A bill to expand Pre-Kindergarten enrollment statewide is anticipated in the 2016 Session of the Maryland General Assembly.

In this last State of the Union Address, President Obama announced several goals in education policy. One of those goals was “providing Pre-K for all.”

We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering. In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by providing Pre-K for all and offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one. We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids.

Legislation to extend free Pre-K to more students is anticipated in Maryland, too. As was reported by the Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE), they have senate and house sponsors for the legislation now,

MABE is pleased to report that Senator Joan Carter Conway and Delegate Alonzo Washington have agreed to sponsor the Prekindergarten Enrollment and Funding legislation supported by a broad education coalition.

For more information on this session’s legislation in education, see the GreenSheet update on education issues from the Maryland Association of Boards of Education.

For information about current law and funding for Pre-K programs in Maryland, see our previous post, Pre-K Grants Begin, as Funding Debate Continues and see the recent report of the Adequacy in Education Study, Final Report of the Study of Increasing and Declining Enrollment in Maryland Public Schools.