As mentioned in a previous blog post, last month President Obama signed legislation passed by the United States Congress to provide additional Medicaid (FMAP) funding to states, including $450 million for Massachusetts.

Governor Patrick and the Legislature will soon decide how to allocate these funds. Because Congress had not acted on FMAP by the end of the state’s fiscal year, the governor signed an FY11 budget that had significant cuts to early education and care. The state now has an opportunity to restore critical funding for high-quality early education and care programs known to improve children’s school readiness and later academic achievement.

We urge our Massachusetts readers to contact their state representatives and state senators to urge them to restore that critical funding.  Click here to send an e-mail to your state representative and state senator today!

Read the letters to the governor and Legislature that Strategies for Children and our Early Education for All Campaign sent last month, recommending that the FMAP relief funds be used to restore funding for high-quality early education and care as indicated in the FY11 Conference Committee appropriations.

Become part of the grass roots movement for high-quality early education in Massachusetts. Sign up to join the Early Education for All (EEA) Campaign.

Post script on MCAS: Check out today’s Boston Globe. Governor Patrick traveled to the Beachmont Elementary School in Revere yesterday to announce statewide 2010 MCAS results – that included a six point increase in third grade reading scores. While at Beachmont, the governor visited a third grade classroom.

“Students were writing a summary of a chapter in a book they had read,” the Globe reports. “When the teacher asked what a summary should include, Oumaima Bahjy’s hand shot up. ‘The important parts,’ she said. In the back corner, Dante Raffa diligently wrote his summary, his legs dangling just above the floor. Head in his journal, he didn’t seem to be listening. But when the teacher asked what a prediction was, he hurled his hand upward, half springing from his seat. ‘When you take a good guess about what’s going to happen next,’ he said. Patrick was impressed. ‘Very good,’ he said with a chuckle.’”

The Globe also quoted Strategies for Children President Margaret Blood.  “Officials said yesterday that the gains made by third-graders, the youngest students who take the annual standardized tests, were especially promising. They indicate that more students are grasping the basics early on, putting them in a good position to handle more advanced work later on,” the Globe reported. “‘It’s very, very encouraging,’ said Margaret Blood, the president of Strategies for Children, a Boston group that advocates for early education. ‘The results had been pretty stagnant, so this shows the state is doing something right.’…  At four grade levels, only one-third of low-income students are proficient in math. And Blood cautioned that more than one-third of third-graders, and over half of those from low-income families, are not proficient readers. Students who struggle with reading at an early age often continue to have a hard time in school, she said.”