Parking a Link: Preschool for All<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This Brookings Study is linked to by instapundit.com: "New Evidence Raises Doubts on Obama\u2019s Preschool for All." It's a study of the impact of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/11\/parking-a-link-preschool-for-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Parking a Link: Preschool for All\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This Brookings Study is linked to by instapundit.com: "New Evidence Raises Doubts on Obama\u2019s Preschool for All." 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{"id":726,"date":"2013-11-21T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/11\/parking-a-link-preschool-for-all.html"},"modified":"2013-11-21T08:45:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T08:45:00","slug":"parking-a-link-preschool-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/11\/parking-a-link-preschool-for-all.html","title":{"rendered":"Parking a Link: Preschool for All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This Brookings Study is linked to by instapundit.com: \u201cNew Evidence Raises Doubts on Obama\u2019s Preschool for All<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a study of the impact of providing free preschool for 4 year olds, based on a randomized study in Tennessee, following the outcomes of low-income children who \u201cwon\u201d the lottery to participate in a full-day preschool program and those who did not.\u00a0 On nearly all measures, the \u201cwinners\u201d did not see measurable improvements in academic, social or behavioral skills when evaluated in first grade, as compared to the control group \u2014 in fact, they performed more poorly.<\/p>\n

Now, this is not just warehousing children, but a program considered \u201chigh quality\u201d by all standards.\u00a0 These programs were either run by local school districts or contracted out to child care centers that met appropriate standards.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the take-away from this?\u00a0 The universal preschool supporters\u2019 take-away is generally to ignore such findings and focus on the two, never replicated Perry and Abcdarian studies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But look at Germany:\u00a0 I know about this.\u00a0 My kids were in \u201ckindergarten\u201d (effectively, a universal pre-k program, for children ages 3 until they begin school in 1st grade, at 5 1\/2 or 6) there.\u00a0\u00a0In our town, we\u00a0could choose half-day, 3:00 pick-up, or 5:00 pick-up; we had the last of these because of our work schedules \u2014 but in other places the full-day option wasn\u2019t always available.<\/p>\n

But consider this:\u00a0there was no interest in teaching them letters or numbers or completing worksheets or learning sight words.\u00a0 Reading began in first grade with no attempts to push it forward to kindergarten.\u00a0 There may have been some \u201csocial studies\u201d or \u201cscience\u201d in terms of what kids of books the teacher read the kids, or what special projects were going on.\u00a0 The kids spent a lot of time playing outside, too.\u00a0 The main goal of kindergarten was to teach children to be accustomed to being in a group, develop friends, play nicely together (they encouraged a lot of board game-playing), and so forth.\u00a0 Secondarily \u2014 but of increasing importance \u2014 was its role as daycare, for working parents, or to enable mothers at home to have some time for errands (which, in a German household, are significant \u2014 shopping, for instance,\u00a0is traditionally a daily, not weekly activity).<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s be honest:\u00a0 \u201cuniversal pre-k\u201d isn\u2019t about boosting academic achievement.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going to do that.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not going to keep kids out of jail 14 years from now \u2014 there are too many influences in the meantime.<\/p>\n

\u201cUniversal pre-k\u201d is ultimately about providing daycare to working families free of charge and in a standardized way (that is, not specifically as a welfare benefit), in the same way as school has the dual function of teaching children and freeing parents from needing to care for them during school hours.\u00a0 Let\u2019s be honest about this.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

(It occurs to me that England is much more like the US in terms of academic expectations in the \u201cpre-school\u201d years \u2014 maybe I should look around later and see if there\u2019s any literature on the UK experience.)<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 It universal pre-k about providing more union jobs for teachers?\u00a0 I think that\u2019s only a small part of it, given that Tennessee isn\u2019t the only state to contract out to private daycare centers; as I recall from reading about this a while back, Oklahoma does, too.\u00a0 (Which is kind of ironic \u2014 vouchers are out of the question for\u00a0primary and secondary school, but perfectly fine for pre-primary and tertiary education.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"