Early Education for All: A Strategic Political Campaign for High-Quality Early Education

Early Education for All: A Strategic Political Campaign for High-Quality Early Education in Massachusetts

This report describes a political campaign for high-quality early education in Massachusetts called Early Education for All (EEA). The campaign is working to provide universal access to high-quality early childhood education and full school-day public kindergarten for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children in Massachusetts. An EEA timeline is presented for 1998-2005. The campaign’s grass-roots strength is emerging as a result of 32 EEA-organized regional forums and 60 public meetings that were held Statewide during two years that EEA sought input from frontline education and care workers and parents in shaping the goals and articulating the policies contained in the legislation. Four key strategies of the EEA campaign include: (1) engage influential new allies for children to work in partnership with early childhood education and care advocates; (2) create and build Statewide constituent support for a public policy initiative that ensures that 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds have access to high-quality early childhood education programs; (3) strengthen support for legislative action by developing a Statewide media campaign to educate the public about the benefits of high-quality early childhood education; and (4) advocate for research and evaluation so that it can be demonstrated to Massachusetts’ taxpayers how dollars put into high-quality early childhood education affect long-term measurable outcomes in children.