By Henrietta Zalkind and Anthony Berkley

Guest columnists

Young children learn more, do better in school and, ultimately, in the workplace when they move seamlessly from home to child care to preschool to the early grades. Unfortunately, far too few children experience such seamlessness, thanks to a herky-jerky educational system that moves them from one place and grade to the next with no sense of continuity.

A number of communities large and small are hard at work to change that -- including Edgecombe and Nash Counties in eastern North Carolina. These communities have launched promising early learning initiatives through a project called SPARK, Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids.

The goal: make sure children are ready for school and that schools are ready for them.

In North Carolina, the Down East Partnership for Children (DEPC) has worked for over 16 years by advocating and supporting high quality early care and education and a coordinated system of community resources. As one of the SPARK initiative sites, DEPC created a model of services designed to ensure that all children are healthy and ready for kindergarten and are launched as successful learners by the end of third grade.

Instead of relying on outside experts -- the usual method for reforming schools -- these communities are tapping parents, teachers, business and faith leaders, and even students to help generate solutions.

The best programs link parents, teachers, and students and create strong connections between classrooms and communities, building an educational continuum.

Such groundbreaking strategies can help shape federal and state policies. In turn, federal and state governments must allow communities the flexibility to implement policies that help their children learn best.

This kind of thinking may well turn this time of economic crisis into one of meaningful and lasting education reform.

The economic meltdown has forced school districts to cut spending -- even, in some cases, for core teachers and staff. But we do have a bit of surprising good news: The federal government is promoting real, meaningful reform, the kind that hasn't occurred in decades. And it's putting up some real, meaningful money to help pay for it.

To propel these innovative ideas, two new federal funds for innovation will provide a total of $5 billion, enough to launch what Education Secretary Arne Duncan has described as "education reform's moon shot."

The best ideas for education bubble up from the community level. Now the stars seem aligned to give this type of bottom-up innovation serious consideration.

Henrietta Zalkind is the executive director of the Down East Partnership for Children in Rocky Mount. Anthony Berkley is the deputy director for education and learning at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.