With the 2024 legislative session behind us, we are taking stock of what was accomplished in this session and how far we still must go to improve education and economic outcomes for Kentuckians. Kentucky’s continued decline in education and quality of life outcomes is cause for concern. In just the last decade Kentucky has fallen
With the 2023 Legislative Session behind us, Kentucky’s continued decline in education outcomes continues to sound alarm bells for our future. In just the last decade Kentucky has fallen to: 29th in the nation fourth-grade reading — a fall from 22nd in 2019 and a high of 8th in the nation in 2015, 28th in
Momentum is building across Kentucky for increased access to high-quality early learning opportunities for our youngest children and stronger support for their working parents. The Kentucky Early Childhood Education Taskforce, co-chaired by Senator Danny Carroll (R-02) and Representative Samara Heavrin (R-18), united leaders from both parties and both houses of the legislature to tackle access
Why is mixed-delivery preschool needed? Can’t we just expand the public school system? Many local school districts lack the personnel and facility space needed to readily expand public preschool to all four-year-olds. Public-private partnerships among already existing private child care facilities and the public school system eliminate barriers to the sustainable expansion of preschool, such
What does mixed-delivery mean for children? Mixed-delivery is an opportunity for eligible 4-year-olds…
A mixed-delivery model is best understood as placing a public preschool classroom within a private child care center. Mixed-delivery preschool facilitates partnership among public school districts and private child care providers to expand access to publicly funded early learning services. A mixed-delivery system wraps child care services around public preschools to provide full working day
The 2022 Kentucky General Assembly can take action to give Kentucky’s youngest learners the strong start they need to grow into exemplary readers and high achievers. Early literacy is the key to ensure more young Kentuckians excel in the primary classroom. Students must learn to read from kindergarten through third grade so that they may read to learn in school and throughout the course of their lives.
Education stands to win big in the U.S. Congress’s social spending bill. After a months-long impasse, a mutually-agreed framework among lawmakers in Washington may signal an agreement on critical investments in American students as young as 3-years old to those engaged in post-secondary pursuits.
The U.S. Congress holds the power to pass an incredible $400 billion investment into America’s struggling child care and early education sector right now that is estimated to deliver nearly $2 billion to Kentucky to invest in its children! This presents Kentuckians with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide care and early learning opportunities to unprecedented numbers of Kentucky children and support their working moms and dads.
Nearly 60 years ago, Ned Breathitt, Kentucky’s 51st governor, addressed his fellow Kentuckians during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the Summer of 1964. Gov. Breathitt made plain his vision for Kentucky’s future:
“Ours is the vision and ours is the growing reality of a great society in which the accidents of race and color, parentage and poverty, and location and geography will not be allowed to dim the light of human hope and to cripple the possibilities of human growth.”