Early education is the type of issue politicians nod their heads at, and then when it comes time to make a tough decision, a financial trade-off, inevitably it's about the first item tossed from the table.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Early childhood education is an urgent educational, economic and moral imperative. Without it, we face a long-term national economic security crisis.
Investment in early education is not a Liberal or Conservative idea. Nor should it be decided along party lines.
Early childhood education begins early, even before birth.
In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.
It is critical that kids start to learn the value of money, short-term and long-term saving and budgeting at an early age.
The number one way that we can address these long-term challenges of poverty, of education, is to invest in early childhood education.
We're committed to making sure parents have affordable, quality early learning for their kids - there's no question about it.
It's always been the case that politicians want different things from children than good educators do. Good educators want imaginative, exploratory beings, but politicians just want economic units.
We have lots of evidence that putting investments in early childhood education, even evidence from very hard-nosed economists, is one of the very best investments that the society can possibly make. And yet we still don't have public support for things like preschools.
Studies have proven that early childhood education returns to society as much as $12 for every dollar invested. Our goal is to identify the most important development opportunities for children five years and younger, providing insight to transform early childhood education from a social policy issue into an economic imperative.