It's not just university students who are facing double-digit tuition increases due to budget cuts in Olympia. The Seattle Public Schools recently announced a 15 percent tuition increase for full day kindergarten. At most of Seattle's elementary schools, parents of children who do not qualify for free or reduced price lunch will be charged $2,720 for the additional three hours a day of instruction in 2012-2013, up from $2,370 in 2011-2012.

The irony, of course, is that for all the talk of education reform in Olympia and nationally, the one reform that we absolutely know produces positive results—universal preschool and full day kindergarten—is the one reform that we refuse to implement. Because, you know... it costs money. Instead, we're moving backwards, by making full day kindergarten less affordable for middle class families.