The cover story of this week’s issue of Parade magazine focused on the need for quality child care in its Sunday issue on July 19, 2009. The article, “The New Push for Quality Child Care,” by Leslie Bennetts, explored the crunch facing families trying to afford child care and the far-reaching social and educational benefits for children.

The article points to new solutions in our neighboring state of Minnesota, where business and community leaders have raised money for high-quality child care and innovations like a quality rating system to help parents find programs with stimulating learning environments. According Art Rolnick, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, early childhood education is “the best public investment you could possibly make.”

The article is particularly timely in light of current action on early learning taking place in Washington. Last week, Education and Labor Committee chair George Miller, introduced legislation to create an Early Learning Challenge Fund. The bill would make available to the states $10 billion in competitive grants over 10 years to support their efforts to improve the quality of early education in all types of settings and increase the number of disadvantaged kids enrolled in high quality programs. The Education and Labor Committee is scheduled to mark up the bill tomorrow (Tues. 7/21).