The Minnesota Post – Terri Barreiro
“The Early Learning Scholarships Program that the Legislature is considering for expansion this year may be the most extensively, locally researched early education tool in Minnesota’s history. Nearly a decade’s worth of encouraging research findings should be very comforting to policymakers making investment decisions this year. Here’s how scholarships work. Low-income parents are given scholarships, and are allowed to choose any program that is using kindergarten-readiness best practices, as identified by the Parent Aware Ratings. And those best practices are based on decades of national research. More than 2,000 of these high-quality programs can be found in Minnesota schools, centers, homes, churches and nonprofit organizations across the state. A website featuring Parent Aware rated programs makes it easy for parents to learn about their options and choose one that best fits their home and work locations and schedules needs based on location, schedule, teaching approach, and other factors. If a parent’s job or residence changes, parents can take the scholarship to a new rated provider that fits their new situation, so the child’s learning doesn’t get interrupted, and paperwork is kept to a minimum.”(more)