 A study at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service found that 43 percent of Virginia’s 4-year-olds were not enrolled in preschool. |
Looking for further evidence that the U.S. is lagging behind other industrial nations when it comes to education? Daily Progress staff writer Barney Breen-Portnoy reports today in an article for Media General News Service on a study by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service that found that in 2005 almost 43 percent of Virginia’s 105,000 4-year-olds were not enrolled in preschool. The director of the Center’s demographics and workforce section, Qian Cai, quoted in the article, zeros in on the disturbing, if not surprising causes: "Kids who are not enrolled are typically kids living in poverty, in single-parent households and with a mother without a good eduction."