Quality Preschool Would Help California's Reading Crisis

Fully 2/3 of California 3rd graders cannot read proficiently according to the CDE, and this leaves them playing catchup for most of their school years. And not only do their grades suffer, they're also more likely to drop out, do drugs, or go to jail. One of the often cited solutions to this problem is increasing the availability of quality Preschool, and Plan 4 Preschool is a new organization aimed at making this happen.

Preschool advocacy groups and pre-k teachers stand behind high-quality preschool as the way to make sure California's children start school on an equal footing. In fact, several steps have been taken in this direction, like the Los Angeles Universal Preschool system and the Preschool for All ballot initiative. Plan4 Preschool is the latest step in this effort, bringing together the preschool advocacy and preschool planning community in order to focus and accelerate their efforts.

Funded by the Packard Foundation, P4P also aggregates a large library of preschool planning documents, county plans, and early education research so that the community can build on each other's efforts.