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With the appointment of his “Start Strong Pre-K Council,”
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has ramped up his campaign for universal pre-school, in which all Virginians would subsidize preschool for the children of millionaires and low-income parents alike.
The price tag is $300 million per year. The Governor tries to make an economic case by claiming that every dollar invested in early childhood programs may yield
$7 to $9 in future savings by reducing costs for things like special education and grade repetition.
But an examination of that line of reasoning demonstrates the case can’t be made on the facts. In fact, the argument in favor of universal preschool is on extraordinarily weak ground.
Nearly every study cited by his “Smart Beginnings” campaign looked exclusively at the effect of pre-school on low-income, at-risk student populations.
In some cases, nearly 20 percent of the mothers had been arrested.
Huge numbers were unmarried teen-age mothers, or involved children deemed at risk for “retarded intellectual functioning.”
For example, a study of the Perry Preschool Project concluded that taxpayers got a return on investment of $7.16 for every dollar spent.
But all of the children had IQs in the range of 70 to 85.
Children had to have a parent at home during the day.
The study looked at only 123 children. And in more than 40 years, no other study has produced similar results.
Will the General Assembly really spend $300 million a year on the basis of one study of 123 extremely low-income children?
Or take the Carolina Abecedarian Project featured prominently on the Governor’s Smart Beginnings website. The program looked at a small group of economically disadvantaged black
children who entered the program at an average
four months of age, and were provided with educational day care eight hours a day, five days a week as well as free medical care, dietary supplements and social service help for families.
It was full-time intervention from birth through age five -- far more expansive (and expensive) than anything Governor Kaine has proposed.
It is simply disingenuous to use
this study in support of his proposal, and the
Governor should order it off the website he
controls.
From these especially challenged, high-poverty populations, the Governor takes a huge conceptual leap forward and concludes that the middle-class and wealthy need to have universal
preschool as well.
This is like arguing that, because the poor benefit from food stamps, everyone should be given food stamps.
Meanwhile, a growing number of more recent studies raise serious questions about the effectiveness of preschool, some suggesting that it may even have a negative effect on child behavior.
For example, Georgia’s pre-school program has served more than 300,000 children at a cost of $1.15 billion. A five-year 2003 Georgia State University study found that cognitive gains from preschool “are not sustained in later years.”
A 2005 RAND Corporation study “found that children participating in preschools not targeted to disadvantaged children were no better off in terms of high school or college completion, earnings, or criminal justice system involvement than those not going to any preschool.”
A February 2006 University of California - Santa Barbara study found that any advantages from preschool in kindergarten performance had faded away by third grade.
A November 2005 study from Stanford University and UC-Berkeley looked at 14,000 kindergartners and discovered that preschool hinders social development and fostered poor social behavior, including bullying and aggression.
A February 2006 C.D. Howe Institute study considered 33,000 children in Quebec’s universal preschool program between 1994 and 2002.
The conclusion: “For almost every measure, we find that the increased use of childcare was associated with a decrease in their well-being relative to other children. For example, reported fighting and aggressive behavior increased substantially.”
These are hardly studies on which to hang a $300 million a year program whose cost will only rise in future years. And these studies raise the question: “Is this really a good idea for everyone?”
It would make far more sense to focus on those students who come to school least prepared to learn – those with limited English proficiency, from a non-literature rich background, or with parents who are, themselves, illiterate or only marginally educated – and then work on developing a means to sustain preschool gains in the K-12 system, methods to avoid behavioral problems, and a rigorous evaluation program to determine what works.
To his credit,
Gov. Kaine has recognized the limitations of an exclusive government-run preschool program, suggesting a voucher plan parents could use at private preschools. He
also should recognize the limitations of the studies he himself cites and stop using them to foist a new entitlement program on
taxpayers.
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May 30, 2006
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