Demarco Campbell flips through magazines in hot pursuit of the letter "E."
It doesn't take the 5-year-old long to find the letter, cut it out and glue it on a sheet of paper where he's spelling out his name. For good measure, he also adds a photo of an iguana.
Spelling his name, sounding out letters and simple math come easy for Demarco, a bubbly little boy who's enrolled in the Bloomington school district's KinderPrep program.
About 92 percent of 130 students enrolled in KinderPrep last year showed up prepared for kindergarten last fall. That's about 20 percentage points higher than the statewide average. Most KinderPrep students are poor, minority children; some are just learning English.
Many of Minnesota's top educators believe such early-education opportunities hold the key to eliminating the state's achievement gap between white students and students of color.
"The research is so doggone clear," said Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius. "It's so much harder to play catch-up once you get them into the system than it is to ensure they're off to a good start."
The push to expand early education both nationally and in Minnesota is picking up momentum after years of debate about the level of dividends paid by preschool.
For example, Minnesota legislators recently approved funding increases for state school-readiness programs and early childhood family education classes, the first real bumps for those initiatives in more than a decade.