QUALITY KINDERGARTEN KEY TO ADULT SUCCESS

Check out this recent New York Times article -- "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers" --about a new research study on the importance of kindergarten in adult career and life success.

It reinforces yet again the positive economic return on investment in quality early childhood education to our society, workforce, and economy. Here is a short excerpt:

"Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

"All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too."