The response below was written by my colleague Maggie Severns, policy analyst for the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation.

Fortunately, the fact that pre-K is rarely front-and-center during election season doesn’t mean that it lacks public interest altogether: The steady rise of state-funded pre-K programs across the country and the persistence of longstanding federal programs, such as Head Start, are testimony to the fact that pre-K is a priority to many despite being chronically underfunded.

One of the best ways to make pre-K an education priority would be to start funding it like one, by moving pre-K funding into states’ formula funding for K-12 education. This would help safeguard pre-K funding in several ways: First, since K-12 formula funding takes into account both increasing costs and student populations when it allocates money to the year’s education budget, including pre-K in a state’s education funding formula increases the likelihood that pre-K funding will increase as enrollment as costs and enrollment increase over time. It also helps safeguard pre-K budgets from cuts by funding pre-K through a larger, less vulnerable budget line item. Finally, in many cases, it would give pre-K some of the same constitutional safeguards from drastic cuts that K-12 education has in many states.

Three of the five states that offered the best access to pre-K in 2011 -- Oklahoma, Vermont, and West Virginia -- fund their pre-K programs through this approach, but a vast majority of states keep pre-K as a separate (and consequently vulnerable) line-item in the state education budget or fund it through human services agencies.

Including pre-K funding as a part of K-12 funds also encourages strategies like aligning pre-K curricula with the curricula in elementary schools and vice-versa so that students progress logically from year to year, which can save class time and improve learning at little-to-no cost. Yet this doesn’t happen in many school districts.

The concept of formula funding pre-K programs can be applied to federal funding as well. We don’t need a separate No Child Left Behind for early childhood education as much as we need to consider using the existing No Child Left Behind law (and the next iteration of No Child Left Behind, when it is passed) to fund early education programs. Currently, states can use a portion of their Title I funds to pay for pre-K programs, but there is little incentive for them to use their stretched Title I dollars to do so. Establishing dedicated pre-K funds or new incentives to use Title I dollars for pre-K (and, of course, more Title I funding overall to help support this expansion) is one strategy for Congress to consider when it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind.

Over the past two decades, Americans have learned to think of a child’s education beyond the parameters of six-hour school days between the ages of 5 and 18. We have learned to consider how the student spends the other 18 hours each day, and how a child’s health and family circumstances may affect his or her ability to excel in school. Perhaps most importantly, we now know that the amount of support a child receives in his or her first 5 years of life can dictate that child’s future.

In order to prepare our students for the challenges that currently face them, education policies must reflect the idea that the starting point for education is no longer kindergarten. In the words of my former boss Senator Tom Harkin, “I don’t even use the word ‘preschool’ any longer, because I think education starts at birth.” Senator Harkin has long been a champion of increasing access to early learning, and in March of this year introduced the “Rebuild America Act”, which allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award state grants to enhance high-quality childhood care and education programs.

But one big question remains: What will it take for more lawmakers to focus on early childhood education? While there is widespread agreement over the importance of early childhood education, there also seems to be widespread agreement that the issue is currently a political non-starter. Political pundits say that legislators and candidates are focused on the economy and fixated on showcasing short-term results of federally funded programs. But education – and early childhood education in particular – is both an economic issue, and one that can deliver short term results. In fact, some educators have developed evidence-based early childhood education approaches that are moving the needle for students over the course of 1-2 years.

In Congress’ own backyard, AppleTree Institute has demonstrated impressive success in the District of Columbia with its evidence-based “Every Child Ready” instructional model for early childhood educators. Children in AppleTree’s program gain an average of 18 standard score points in two years on national measures of vocabulary (a gain of 4 points is considered significant). Every Child Ready supports teachers by providing what to teach, how to teach it, and how to know it’s working. This model was developed by AppleTree to fill the glaring void they saw in early childhood education. AppleTree wanted to provide its teachers with an evidence-based instructional program that was aligned with the Common Core, could provide teachers with robust professional development, and included assessments.

The success of Every Child Ready has come to fruition with the help of a $5 million Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant through the Department of Education and a 25 percent match in private contributions.

