“As a business leader, I am concerned,” declares Katherine Busser, a senior vice president for Capital One and chair of the Strong Start Council. “I need a workforce of critical thinkers, team players, and effective communicators. These skills find their roots in the earliest years. High-quality early-childhood education is a solution.”
We can all agree that Virginia needs more critical thinkers in order to compete in a global, knowledge-based trading system. But a little more critical thinking might have helped Busser in her column in Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch touting a universal pre-K program.
Busser’s column is long on platitudes and short on data. One of the few numbers she cites is this: Last year, Virginia taxpayers spent $90 million on children who had to repeat a grade between kindergarten and the third grade. The number she neglected to mention was that universal pre-K would cost $300 million a year. Even if universal pre-K reduced drop-outs to zero — a proposition for which there is zero evidence — that still would yield a lousy return on taxpayer investment.
The person displaying an ability to think critically in this debate is not a businessman at all, but a lawyer and politician: Del. Kirk Cox, R-Chesterfield. In a companion column, he asked the tough questions that Busser needs to address:
(1) What would Virginia get for $300 million? Does the price tag include the cost of adding 4,100 classrooms plus intangibles such as training, health care, snacks and support services?
(2) Does universal pre-K help all children? Some evidence suggests that at-risk students might benefit, but there is nothing to indicate that students of middle- and high-income families would gain anything. “Is it right to ask Virginia taxpayers to pay for the child care and preschool choices of millionaires when studies show it may not help these children?”
(3) Does the current program work? “What statistical data — actual results — does the state have that demonstrate improved test scores and proficiencies for those children who enrolled in the Virginia Preschool Initiative program versus those who did not?”
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and other supporters of universal pre-K have have to do better than dish out pious generalities about the importance of early childhood learning. Of course early environmental influences are critical. Of course we want to encourage early learning. But that’s a far cry from justifying the expansion of existing programs targeting at-risk children to a universal program for all.
