A national education advocacy group has singled out Iowa as one of the state’s that’s spending more money on education programs for kids before they start kindergarten. The group “Pre-K-Now” featured Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack today on a conference call with reporters. Vilsack says the state was able to increase its commitment to the community empowerment program that provides assistance to school-ready grants and early childhood grants for preschool and for more quality childcare and home visits for parents. Vilsack says it was not easy to do with the state’s tough budget situation. He says, “The choice we had to make was to substantially reduce our commitment to the state university system, which resulted in tuition costs increasing for a lot of our young people, so these are always tough choices.” Tennessee’s governor was also featured on the conference call.