Governor Jim Hodges joined Tenenbaum for today's news conference. This is no time for the General Assembly to back off its commitment to our children. We must build on the success of full-day kindergarten with full funding for First Steps to School Readiness . We cannot rest until every child in every county is able to begin the first grade healthy and ready to learn. First Steps uses public and private funds to develop county partnerships that support high-quality early childhood development and education services for children.
Support is provided for families to enable their children to reach first grade ready to succeed.
One of Tenenbaum's newest initiatives is the recently created Office of Early Childhood Education at the State Department, which has a staff of six regional coordinators who will work in specific areas of the state. They will assist teachers, school administrators, and parents, as well as build strong links among local child care programs, First Steps local partnerships, Head Start and other agencies that deal with caring for and educating young children. Last fall's CSAB readiness scores by 52,611 incoming first-graders were the best since the test was introduced in 1979. Also impressive have been gains by first-graders from the most economically disadvantaged families. Improvement over last year was 3.5 percentage points.