Children engaged in sensory exercises, often used in special education classrooms. (Photo by Getty Images)

Early childhood education. Across much of the rest of the world, free, public early childhood education is a basic right.

At a time in which it’s necessary for almost all parents to work in order to make ends meet, these nations have long recognized that there’s no good reason to hold off on providing free public education until children enter Kindergarten.

If it hopes to continue to compete and advance, at some point, the U.S. simply must move to make free public education from birth a basic right.

Until that time, however, there are some obvious and commonsense steps that should be taken in order to make early childhood education more affordable, and to its credit, a state task force led by Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt recently recommended several – including raising state child care subsidies, establishing partnerships with North Carolina public schools and universities and creating a state child care endowment.

The bottom line: The current state child care system is broken. And the task force recommendations are an obvious first step toward constructing something much better.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Task force outlines some commonsense first steps to address state’s child care shortage