My colleague Andrew Rotherham is an astute analyst of education politics, and his analysis of the significant obstacles facing any federal push on pre-k coming out of tonight's State of the Union is pretty dead on. I would quibble with one point is his analysis, however. Andy writes:

3) There is no center to hold. The basic battle lines are people who think expanding access to pre-K is paramount and those who think improving quality in pre-K is.

Three quick points here:

First, I don't think there's anyone participating seriously in these debates at a policy level who doesn't think quality matters. There are just real differences of opinion on what pre-k quality means: certified teachers? rich interactions? an emphasis on language and early literacy skills? There is real evidence to inform these questions, but there are also, as in K-12 education, adult interests that may be threatened by some ways of defining pre-k quality and may resist that.

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