Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is proposing a $10 billion federal program aimed at providing voluntary pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-old children in America.
Isn’t that how it is now? Why throw money at it. We have all suffered the 400 monthly payments for day care school. So what. Pre-K is voluntary now and should stay that way.
>>Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is proposing a $10 billion federal program aimed at providing voluntary pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-old children in America.
Isn’t that how it is now? Why throw money at it. We have all suffered the 400 monthly payments for day care school. So what. Pre-K is voluntary now and should stay that way.<<
Well.. I know folks who read my posts probably get tired about me talking about Georgia - but our state government has improved so much since 1990, I’m proud of it.
In Georgia, we fund pre-k with lottery money. Its still government funding but at least its voluntarily contributed instead of taxes.
We started with a pilot program of of 750 kids to see what works for the state and then fine tuned.
Some of the conclusions were to make it a school readiness program rather than focusing on babysitting to let the mothers work. We also didn’t want to destroy the private sector by subsidizing government run competition so we use existing private facilities wherever possible.
If, and only if the people of a state want to do something like this, doing it at the state level seems to the way to go. We already have enough over-reaching Federal bureaucracy and Federal taxes. (more than enough, of course, but that’s another thread.)
What if they set up a Federal program and the needs of Tennessee are different that the needs of Texas or Florida? What if the people of a state feel a pure private sector approach is better? Why should all the states be forced into a monolithic Federal mold?