Our new strategy aims to ensure that all children in Washington are prepared for kindergarten.

In 2005, we developed a long-term, statewide early learning strategy that will focus our work in Washington state. We will work with public and private partners across the state to ensure that every child is given the opportunity, from birth, to succeed in school and life. In 2006, our early learning efforts were combined with our high school efforts as part of an expanded Education portfolio. This change will allow the teams to communicate more effectively about the common challenges they face.

Three-fourths of all children in Washington's lowest-income classrooms start kindergarten socially, emotionally, physically, or cognitively unprepared for school. They fall behind, and the likelihood is that they'll never catch up. A wealth of research, however, shows that exposing children to high-quality early learning environments (either at home, in child-care centers, or in other settings) during the key years between birth and age 5 makes a significant difference in their futures. Our strategy is to provide support for parents and families to make sure children have access to high-quality early learning opportunities regardless of where children spend the majority of their day.

In 2005, we worked with our public and private funding partners to begin the process of building a partnership focused on taking sustainable, high-quality early learning to scale in Washington state. Our strategy is based on three tactics we believe will provide both the evidence and infrastructure needed to advance this effort statewide.

First, we will select demonstration communities where comprehensive early learning initiatives will exemplify the effectiveness of high-quality early learning. Second, we will support efforts in local communities to replicate models that are either proven or hold promise to add to our knowledge about what works well for young children. Third, we will encourage statewide efforts to improve early learning through programmatic initiatives, education, and advocacy efforts.

Working with public and private partners, we are committed to creating a system that ensures the best start for children in Washington. We believe that through these efforts we will see a significant increase in school-readiness rates for all children and a reduction in the school-readiness gap between low-income and high-income children statewide.