Spitzer Hearts Pre-K, Too

There's been a lot of bloggy talk about NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's budget proposal to dramatically increase funding for public education but require greater accountability and raise the charter cap. But what seems to have slipped under a lot of folks' radar--including, as Richard Colvin notes, the major print media outlets--is Spitzer's proposal to ramp up funding for New York's "Universal" Pre-k program over the next three years so that it actually gets to the point where it deserves that adjective. New York launched the program in 1998, with plans to ramp up funding through several "waves" of school districts, starting with the most disadvantaged. But it never quite got there, so it's remained in effect a smaller targeted preschool program. Now Spitzer wants to bring it all the way to full scale. That should be big news, and it would have been if Spitzer hadn't packed so many bold and controversial ideas into his proposals. But even with everything else going on, it still deserves significant attention.