David W. Gordon is the Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools. From 1995 to 2004, he served as Superintendent of the Elk Grove Unified School District.  

Recently, I had the opportunity to go back to kindergarten. Along with other proud family members, including my daughter and son-in-law, I stood in a classroom snapping photos of my granddaughter Emma’s first day of kindergarten at Stone Lake Elementary School.

We watched as Emma, dressed in a navy blue dress with a matching polka dot bow in her hair, placed her little backpack in a cubbyhole labeled with her name. I left the classroom confident that Emma is ready for kindergarten. That’s because in addition to learning at home, she went to a high-quality preschool that helped her to learn how to learn, take in information and relate to adults and other children.

Unfortunately, too many children don’t have access to high-quality preschool that gives them an equal opportunity to start kindergarten ready to learn. A recent report by the RAND Corporation found that just one in four preschool-age children in California is in a high-quality preschool center that promotes school readiness.

Locally, we are taking steps so that more children have access to the kind of high-quality programs that prepare them for success in kindergarten and beyond. Because teachers are the lynchpin of everything that takes place in classrooms, we are expanding a pilot program that began here in Elk Grove. Funded by First 5 Sacramento, the program provides preschool staff with professional development coaches and mentors, and will be extended countywide.

To ensure we have a highly trained, expert workforce to work with our young children, we must also do a better job of making it easier to get the necessary coursework to earn licenses, gain full accreditation and earn associate’s or bachelor’s degrees. We are working with Los Rios Community College District to bring early childhood education courses to teachers in the communities where they live and work, and assist with the complex financial aid and transfer process to four-year universities.  

The Sacramento County Office of Education is also supporting two preschool reform bills by local legislators. SB 1629 by Senator Darrell Steinberg would establish a committee to create an early learning quality improvement system, so that when we have the resources, we can invest in programs that work. The bill would create a quality rating scale to help parents like my daughter – who looked at 15 preschools before settling on one for Emma – choose the best preschool for their child.

AB 2759 by Assemblymember Dave Jones would consolidate and streamline five existing state-funded preschool programs, building the system into a single coherent, more efficient one. AB 2759 is an important step in reducing administrative burdens on programs so that they can focus on their most important task: providing quality preschool to prepare young children for kindergarten.

Throughout my 40 years in education, I have seen the payoffs of investing in preschool. When children who have gone to preschool come to kindergarten, they know their numbers, colors and shapes, and they don’t need to spend time catching up on basic skills such as listening, demonstrating self control or cooperating with others. The early social and academic skills that high-quality preschool provides are even more important given the increasing expectations children face in kindergarten.

Children who attend high-quality preschool simply do better all along the way because they are ready to learn. When I served as superintendent of Elk Grove Unified School District, we analyzed the performance of children who had attended preschool and found that their test scores exceeded those of children who had not gone to preschool.

Research also shows that children who attend high-quality preschool are less likely to be held back a grade or be placed in special education, and have higher high school graduation and college attendance rates.

That’s why the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence, of which I am a member, recommended high-quality preschool programs as the foundation of system-wide education reforms.

Just before she started kindergarten, my granddaughter Emma told us she was excited about being one of the big girls. The future of our state is in the hands of children like Emma and her kindergarten classmates. We must increase access to high-quality preschool so that our next generation gets the strong, early start they need to succeed in school and in life.