The scene at San Francisco's Grace Child Development Center could have been lifted straight from a feel-good movie. On a perfect summer day the cameras rolled and reporters crowded around as filmmaker and preschool activist Rob Reiner joined a table of 4-year-olds. He found himself talking about movies with a precocious girl named Diamond, who has ambitions to be a movie star--both Reiner and Diamond are fans of The Cat in the Hat--and April, a would-be doctor who can almost spell her name.

Reiner was on hand to celebrate the launch of the city's universal pre-kindergarten program. Flanked by local politicians, he turned the occasion into a rally for a proposed measure that would guarantee access to a high-quality preschool for every 4-year-old in the state. The initiative will be on the June 2006 ballot. "Even though preschool isn't a sexy issue, it's a critical issue," he said. "If we don't make an investment in young children, we have no chance of reaching the society we want."

In recent years this message--that early education isn't something that should be left entirely to families; that the government also has an obligation to improve the lives of young children--has started to resonate with parents, voters and taxpayers. Publicly supported pre-kindergartens are proliferating nationwide. Four states (Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia and New York) now formally guarantee universal preschool, and thirty-seven others support some preschool programs.

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