September 20, 2006 - Tennessee 's efforts to establish a pre-kindergarten program were highlighted before a national audience today, in a live video session broadcast to over 200 locations.

George Stephanopoulos, a Sunday morning political talk show host for ABC, moderated the event which was organized by a national early childhood education advocacy group, pre[K]now.

Over 1500 pre-k advocates, policy makers and parents gathered in cities in 35 states to watch the conference and participate in question and answer sessions.

State education commissioner Lana Seivers flew to Washington D-C for the event, while Governor Phil Bredesen participated through a video link from Vanderbilt University. Bredesen says the bi-partisan leadership is key to the program's success, and hopes it will be in the future.

“I think we all agree that the at-risk students ought to be the first place to go and you know we're maybe half way through the at-risk students at the moment, but what I would like to do over the next year or two is get the legislature to open that up so that we no longer differentiate, these are all Tennessee children, Tennessee students who have access to this program.”

Metro Council lady Diane Neighbors is the chair of the Tennessee Alliance for Early Education. She says Tennessee has a high-quality program compared with other states'.

“The components that kind of set us kind of head and shoulders above the other states is we have small class sizes, good teacher-child ratio. We have to have qualified teachers, we have to have support systems in place and it's a voluntary program. There had been states that went with lower standards and their programs have not been as successful.”

The state's pre-k program serves about 13-thousand at-risk children.