I agree that we need to educate our children as early as possible. However, I believe  we need to include the parents and remind them that they are their child's first teacher. Training, exposure, and meaningful learning experiences should begin in the home.

I am a parent of a 2 year old and 6 mo old.  Our local library has a children's story time.  The days and times are broken up by age: birth to 18 mos, 18 mos to 3 years, and 3-5 years old.  Each story time is age-appropriate and engages the children with stories, music, puppets and other props.  It is a county-wide program.  Even when my husband lost his job (and we had no income), we went to the library and particpated.  It was completely free and we were lucky that there was a playground right next door.  It was also one of the only family outings that we did while he was unemployed because, again, it was free.  Is this program something that is available to all people? 

Early Learning Challenge grants may provide additional funding, but will this support children for the long haul?  As soon as a child is born, how can we as a nation provide consistently funded programs to train new parents with their young children to promote critical literacy skills?  Will early childhood and whole family education be higher priorities in the near future?  As a Reading teacher for those elementary students who have NOT had early literacy, I certainly hope so.

I am the owner of a home daycare and have a MA in Counseling.  I started my daycare because I was so frustrated with what I was seeing in most of the daycares I visted while working with children with developmental delays from birth to age 3. It is beyond me why we do not require our Pre-K teachers to have some type of credentials.  The majority of Daycare/Pre-K teachers make less than $10/per hour and have just a highschool education.  Do we as a nation seriously think these people will be able to identify potential developmental delays or know how to get a child engaged? I have given seminars to daycare owners and their employess and have said learning begins at birth not at age 2 or 3, for most of them this is their first exposure to this knowledge.  We have to do better and require more of the people who are educating of young infants and toddlers.

 As a Special Ed Itinerant teacher- I have the opportunity to observe not only the special ed child receiving services - but the entire class. My issue is the obvious lack of responsibility ( age appropriate) instilled in our young children. The entitlement issues are a huge problem in bringing our children to understand their responsibility and self concept levels. I see this as a problem that needs solving through greater teacher/parent/administration team work.

Early education is very important. We have children that struggle in school, but we also have children who are purely bored in school. No one notices these children. They only notice the ones who are struggling in school. Everyone forgets about the Gifted children. The children who aren't challended enought. I live in Florida. Our schools are so messed up it isn't funny. And no one cares. I believe we need to get all the parents back into the school's. We need to get the people who don't have children, out of our school system. One of the biggest problems in Florida is, we have people teaching our children who don't have degrees in teaching. Florida lets the people take a certification course, and then let's them teach our children. Everyone should take a good look at K12 an online school that goes from Kindergarten through High School. They have brought schools back to basic.  It is an excellant program. I know that online schools don't work for everyone, but maybe we should consider putting the program into our schools. We need to start fixing our school systems and we need to start at the beginning.

I believe that we need to start teaching kids to their academic levels and not grade levels.  Kids learn at all diffeent paces.  We need to pre-test children to see what they already know and then teach them what they don't know.  If a student already knows 90% of what is going to be taught then why does that student have to stay with that grade level for 9 months only to gain 10% growth that year?  That 10% can be covered within the first 2 months of school and then let the child move on.  If a child is just sitting in class and will not get any new material until the end of school that child will most likely become a behavior issue because they are not being challenged and are not engaged in learning.  We need to stop discriminating against a student because of their age.  Just becuase they are 9 years old doesn't mean they are ready for 4th grade.  Maybe their skill levels are at a 3rd grade level or possible at 5th, 6th or higher.  All kids need to learn a years full of knowledge.  Start from what they know and move on.

 If only parents would realize how precious these early years are and would engage their babies by reading to them, many of these problems would be moot points.  It really is such an inexpensive fix.  Read to children, it builds their brains.  Instead we spend money on programs that teach them phonics, but they rarley are read to.  Why should they want to read? As Jim Trelease, author of The Read Aloud Handbook, say, kids have favorite books, not favorite phonomes.  

We have use the MonkiSee Baby Reading Program with our youngest and the results have been nothing short of amazing.  At 4 1/2 years old she is reading well above her grade level. She loves to read and insists on reading to me instead of me reading to her. When we come across words she is not familiar with, she always asks what they mean. How did she learn to read?  By being read to and using this program for a few minutes a day.  The investment was small and the rewards are huge.  She reads to herself every day as a form of entertainment.  We get most of our books at the library, so our only cost was this kit.

We should encourage all parents to read to their babies beginning at birth.  It is a sure prescription for improvement.

One of the greater chalenges lies between the family and society, I see far too many failies expecting that society should take on the responsibility of his or her child. It is very vital that children are reached during his or her first years of school when he or she is most influential. More adults need to be involved in structures that can lead the parent back to his or her responsibility which needs to include therapy for these parents that will include psychological, psychiatrical, drug/alcohol threapy that practices total abstinance

 I feel that everyone who responded had at least one great idea that I could agree with. With that being said this is my thought. Our kids like some other nations can handle being placed in an educational enviroment at age three(3). The teacher -student ratio should be no greater than one(1) teacher  to twelve(12) kids. I know cost would be a concern but when compared to whats happening now I think over time it would be well worth the investment. We also need to evaluate the parental/guardian situation and involve them in the teaching process and if need be improve their ability to help. learning is a continuous process and just doesn't stop at the end of the school day. Incentives could be build into the educational system to reward parental/guardian participants. In a sense we would be hightening the educational level of both the kid and the parent. The kids who are the greatest chellenge usually have parents or guardians with the least education.