More than 50,000 kids gained access to pre-K under de Blasio: How big a deal?

Advocates of universal access to pre-K tout such programs as socio-economic equalizers because they remove financial barriers to early childhood education.

|
Susan Watts/Reuters/File
Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray (l.) host a roundtable discussion about universal pre-K and after school programs with parent bloggers, Rebecca Levey of KidzVuz (second r.) and Anna Fader of Mommy Poppins (r.), in the Blue Room of City Hall, in New York, March 7, 2014.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's $300 million expansion of the city's Pre-K for All program has enabled an additional 50,000 children access to free, high-quality pre-kindergarten, the mayor announced Friday.

Advocates of universal access to pre-K tout such programs as socio-economic equalizers because they remove financial barriers to early childhood education, which is increasingly being seen as vital preparation for success later in elementary and secondary school.

“The historic number of students enrolled in free, full-day, high-quality pre-K means that [more children] are getting a crucial year of problem solving and vocabulary building that will put them on the path to long term success,” Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said in a statement.

New York City, and New York state as a whole, has one of the highest pre-K enrollment rates in the country, exceeding enrollment rates for all but six states on a list that also includes Texas and Florida.

“Parents have voted with their feet. Pre-K for All is now part of the lives of tens of thousands of children,” Mayor de Blasio said in a press release. “It will only get bigger and better from here. We’re proud Pre-K for All is performing on a level with some of the most highly-regarded programs in the nation, and we are going to use these assessments to strengthen centers even more.”

Critics of Mr. de Blasio’s plan contend that while it is noble that the plan has helped get thousands of children from low-income families into pre-K, it has also given the same free education options to children from wealthier families who may not need as much support.

“We just don’t have the evidence to back why we would heavily finance pre-K in middle class and upper class communities,” Dr. Bruce Fuller, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, told ProPublica in September.

The de Blasio administration maintains that offering the program to all families in New York has not diminished the city's ability to expand access for low-income families.

Enrollment in the city's pre-K programs surged particularly among the city’s poorest children, according to US Census data. Politico New York found that 26,865 four-year-olds from the lowest-income quartile have a spot in pre-K this year, compared to 7,587 children from the city’s highest-income quartile.

"With a particular rise in the enrollment of children from low-income families, it is clear that the Pre-K program is reaching our City’s most vulnerable youth, and bringing them into a safe, healthy environment that encourages the development of intellect," said City Council Member Chaim Deutsch, in a statement.

The application period for applying to New York City’s free pre-K programs opens on January 25 next year, more than a month earlier than last year, as part of an effort to continue expanding enrollment.  

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to  More than 50,000 kids gained access to pre-K under de Blasio: How big a deal?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/1218/More-than-50-000-kids-gained-access-to-pre-K-under-de-Blasio-How-big-a-deal
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe