CLEVELAND (AP) — A new preschool program is helping prepare children for kindergarten and reassure parents who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the high cost of early education.

Invest in Children, a public-private partnership run by Cuyahoga County, provides scholarships to children of working-class parents. About 1,000 children participated at 24 day care sites in its just-completed first year.

High-quality preschool is out of reach for some working families — the average cost for a full-day program in Cuyahoga County is about $11,000 a year. Invest in Children is trying to close that gap.

Ohio’s investments in preschool will pay off down the road with more high school graduates and skilled workers and fewer people arrested or on welfare, said Debra Ackerman of the National Institute for Early Education Research.
“This is how you can get the best bang for your public dollar,” she said.

Stacy Sheppard, a parent of a 5-year-old boy, said her son has benefited from attending preschool at the Wade Child Care Center in the city’s Glenville neighborhood. Frequent field trips to nearby museums and an emphasis on vocabulary skills have made a difference, she said.
“If my son hadn’t attended Wade, I might be nervous about him starting school. But they’ve gotten him ready for kindergarten and beyond,” she said.

The likelihood of a child being well-prepared for kindergarten rises along with the parents’ income and education level and the use of high-quality preschool programs, research shows.

In Bay Village, a suburb west of Cleveland, about eight of every 10 kindergartners show up at the beginning of the academic year having all the skills necessary to start reading.

Parent involvement is a given at Normandy Elementary in Bay Village, where James McGlamery is principal for students in kindergarten through second grade.

“The students are very much ready by the time they come to us,” he said. About 70 percent of the youngsters have attended preschool, he said.

“Years ago, children started to learn to read in first grade,” said Carla Calevich, director of curriculum and instruction for the Brecksville-Broadview Heights district. “But with the new state standards, now that begins in kindergarten.”

In Cleveland, which the U.S. Census Bureau ranks as one of the poorest big cities in the nation, school leaders are pushing to start more free preschool programs at elementary schools. In 2005, there were 22. Now there are 40, and about six more could be added next year, said Thea Wilson, who heads early childhood education for the Cleveland public schools.