhood education and what the proposed budget offers. For those of us in Wednesday night’s class the following might be of interest (due to the basis of our cohort):

Creates incentives and supports for States to build comprehensive, coordinated, high-quality early childhood "Zero to Five" systems, building on the early childhood investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The proposed plan will provide needed support to young children as well as to their parents. This will be accomplished by investing $10 billion per year to create Early Learning Challenge Grants to help individual states fund and further enhance present "zero to five" efforts. The budget proposes to quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start. Head Start funding will be increased. There is a directive in the budget to ensure all children have access to pre-school. There will be the creation of a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and to assist program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.
President Obama wants to fund a new effort entitled Promise Neighborhoods. This effort would give poor urban children a "rigorous K-12 education" along with family services that include preschool, health care, family counseling, parenting classes and nutrition. This effort is modeled after a successful New York program called the Harlem Children’s Zone. The thought is that in addition to attempting to fix the schools of low-income neighborhoods the other physical needs of students have to be addressed for a true solution.

I feel that the proposed Department of Education budget just might positively affect us as future early childhood educators. It is nice to see direction being given to this needed area.