Getting children on a path for success is a calling for actor/director Rob Reiner

Great advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of how the brain develops. "Had we had that information 125 to 150 years ago, there's no question preschool would have been part of the public school system," says actor/director Rob Reiner.

To make up for the oversight, he's putting his muscle behind a joint effort with CTA to pass an initiative that will provide funding not only to improve K-12 education, but also to establish voluntary universal preschool for California.

"This is a marriage," insisted Reiner as he explained his support for the funding initiative CTA's State Council has decided to circulate for the November 2004 ballot.

"Real government is government for the future. I hear children are our future, but when it comes time to invest in children, I don't see it happening. I'm here to bust some heads and make it work."

Reiner started brainstorming for solutions to society's problems after watching news coverage of incidents in which children had become cold-blooded killers. In each case, bewildered grown-ups invariably said how nice the children had been and they couldn't understand how it could have happened. Somehow, the children had gone astray and no one seemed to know why. "There was a big disconnect," said Reiner.

"When you think about getting in there in a way that fixes social ills, you have to look at the experiences people have as children. I wanted us to make an investment early on so children wouldn't get on a bad trajectory."

After much discussion at home, he decided to make use of the name recognition he had acquired as a result of his Emmy-award-winning performance as the son-in-law Archie Bunker dubbed "Meathead" in the long-running television series "All in the Family." He had also won acclaim for many screen directing successes, including The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, and When Harry Met Sally.

He got involved with then-President Bill Clinton's Goals 2000, which included a focus on getting every child to enter school ready to learn. Reiner thought, "If we reached that goal alone, a lot of other goals would fall into line."

He was also instrumental in initiating the White House conference on early-childhood development.

When Reiner heard about the work presidential candidate Howard Dean was doing in education as governor of Vermont, he made overtures. During a meeting with Dean's chief of staff, he was introduced to a Carnegie Corp. researcher who had written about early brain development and "its profound effect on function later in life."

When Reiner asked how many people knew about the findings, the researcher said the information had been distributed widely. "I told him I was as tuned in as one can get, but I had never heard about it."

At that point, Reiner realized his mission.

"I'm a communicator. My role would be to get the word out."

He produced a television special on early childhood, and launched the "I Am Your Child" national awareness and engagement campaign to emphasize the need for quality early childhood development programs.

Reiner also went to Congress to talk up his ideas, but now realizes "it was a wrong turn." Even though legislation introduced to provide early education earned widespread support, it eventually was attached to a funding mechanism that the tobacco industry killed. "After two years, we wound up with nothing."

Reiner then turned to California's initiative process "to see if we could get something started here." Proposition 10 used money generated by a tax on cigarettes for "integrated, comprehensive programs for young children" like education, preschool, child care and intervention programs for families at risk. It meant going up against big tobacco again in a "tough fight - we won by less than half a percent."

Shortly thereafter, the tobacco industry launched a serious attempt to repeal Prop. 28. Even though it meant fighting the battle again, Reiner said there was a silver lining. "During the campaign, it occurred to me how to explain what we were doing."

He realized there's no way preschool wouldn't have been part of the education system if the developers had known how the early brain develops and how a child really learns. "We would have built it that way."

Knowing that, he said, the question became, "How do we go back and do something about this?" To those who said it couldn't be done because it would detract from K-12's mission, he said, "This is not about pitting K-12 against preschool. This is a marriage. This is designed to help strengthen K-12. We're all trying to do the same thing. We want kids to succeed."

Now that he's joined with the "like-minded" members of CTA, he predicts certain success. "We're going to get lower class size, we're going to have preschool, and we're going to make this education system the best of any education system in the United States!"