Education Week: Congressional Pre-K Caucus Launches With Celebrity Guests

This article was published in Education Week on April 15, 2016. A link to the article can be found here.

By Christina Samuels

Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Republican Reps. Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Richard Hanna of New York hosted an event Thursday launching what they called the first Congressional Pre-K Caucus.

But the real stars of the show were Cookie Monster and Elmo, who made a trip from Sesame Street to Capitol Hill.

The four members of Congress are joint co-chairs of the caucus, which plans to bring "members of congress together to gain a deeper understanding of the benefits of early childhood education and promote policy recommendations to expand pre-K access for children throughout the country," said an invitation to the kick-off.

The Dallas Morning News, which attended the event, reported Hanna as stating: ""There's nothing about this issue that should be anyway partisan, and I don't think that there is. The reality is once you know more about pre-K it's impossible not to support it for every child in America. We need universal pre-K."