Teacher Diversity Is Key to California’s Expanding Public Early Education System

After years of political popularity, public investments in early education have mostly struggled to get traction in recent years. Federal momentum toward universal pre-K has stalled, and some successful local experiments from the 2000s and 2010s have struggled to deliver on the optimism that accompanied their launches. 

California is a notable, laudable exception to this trend. In 2021, under the leadership of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state embarked on an ambitious effort to more than double its number of public pre-K and transitional kindergarten (or “TK”) seats for 4-year-old Californians from just over 147,000 to roughly 400,000. (TK began in 2008 as a program for children who just missed the state’s cutoff for kindergarten enrollment, but has significantly expanded to serve more 4-year-olds since 2021). 

This would be a major accomplishment for the state and for early education advocates. The key, of course, is to show how policymakers can dramatically grow pre-K and TK access while maintaining crucial quality elements that support children’s development. The best way to do that is to ensure that the state’s new early education classrooms have great teachers prepared to meet their students’ needs. 

Please help put parents in charge of their child’s education by forwarding this article to other parents, family, friends and voters.