John E. Pepper Jr. (former chairman and chief executive of Procter & Gamble, former chairman of the Walt Disney Company) and James M. Zimmerman (former chairman and chief executive of Macy’s) recently joined the high-quality early education “movement” by publishing a pro-preschool article in The New York Times.

The article discuss the long-term positive benefits of high-quality early education, and notes the numerous research studies on the topic. The authors call on the government to reorganize current spending to make a much greater public investment in early education. This issue is non-partisan, and the return on investment in early education is large.

Universally available prekindergarten is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Raising lifetime wages (and thereby tax revenues) and reducing the likelihood that children will drop out of school, get involved in crime, and become a burden on the justice system more than make up for the costs of early childhood education.

Read the full newspaper article here, and let us know why you believe investing in early education is important!