The solution is ensuring children enter school prepared and ready to learn, said David Lawrence Jr., president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation. "You want to change reading scores? Then invest up front," he said.

Besides improving student achievement, quality preschool education also will save the state money on remediation, Lawrence said.

Last week's summit provided an opportunity to highlight the task force's initiatives and discuss strategies.

Since its inception, the task force has:

• Created preschool standards, approved by the Legislature in 2003, to help preschools development meaningful, well-rounded programs.
• Developed family and community guidelines to advise parents about activities that will help prepare their children for kindergarten.
• Prepared a school readiness assessment to determine the progress and effectiveness of preschool programs.

In addition, the state Legislature in 2002 created the Pre-Plus program, a public-private partnership touted as the first step to making preschool more universally available, particularly to children of low-income families. While it has had problems getting started, 12 Pre-Plus sites are now under way, and another will open next year.

More needs to be done, said task force members and others speaking at the summit — particularly in giving all 3- and 4-year-olds statewide access to early-learning opportunities and establishing a statewide network to provide school readiness information and resources to families and childcare providers. The task force is looking to partnerships among government, business and nonprofit groups to pay for the initiatives.

Other suggestions include ensuring that teachers and administrators are qualified, and establishing a statewide approach to easing the transition to school.

"We know that early-education efforts pay off in the end in big dividends," said Kamehameha Schools executive officer Dee Jay Mailer, who co-chaired the School Readiness Task Force with Department of Education Superintendent Pat Hamamoto.

Children with a strong preschool foundation have better math and reading skills, an advantage that continues throughout their lives. Students who start out behind their peers often have difficulty catching up, and research indicates they are more likely to drop out of school, repeat grades or require special education.

Students that lag behind also make it difficult for schools to achieve the progress required by No Child Left Behind. The law will cost the state $248 million to implement, only $72 million of the total coming from the federal government.

While universal preschool carries a $60 million price tag, several speakers at the summit said it would reduce significantly how much the state needs to spend on remediation. Several states already are moving toward universal preschool: Georgia has it, Oklahoma and Florida will implement it in the next year and other states have universal preschool in progress.

Lawrence emphasized the importance of quality preschool programs. While 17,000 children are in licensed childcare, only 17.5 percent of preschool centers were accredited in 2002, according to the Good Beginnings Alliance.

Quality costs, however, and low-income families often choose lower-quality preschools to save money, if they send their children to preschool at all. Education Week's 2002 Quality Counts survey showed that more than 70 percent of Hawai'i children from high-income families attend preschool, compared with 30 percent of kindergartners in low-income areas who had attended preschool.

Lawrence used a recent Georgetown University study of Tulsa, Okla., to demonstrate the importance of early literacy skills. The study found that children who enter kindergarten knowing the alphabet are 20 times more likely to be able to read simple words aloud at the end of the school year, and read and understand simple sentences by the end of the first grade.

The study also showed that if 50 first-graders have problems reading, 44 of them will have problems reading when they reach the fourth grade.

In Hawai'i, as in other states, financial restraints have forced early-education resources to be focused on the most disadvantaged children, who lag furthest behind and benefit the most from such programs.

Lawrence said all children need the support, however. "Let us also remember that the children with readiness challenges are frequently children who do not come from poor and distinctly disadvantaged homes and families and neighborhoods," he said.

Gov. Linda Lingle, who addressed the summit, said early-childhood education has bipartisan support. "We all know this information," she said. "This is not something that you have to go out and prove."

Lingle said her administration is working on its legislative package and will try to come up with legislation, money, or both to support early education. A possible source of funding could come from converting surplus money from Temporary Aid for Needy Family as welfare rolls decline.

In an effort to better prepare children for kindergarten, the Legislature this year created junior kindergarten, which will give 4-year-old kindergartners more time to adjust to school instead of making them catch up to 5-year-olds. But introducing voluntary preschool for all 4-year-olds is a much more formidable task.

In Miami-Dade County, Fla., voters agreed to higher taxes to raise $65 million for early intervention and prevention. But Carl Takamura, executive director of the Hawai'i Business Roundtable, said early-childhood education advocates will have to put forward a strong case about the benefits of quality preschool before discussing who will foot the estimated $60 million bill here if programs are to be made available to all 4-year-olds.

"If you start talking about tax increases, that's all people will hear. They won't listen to what the money is for," Takamura said.

A bill that would have raised $30 million to $35 million for universal preschool in Hawai'i died in the Legislature last year as soon as lawmakers learned it required raising taxes, said Sen. Brian Kanno. "Passing a tax increase is not easy," he said.

Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), and Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, D-13th (Kalihi, Nu'uanu), said they would hold another summit next month at the Capitol to discuss ways to promote early-childhood education.

"We need to put this in position as a priority," Kanno said.