Start Strong Council Report On Preschool….

education has been released for the state of Virgina.  The report gives out recommendations which includes a rating system for each preschool, data collection, and strengthen existing programs.

The report says that in the 2005-2006 Virginia school year that nine thousand students in the k-3 grades repeated a grade because they were not ready or by some other factors at a cost around 44 million.

The report does look at what other states have done and what other countries have done which is great.  Through the graphs they show it shows students who have had a high quality preschool program graduate more, earn more, and go to jail less often.

In Europe most of the kids have gone to a preschool type program and in some countries it is a legal right.  In Japan programs are varied, quality is varied as well, the cost is heavily government funded, but 90% of the kids have it.  In China the report says that 47% of kids go to an early education program.  That stat was from 1997 though.

In the USA 41 states have some state funded preschool program which serve only 20% of the 3-5 year olds. The report looks at programs in the state of Georgia which is lottery funded and in the NYC.

The report says that in the state of Virgina only 11% of four year olds use a preschool program VPI and that the system is fragmented and inconsistent in quality.

The report also gets into some costs such as price for a year of daycare.

The report is a good read.