By Matt Weyer
The State Policy and Research for Early Education Working Group (SPREE) met for the first time at the 2016 NCSL Legislative Summit. This effort is sponsored by the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Their task? This group of legislators, legislative staff and educational researchers is charged with creating a policy framework for state legislatures to consider how to meet the needs of the youngest learners.
Engaging in critical, challenging and thought-provoking conversations and presentations, SPREE members met this challenge head-on and laid a solid foundation for the next iteration of their work.
Two SPREE members, Indiana Representative Robert Behning (R) and Utah Senator Howard Stephenson (R) frequently referred to a recent publication by NCSL’s Education Program, “No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State.”
The legislators emphasized this publication’s clarion call for a systemic approach to education reform and highlighted the importance of high-quality early education in successful countries across the globe.
SPREE members acknowledged that the framework for this group cannot be another “silver bullet,” such as solely focusing on creating more full-day kindergarten in states, but rather an attempt to change the dialogue toward building a systemwide approach to reshaping early childhood education.
What this systemwide approach and framework turns out to be remains to be seen, but SPREE members will be hard at work over the next 16 months in its development.
For more resources on early childhood education, please check out NCSL’s Early Learning and Support webpage.
Matt Weyer is a policy specialist in NCSL’s Education Program.
Email Matt