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If
Governor-elect Tim Kaine keeps one of his key
promises, a new state entitlement program will
soon come before the Virginia General Assembly:
Kaine’s “Start Strong” program of
“universal pre-k” education.
Such
a program – offering free pre-k education to the
children of millionaires as well as the poor –
is certain to be expensive. Kaine himself
estimates the cost at $5,400 per student, and more
than 78,000 Virginia 4-year-olds are currently
without any subsidized pre-k schooling (18,500
already receive some form of subsidized pre-school).
Assuming
only 70 percent use the new “free” preschool
program (an estimate used in other states) the
price tag will run nearly $300 million a year –
even before we’ve built the classrooms to
accommodate these new students.
For
the moment, let’s leave aside the question of
how Virginians will pay for the program or whether
this will develop into a government-managed
program putting even more pressure on the public
schools. That debate will come when the new
Governor lays out specifics.
Instead,
let’s focus on first things: Does this
work?
The
answer is that, for the vast majority of students,
there is little evidence that it does.
The
Kaine for Governor campaign website cited a
“highly regarded Michigan study, which followed
a group of students from low-income families from
preschool to age forty.” That study, presumably
the one conducted by the High/Scope Educational
Research Foundation -- the Kaine site doesn’t
say, but this is the only one around – showed
“positive effects on adult crime, earnings,
wealth, welfare dependence and commitment to
marriage.”
That’s
true. But it’s not the whole story. The project
was for pre-schoolers deemed to be at risk for
“retarded intellectual functioning and eventual
school failure.” It involved a grand total of
123 children (58 in the experimental group and 65
in the control group) who were given one or two
years of half-day preschool for seven months and
periodic home visits. All of the children were of
low socioeconomic status and had IQs in the range
of 70 to 85.
It
not only wasn’t representative of most children,
it wasn’t even representative of a majority of
economically disadvantaged children. And it is
hardly sufficient evidence on which to hang a $300
million a year program.
Perhaps
most telling was the comment of David Weikart,
past president of the High/Scope Education
Research Foundation that conducted the study:
“For middle-class youngsters with a good
economic basis, most programs are not able to show
much in the way of difference.”
He’s
right. Let’s remember that 83 percent of the
children eligible for this new taxpayer-financed
benefit are not low income kids. And a taxpayer
investment of hundreds of millions of dollars
should produce results with the target population.
So what are the results for those middle-class
children?
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Georgia’s
pre-school program has served more than
300,000 children at a cost of $1.15 billion.
A 2003 report by Georgia State University
researchers tracked students for five years,
finding that any test scores from preschool
“are not sustained in later years.”
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A
November 2005 study from Stanford University
and the University of California in Berkeley
looked at 14,000 kindergartners. They
discovered that preschool hinders social
development and created poor social behavior,
including bullying, aggression, and a lack of
classroom participation.
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Another
November 2005 study from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human
Development found that those behavior problems
were still evident in third graders who had
spent more, rather than less, time in
preschool centers.
Admittedly,
there is evidence that pre-school programs can
make a difference for low-income, at-risk
children. But the expensive program planned by the
Governor-elect is designed for everyone and there
is little evidence to suggest it will have any
more effect on wealthy kids than a babysitting
program that ought to be paid for by their
parents.
Members
of the General Assembly should be warned: Across
Virginia, taxpayers are increasingly asking
questions about the rising cost of public school
education. Those questions will only intensify
when struggling couples making $28,000 a year are
asked to pay through taxes for the pre-school
choices of middle-class and wealthy families.
--
December 12, 2005
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