Reporter's Notebook

New Orleans

The upbeat tempo of a traditional New Orleans jazz band preceded the opening session of the National Association for the Education of Young Children's annual conference. Sharon Lynn Kagan, the president of the 102,000-member organization, spoke of the challenges facing early-childhood educators.

Among those challenges, she said, are the problem of low salaries and the staff shortages faced by many of the nation's child-care centers. Ms. Kagan observed that some preschool teachers have been known to "leave our profession for better-paying jobs at the mall and McDonald's."

Other formidable tasks range from determining proper discipline in the classroom to "trying to tell a legislator that early-childhood education is more...