The state should, for example, vastly speed up its current 10-year timeline for expansion of preschool or risk losing “hope, heart and funding along the way.”

That charge came from David Lawrence, former publisher and chairman of The Miami Herald and a leader in the successful effort to bring early childhood education to all of Florida's 4-year-olds.

He made his remarks during a speech to about 200 education officials, state legislators and others in an event organized by the state Department of Education to stimulate momentum and support for its new initiative to expand the availability of preschool education.

Lawrence helped spearhead the passage of a Florida constitutional amendment in 2002 that requires his state to begin providing high-quality preschool for all its 4-year-olds by 2005.

“We passed it 2-to-1 not because we were on the side of the angels,” Lawrence said. “We were able to convince the community that this was an investment in every child's future.”

The amendment was one of several steps Florida has taken in recent years toward improving the social, emotional, educational and physical well being of its youngest residents, Lawrence said.

“The wisest resources we can possibly spend are time and money in the front end, from birth to age five,” he said. “Surely all children, rich and poor, deserve the same start in life. That seems to me a matter of basic American equity and citizenship.”

While Connecticut has much wealth and a strong educational system, he said, leaders must be mindful of the fact that one in four children here enters kindergarten unprepared because they didn't attend preschool. Research shows those children will have weaker literacy skills, higher absentee rates and will be much more likely to repeat a grade.

“Those children feel like failures by first grade, and if someone who is six feels like a failure, that is a tragedy,” he said. “We have no right, you and I, to blame the children for the fix we have placed them in.”

Research has repeatedly shown that preschool makes a huge difference in children's academic state spends about $40 million on its preschool programs, and also receives federal funds for Head Start. But an estimated 15,000 to 18,000 3- and 4-year-olds are not enrolled in preschool because programs affordable to their parents are at capacity. Most of the unserved children are from low-income families.

Lawrence advised state policymakers to focus first on bringing preschool to all 4-year-olds instead of also to 3-year-olds, and keeping participation in programs voluntary. But more attention must also be paid to what happens to children from birth through age three, he said.

“Do not let money dominate the discussion,” he said. “The real discussion should be on what children need, what the outcomes are, and on real research.”

Walter S. Gilliam, a researcher in Yale University's Child Study Center, presented national and Connecticut data documenting the positive impacts of preschool on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Persistent differences in achievement levels of poor and minority children compared to their more affluent white peers can be narrowed significantly if more low-income families could send their children to preschool, his research showed.

A panel invited to respond to Gilliam and Lawrence's comments included Waterford First Selectman Paul Eccard and Mary Broderick, president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and longtime member of the East Lyme school board.

Another panelist, banker Robert Mantilia, estimated that providing preschool to every child would cost the state an additional $144 million annually. That would provide a return on investment of $720 million to more than $1 billion, he said, in greater worker productivity, fewer dollars spent on remedial education, less demand for prison space and other dividends.

“We can't afford not to do this,” said Mantilia, vice president of JP Morgan Chase.

Connecticut's educational leaders need to “build a movement” toward making sure every 4-year-old can attend a quality preschool program, and that movement needs to have a sense of urgency.