Southeast leads U.S. in pre-K funding

ATLANTA – Rarely do experts extol the virtues of public education in the South.

It was notable, then, when a report released Thursday said that the Southeast leads the nation in state-funded early childhood education.

According to the Southern Education Foundation, the Southeastern region provides public prekindergarten to the largest percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds in the country: Nineteen percent, compared with 12 percent in the Northeast, 9 percent in the Midwest and 5.6 percent in the West.

“That is a dramatic difference,” said Steve Suitts, the author of the report, who noted that the South’s advances in pre-K education could be measured not just in enrollment, but in quality: Two-thirds of the states with the highest standards of pre-K quality are in the South.

Suitts said he hoped the report would encourage Southern states to eventually introduce universal Pre-K education.

While Suitts acknowledged that pre-K alone could not “transform the long-standing patterns of inadequate education and depressed personal income that have plagued and burdened the South,” he said “Pre-K is where the South can finally break this long pattern.”

Still, the response from leading education experts across the nation was muted.

Some say it is imperative that pre-K develop in conjunction with other education levels; others say there is little evidence that pre-K benefits middle-class children.

“It is clearly ironic that the most conservative region in the country now has the clearest focus on serving poor children,” said Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s wonderful progress. But I think it’s a huge leap of faith to then argue that the benefits available to poor kids should be given to all children.”

The South has lagged behind the nation in education and income since before the Civil War, the report states.