Early Education Returns to Policy Spotlight

Amid a recession that’s squeezing state budgets and pushing more families into poverty, teams of officials from 39 states gathered near Washington last week to explore ways to better meet the educational and health needs of young children.

The Sept. 16-18 meeting, sponsored by the National Governors Association, came as the U.S. House of Representatives debated and approved a bill that aims to pump $8 billion over eight years into states to improve the quality of early-childhood education from birth to age 5.

And it followed a U.S. Census Bureau report earlier this month about the recession’s impact on children and families, which showed that about 800,000 more children younger than 18 nationwide were living in poverty in 2008 than in 2007, for a...