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"That pre-kindergarten education is the gateway to a better life for poor, working-class children is highlighted in a chart that was used to highlight the importance of a college degree. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income for people 25 and older with a college degree or higher is $60,004. Those without a high school diploma make considerably less, $23,532 annually."

"According to the report, Some of the most significant achievements have involved expanding access to early childhood education, health-care coverage and affordable child care.' Other gains the report touts include substantially improving the child welfare system, establishing and strengthening the state earned income tax credit for low-income working families and adopting social and emotional learning standards for Illinois public schools."

"But, starting a few decades ago, we learned that preschool intervention programs could help. The efforts were small and expensive, but early childhood programs like the Perry and Abecedarian projects made big differences in kids' lives. The success of these programs set off a lot of rhapsodic writing, including by me, about the importance of early childhood education. If government could step in and provide quality preschool, then we could reduce poverty and increase social mobility."

"Oklahoma's 1998 law gave more funding to schools that enrolled 4-year-olds and allowed school districts to collaborate with federally-funded Head Start programs, churches and other outside organizations to share resources. The law also created stringent standards for the classroom: All pre-K teachers had to have a college degree and a certificate in early-childhood education, and they were paid the same wage as K-12 teachers. The student-teacher ratio had to be at least 10-1, and class sizes were limited to 20."

"Even after recent significant increases, the maximum Pell Grant today covers the smallest share of the cost of attending a public college since the program started 40 years ago, advocates say. As a result, the gap in college enrollment and graduation rates between children from high- and low-income families has widened over the past 30 years. To help reduce the gap, many Ohio schools have added new grants and scholarships and increased the amount of their awards."

"In just a handful of words in his State of the Union address, President Obama renewed a proposal to lower the amount that the federal government pays for drugs taken by low-income seniors -- a measure that supporters say would save the government more than $150 billion over the next decade. But it faces formidable opposition from Republicans, some Democrats and the powerful pharmaceutical industry, making passage unlikely. In essence, the plan would require drug companies to provide Medicare with discounts like those they now give to Medicaid."

"President Obama will visit a Head Start program near Atlanta on Thursday to formally unveil his proposal for expanding early childhood education, which includes home-visiting programs that offer parenting skills and support to new mothers and fathers, more quality child care for infants and toddlers, and a push to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families."

"Obama proposes expanding federal support for preschool to all 4-year-olds from moderate- and low-income families. The idea is supported by considerable research showing quality early learning boosts graduation rates. Putting students on the right academic track early saves school districts about $3,700 per child over the K-12 years in money not spent on remediation and other interventions."

"While supporters herald the plan as a way to help level the playing field for children who do not have the advantages of daily bedtime stories, music lessons and counting games at home, critics argue that providing universal preschool could result in federal money being squandered on ineffective programs."

"Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union, announced Wednesday morning that he has introduced federal legislation that would give tax credits to help prepare our children for the jobs of tomorrow.' The bill, titled the Educational Opportunities Act, would, among other things, amend the federal tax code to allow taxpayers to receive credits of up to $4,500 to cover tuition and other education-related expenses for children attending nonpublic schools. The Rubio measure, his first during the new congressional session, represents a new frontier in federal school reform and is geared specifically toward low-income families."

"And President Obama is trying, against great odds, to do something for 4-year-olds. People, think about this for a minute. We have no bigger crisis as a nation than the class barrier. We're near the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to upward mobility. A child born to poor parents has a pathetic chance of growing up to be anything but poor. This isn't the way things were supposed to be in the United States. But here we are."

"Most other academic studies have also found early educational intervention fade out' and that these programs rarely achieve what they promise. Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution wrote Wednesday that the available studies supporting universal pre-K were thin empirical gruel.' Researchers at the Heritage Foundation and the conservative sociologist Charles Murray have come to similar conclusions. This is about as close to an intellectual policy consensus as Washington gets."