Washington DC -- Today, the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative released an issue brief proposing 10 new policy ideas to improve access, quality, and alignment in early education from preschool through the early elementary school years. The 111th Congress will have numerous opportunities to enact policies that improve early education, including the economic stimulus package currently being debated in congress and the scheduled reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This issue brief offers guidance on how to best use these opportunities to improve long-term outcomes for young children.

Specific proposals include:

1. Ensure that school construction funds are available to support the expansion of high-quality early education programs.
2. Recruit talented individuals to become qualified PreK and early elementary school teachers by providing expedited alternative routes to PreK teaching.
3. Support the ability of charter schools to offer high-quality PreK programs.
4. Strengthen early elementary standards.
5. Allow and encourage chronically failing elementary schools to be reconstituted as PreK to 3rd Early Education Academies.
6. Set aside a portion of school construction funding to support the reconstitution of chronically low-performing elementary schools as PreK to 3rd Early Education Academies.
7. Tap supplemental educational services and public school choice set-aside funds for high-quality PreK programs.
8. Ensure that alignment between PreK and the K-12 public schools is included in the definition of quality for any new federal early education program.
9. Improve accountability for early education programs.
10. Target elementary absenteeism.

The full issue brief available on NewAmerica.net. For more information, or to set up an interview, please email drankoski@newamerica.net. The following New America Foundation expert is available to speak on the 10 New Ideas for Early Education proposal:

Sara Mead, Director, Early Education Initiative, New America Foundation
Sara's biography: http://www.newamerica.net/people/sara_mead

The New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative is funded through generous grants from the Foundation for Child Development, the W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation, and the Strategic Knowledge Fund, co-funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

About New America
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.  Headquartered in Washington D.C., New America also has offices in California.