A new tool is available to help. Called "Parent Aware'' and launched earlier this month, it is a system of rating child-care programs on the basis of how well they prepare youngsters for school.

"This is not child care — this is school readiness. That's what we're measuring,'' said Duane Benson, head of one of the sponsoring groups, the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation. The idea is to help parents find and evaluate these "early learning" opportunities, and to help the child-care providers improve their programs and staff to meet the rating system's educational standards.

Every moment in a 3- or 4-year-old's life is a learning experience of some kind, whether they are banging pots and pans on the kitchen floor or listening to Dr. Seuss at bedtime: "I do not like green eggs and ham/ I do not like it Sam-I-am ...." Efforts like Parent Aware, it seems to us, are an attempt to ensure the learning potential of long hours spent in child care are not wasted.

The program is limited, with 250 of 13,500 licensed child-care programs rated. It focuses on pilot programs in St. Paul, North Minneapolis, Wayzata, and Blue Earth and Nicollet counties. To view ratings, use the program's Web site at www.parentawareratings.org or call the Child Care Resource and Referral Information Line at 888-291-9811.

We find the methodology as interesting as the results, and think parents can learn something from knowing what the program looks for. These include: a curriculum based on the latest research into child development; the education and training level of teachers; how progress is tracked; and how parents are involved in the learning process.

Just asking those questions on a visit to a child-care provider could give parents a good idea of whether the program is aimed at constructive early learning that could make a difference down the line.

This focus on early learning is particularly important in light of the achievement gap in K-12 education — the distance between white and minority students on test scores and graduation rates. Both the Web site and telephone source listed above have information about financial assistance for low-income families to help defray the costs, because while it is true that early learning matters, it is also true that early learning ain't cheap.

The years from birth to that first day at the school-bus stop fly by. We like to think that banging those pots and pans, listening to Dr. Seuss and being exposed to research-based curriculum are of equal value in the early learning department.

Parents with fast-learning, brain-developing, open-eyed toddlers under foot need help. Parent Aware and similar efforts reinforce the point that play can be serious and that learning during the pan-banging years can pay off in fifth or seventh or ninth grade.