Washington (CNSNews.com) – While senators scrambled to pass a financial “rescue” or “bailout” package that could cost taxpayers up to $700 billion on Wednesday, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) called for expanding the public education system to include 3- and 4-year-olds.
 
The pre-K programs would be paid for by state funding and supplemented by federal grants.
 
“Investment in quality pre-K is a win-win,” Clinton said in a press release issued at a Capitol Hill briefing, which was not attended by either senator. “It provides immediate economic relief to families and ensures that children are prepared to thrive and succeed when they start school.”
 
The briefing was sponsored by pre(k)now, an education advocacy group that “advances high-quality voluntary  pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds.”
 
A survey conducted by the organization showed that 60 percent of registered voters support the estimated $45 cost to each taxpayer for such a program.
 
“As a governor, I’d like to say a program like that would be far more useful to me,” Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) said at the briefing. “Not something that’s a big bureaucracy in Washington … but simply somebody saying this is important to the country -- and if you, the governor of one state, and you, the governor of another state, will construct a program that conforms to certain kinds of basic principles that we can enunciate, we will be a co-funder of that program.”
 
Bredesen was one of a panel of state officials, school administrators, and advocates for pre-kindergarten who said pre-K should be available to all children, not just low-income or at-risk children who have traditionally been targeted by programs such as the federal Head Start program.
 
On a related note, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to create a “Zero to Five Plan” that would, as his Web site states, emphasize “education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten.” The plan also calls for helping “states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.”
 
At the briefing, Bredesen said the goal now is “to make pre-K education “truly a program for every child.” He said it’s time to stop labeling children and help them “reach the potential they have within them.”
 
In a letter to Senate colleagues distributed at the briefing, Clinton said she and Bond will reintroduce the “Ready to Learn Act” in the next session of Congress. The act, which amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, would authorize “such sums as may be necessary” to pay for grants “to establish and administer full day voluntary pre-kindergarten programs for children age 4.”
 
As previously reported by CNSNews.com, some experts point to studies showing that low-income and at-risk children can benefit from programs to prepare them for kindergarten, but the positive results do not extend across the board.
 
“Research shows disparate results (of pre-kindergarten programs),” Don Soifer, executive vice president of the conservative Lexington Institute, told CNSNews.com.
 
The research has also shown that such programs can cause behavioral problems in some children, he said.
 
But panelists at the briefing said the idea is to put a “certified public teacher” in charge of voluntary pre-K programs who will help children adequately prepare for school.
 
When asked by CNSNews.com if teachers were better than parents at preparing their children for school, Gov. Bredesen said it took a “joint effort.”
 
Another panelist, Ramona Paul, assistant state superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma, responded to CNSNews.com’s question by referring to W. Steven Barnett, a Board of Governors professor and director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, who wrote about the subject in 2003.
 
“Research findings confirm the long-term benefits of early education and offer some options for integrating the existing patchwork of U.S. public and private pre-K programs into a uniform system that provides a high-quality early education to all young children,” Barnett wrote in the paper, which was co-authored by Jason T. Hustedt.