"How do you say to a middle-class family that yes, you pay taxes for schools but you can't send your kids" to pre-k, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen asked. While Bredesen proposes pre-k for more middle-class families, The Tennessean reports that opponents are lining up to ensure the program is limited to at-risk children. Those opponents need a refresher in Pre-K 101: one in three middle-income kindergarteners do not know their ABCs. Middle-class parents often struggle to find and pay for quality pre-k, earning too much to be eligible for Head Start and not enough for private pre-k. Hopefully, legislators will reexamine the research prior to the education budget hearing in mid-March.

“I don’t hear anything about education, and that really scares me,” teacher Julie Crudele tells The Plain Dealer. And she is not alone. Ahead of Ohio's March 4 presidential primary, Buckeye State voters are wondering what the candidates' education plans entail and how each might help Ohio's struggling economy become more competitive. Cleveland station WKYC-TV reports on the Democratic candidates' education proposals, both of which include pre-kindergarten. If the candidates were waiting for a cue from the voters to discuss pre-k and other education reforms, they need to wait no more. It looks like voters in the heartland of America know education is a winning issue.

A growing movement is promising to raise up Mississippi's low-performing education system through much-needed reforms like pre-k. The Parents' Campaign is focusing its tens of thousands of supporters on passing the Quality Education Act of 2008, a package of nine reforms proposed by the State Board of Education that includes pilot pre-k programs. Media coverage is building as well. A Clarion-Ledger editorial this week challenged lawmakers to make the Act their top priority, writing: "What part of creating a starter program to allow Mississippi to no longer be the... only Southern state without early childhood education is a frill?" We applaud Mississippians for helping their elected leaders understand that education reform is the first step to economic prosperity and that pre-k is the first step to education reform.

Changes to New Jersey's school funding formula, passed last week by lawmakers and subject to approval by the state's Supreme Court, will expand high-quality pre-k and increase overall education spending in 2009 by $533 million, reports The New York Times. Under the new formula, state-funded pre-k will be available to an additional 20,000 three and four year olds by the 2013-14 school year. “This formula puts the needs of all children on an equal footing, and will give them the educational resources they need for success,” said Gov. Jon Corzine. Yet, New Jersey leaders need to ensure that the path to greater pre-k access doesn’t cause a reversal of course in the state's poorest school districts, where high-quality pre-k for all is a hard-won reality. A true formula for the future must keep the focus on children, not ZIP codes.

An evaluation of the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM) by Edvance Research confirms what many pre-k advocates and policymakers know: the path to quality pre-k is often marked by implementation challenges. The evaluation found TEEM to be a groundbreaking program worthy of continuation while also in need of improvement. Among other results, TEEM produced clear and measurable student gains in the three skill areas linked to school readiness. As the Edvance evaluators point out in a spirited letter to the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, a recent Dallas Morning News article misrepresented the Edvance evaluation in a broadside against TEEM. This may be partly due to the fact that, although the program is now in its fourth year, the evaluation analyzed only the first two years of implementation, frequently the most challenging time for any new program.