AppleTree’s story provides several important lessons: short-term results are possible in early childhood education; smart federal investment can spur innovation; public and private dollars can work together; and effective programs should be evidence-based, include teacher supports, common core alignment, and meaningful assessments that track progress for the students and teachers. If replicated effectively, these lessons could provide the spark that current federal education policy so desperately needs.

While early learning seems to be a political non-starter right now, I’m hopeful that this won’t be the case for long. The most effective way to direct political will towards early learning is to show lawmakers that effective early learning programs provide short-term results, not only long-term impact. And to further elevate early learning in policy and politics, we’ll need to hear from a variety of stakeholders that have an interest in short and long-term results, particularly the business community.

Education has always been ‘the great equalizer’ of our country, but right now, that’s not the case. In order to provide everyone with the same opportunities, we need to get young children educational resources when they need them, which is long before age 5. In much the same way that society should view education as a birth to adulthood continuum, we must also recognize that with quality programs, the results can be measured on that very same continuum. The right investments in quality early childhood education can be returned in 2 years…and 20 years after that. Now that’s a timeline that works for everyone.

Nationwide, more than a third of our third graders are still unable to read at grade level. Students are dropping out of high school at roughly the same rates as those who were struggling to read in elementary school. States like Arizona and California have long used third grade reading performance measures to determine how many jail cells to build. Yet we are still debating whether early childhood education should be a political focus or even a national policy issue.

For well over a decade we have heard the data on the impact a rigorous, evidence-based early childhood education can have on a young learner, leveling the playing field for students from historically disadvantaged populations. We seem to know what we should do, yet we continue to debate whether it should be a priority or not.

Here in Connecticut, as part of our landmark education reform legislation passed this spring, advocates pushed for the creation of 1,000 new preK slots for students in need. This was an action taken following the rejection of Connecticut's Race to the Top: Early Childhood edition application at the end of 2011. While just one step, it was a start down the right path to address the disparities and learning concerns that begin well before the first day of kindergarten.

As one would expect, no one stood in opposition to adding preK slots in Connecticut. Individuals and organizations were quick to voice their support for the expansion, but few were willing to discuss a far more important issue. Which students would fill these high-quality preK slots and in which existing programs? How do we ensure meaningful ECE programs for the students who may benefit the most, such as special education or ELL students? How do we to ensure that learners in need will get the pre-reading and pre-math instruction necessary, and won’t just be plopped into a glorified babysitting program?

The question is not simply whether or not to provide early childhood education. In a time when we are ever-focused on return on investment of scarce public dollars, the real questions should be about the rigor of the ECE program. What is the evidence base on which the program is constructed? How do we correctly target the students most in need? What is the quality and effectiveness of the educators leading an ECE classroom? What is their track record of effectiveness? This may be an unpopular thing to say in our current anti-testing environment, but we need to demand proof that the program (or approach) works and that the children it touches are gaining the skills needed to succeed in kindergarten and beyond.

While we treat all that came under the NCLB banner as if it were Voldemort – something that shall not be named – let us not forget of the initial investment NCLB placed in early childhood education through its Early Reading First (ERF) program. In its 2007 evaluation of the Early Reading First program, the Institute for Education Sciences found that the program had “positive, statistically significant impacts on several classroom and teacher outcomes,” including the number of hours of professional development, improved aspects of classroom environments and teacher practices, and more general aspects of classroom quality. More importantly, “ERF had a positive impact on children’s print and letter knowledge.”

The evaluation also highlighted that more work needed to be done to build phonological awareness and oral language.

We now have nine states – California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington – that are enjoying $500 million in Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Funds. The expectation is that those states will be held to rigorous standards, held accountable for measureable results, and drive the sort of improvement we are all seeking.

Now is the time to ensure that those states and their efforts are successful. Using valuable ECE research from sources such as Pew, New America Foundation, First Five Years Fund, NIEER, and yes, Early Reading First, we can empower our youngest learners with the social and cognitive skills needed to succeed.

In our quest to close the achievement gaps, we often speak of equity, accountability, and results. We must do the same with our early childhood education programs, focusing on what is proven effective and holding all in the system accountably for results. Such early investments are some of the most important ones we can make in students’ lives. The one thing worse than doing nothing is to do that which is unproven and will have no impact on the long-term success of the learner.