Who would write such a commentary? Reason Foundation writers, of course, who have discovered a gold mine in being the only outfit in the entire country willing to opine against preschool.
Who would print such a commentary? The WSJ opinion page, of course, where the editors equipped the commentary with this wonderful headline: “Protect Our Kids From Preschool.”
Preschool only produces a positive bump for those in extreme poverty, we’re told. Interesting, isn’t it, that the WSJ opinion page, a true believer in the wisdom of market forces, would print an op-ed concluding that all those masters of the universe dropping children off at New York’s famous 92nd St. Y preschool are acting against their economic interests. Turns out Jack Grubman endured that scandal for nothing.
Sure, some of the claims for preschool payoffs are over the top, but that’s mostly because few schools of any kind going to scale can maintain the quality of a research-supported incubator. But ask yourself this: Does that fact that real-world preschools produce gains at, let’s say, a mere four or five times the original investment render them useless? Um, my modest retirement portfolio hasn’t been doing that well lately.
I don’t see the need to defend the research behind the benefits of preschool, but here’s the latest I wrote on this.
(I do feel moved, however, to remind the McCain campaign once again that ducking the preschool issue is a bad idea. The families that need good preschools the most are working class Americans. Of course you could try telling these families that those upper-income parents across town flocking to high quality preschools are just wasting their money. Good luck with that one…)
–Guest blogger Richard Whitmire
I find it interesting that you only link to the opinion piece you are attacking as false and your own editorial in USA Today. No facts produced at all. In the USA Today editorial, you commend the Oklahoma preschool program for raising the bar for students, but their 4th grade stats in the NIEER 2007 yearbook show a decline fromf one point to two points behind the national average in math and a drop from five points above the national average to three points below the national average in reading from 1992 to 2007.
In the study linked to by the USA Today editorial, you use the findings of a study whose statistics are invalidated by not choosing participants in either the preschool or “control” group at random. I could cherry-pick results to show that the sky is pink with those statistical methods.
I find it interesting that you only link to the opinion piece you are attacking as false and your own editorial in USA Today. No facts produced at all. In the USA Today editorial, you commend the Oklahoma preschool program for raising the bar for students, but their 4th grade stats in the NIEER 2007 yearbook show a decline fromf one point to two points behind the national average in math and a drop from five points above the national average to three points below the national average in reading from 1992 to 2007.
Anyone wishing more details on the research behind preschool needs to pick up a copy of The Sandbox Investment, by Berkeley professor David Kirp.
Richard Whitmire
It might be educational for you to investigate how many hours a day pre-school children in Japan, China, and Korea attend school.
And it might be educational to see how many hours a day those kids spend in school in first, second, and third grades.
You will see that the countries that have the best educational systems in the world have the lowest requirements and expectations on young children.
ot;Japan also has a math system which requires younger children to learn very little the first years, their books are tiny – the differencei s they learn the basics, so well their foundation never cracks.
The situation of those not socioeconomically advantaged is quite different than the yuppies in NYC trying to get their children into elite pre-schools. Those with a disavantage socio-economically do benefit.
It’s not always about the “have’s” it is sometimes about the “have not’s”.
I understand how the WSJ would miss that though.
According to http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/spring05/mcguem/psy8935/readings/currie1995.pdf and http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/jhr/2001ab/aughinbaugh.html and more (online reprints of JSTOR & JHR archives), there are no benefits for either high income OR low income children. In one study, all gains for African American children were lost by 3rd grade, while white children retained some gains, but there were none of the highly touted “health” gains for Head Start children at all.
See Finland cited in the WSJ – the best results come from a later start, not pushing children to be academics when their main job should be learning from real life & play.
The crucial point that all these anti-universal-preschool people miss is that universal preschool does NOT mean that all kids go to preschool. It will never mean that.
Universal preschool means that all kids whose parents want it, will be able to go to preschool. It will target the urban poor, who can make the most gains from it.
Speaking as a teacher, when I taught kindergarten to disadvantaged kids, it was extremely difficult to get them caught up to where they needed to be at the start of K, let alone get them through the year’s curriculum and ready for first grade. They started really far behind because of their lack of experiences in the preschool years, and making up for what they had missed in their first five years of life was a huge task.
Once I started teaching that same demographic group in preK, suddenly things became more possible. I could take kids who were behind where they needed to be at age 4, get them caught up, and get them ready for kindergarten, or even ahead a little.