High quality preschool should be done by the parents. Parents are the people who care and love the child most. I think of preschool as a high pressure atmosphere for those parents who want to produce a little genius, or for those parents who work, it is a cheap form of babysitting. After all, even low income families seem to afford several TV's and video junk for their children. By taking away the parent responsibility of rearing their own children, we are creating an atmosphere of "low family self-esteem". In short, I would never trust my young child to the state, especially in these times when our USA is lagging behind in education. Character Counts, and I think this should be taught at home. School, for many students, is the place where misbehavior flourishes. The earlier this happens, the more indelible the misbehavior becomes. Yes, there are some parents who we wish weren't parents, but that is a different story.

I think one of the biggest things that needs to be addressed is that there isn't that much difference between those of us who teach preschool and those who teach K-12. I have worked in preschool for the last 20 years, have a Masters in Ed with an EC emphasis. I have to write lesson plans, hold parent teacher conferences, maintain program standards, state licensing requirements (which are more stringent than public ed) and more. The only difference I see between the children I teach and the K-12 is that my students are shorter and need their clothes changed more often! We need to all work together to educate children from birth through college/tech program/whatever. We also need to address the economic, health, nutrition, safety issues of families so that they are in the optimal postion to provide for their children. Until we have a handle on all that goes into poverty, I think we need to provide quality early childhood programs for all children. There needs to be a national standard that all child care providers, public/private pre-k programs, Head Start right up through high school and beyond that provides the best educational beginnings for our children to become productive, successful adults. They will be making the decisions for our country before we know it. How do we think they are being prepared for it now?

Whether preschool should be mandatory or not is moot. What should be mandatory is a program to teach better parenting of birth to age 4 children. After all is said and done, parenting is preschool. Our program, Before4, abets parenting of birth-four children. If interested, drop a request to Rezoom, PO Box 1092, La Crosse, WI 54602.

Young minds need to flourish in environments that will cultivate their creativity, cognitive and social-emotional development. The goal of any institution is to offer age and developmentally appropriate educational opportunies. This can capably be handled by the many skilled professionals within our public school systems.

I am a fully indoctrinated, dogmatic, anti-voucher supporter of Public Education (caps intended). That being said, I contain a libertarian streak that balks at preschool mandates, all-day kindergarten and 4-year-old kindergarten. I believe that early childhood is a time for developing crucial skills and cultural identities that rightly lie outside the scope of public education. Many of these initiatives are a response to the economic demand to get children of the working class out of the way so their parents can get to their menial jobs. I would rather see early childhood programs (such as the U of M-grown Early Risers) that remedy the effects of poverty more directly and respect the value of families.

Yes, I agree that "preschool has been shown to have positive effects on future school performance, and all children, regardless of income, should have access to high-quality preschool programs." I feel strongly that high-quality pre-school should be available to all families as part of public schools. However, they should not be mandatory. With children of such a young age, parents should have the abiltity to choose whether or not their children participate in a formal educational process.

Public school is charged with what seems to be an ever increasing load of responsibilities for the lives of children. Parents are, of course, under significant pressure to live productive lives and preschool as a babysitting service is a choice many must make. Nonetheless, if preschool becomes a public school responsibility, it will undoubtedly join the rest of the underfunded/unfunded mandates that public districts currently strive to accomplish.

It would be my personal preference that families keep their children happy and busy in their own homes and neighborhoods, developing social skills in a strong, nurturing, loving home environment.

School, an institution cannot serve a child with the same close support of a family and should not be held responsible for early childhood development.

Is it reasonable to ponder the question of furthering taxpayer responsibility to include an optional pre-K class? We live in a welfare state where 60% of our society is the working poor or poverty level. Nothing infuriates me more than my school district raising my property taxes to keep feeding the status quo.

Before 'we' as a society can talk about increasing services, we need to address the issues of the day with education. There are all kinds of discussion about fixing education within the parameters of the public school system; but, the solutions to educating our children will be found outside of those parameters.

I see one immense advantage to making preschool part of public education: well-trained, certified, developmentally-aware professionals. Too many preschool children spend a great part of their early years in daycares that employ those who are just the opposite. Adding preschool training and certification to college education programs and requiring public-provided preschools to employ those who have that training and certification will ensure that more children have the rich, varied, and developmentally sound preparation we know is needed to suceed in today's schools.

Yes, I work in an inner city school and most of our students are considered at risk. As a staff we struggle with low reading and math scores. They come into school with little preschool experience. We feel if we could get them earlier, we could prepare them for kindergarten.