Touted as a solution to poor school performance, the push for universal preschool nationwide is based on the questionable assumption that children will do better academically by spending even more time in an institutionalized school setting.
Advocates of these new entitlement programs claim the benefits will eventually exceed their considerable costs. According to Pre-K for All, a District-based advocacy group, test scores and graduation rates will go up, incarceration rates will go down and taxpayers will save $81 million after placing 3- and 4-year-olds in “high-quality” preschools with skilled teachers, small class sizes and a comprehensive curriculum aligned with national standards. In other words, exactly what a sound K-12 system should provide.
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But because D.C. has been unable to provide a “high-quality” education of any kind, such claims must be tempered with a considerable amount of skepticism.
The group cites a 2006 cost-benefit analysis that predicts lower grade retention and less special education expenditures with a universal pre-K program. But the same year, echoing a 2003 Georgetown University study, researchers at the University of California found that “the achievement impact of preschool appears to diminish over time.”
There’s no doubt that severely disadvantaged children benefit from early intervention such as the successful federal Head Start program, but there’s no evidence that universal preschool benefits other children. In fact, Oklahoma’s reading scores actually dropped four points when its universal pre-K students took the National Assessment for Educational Progress exams in fourth grade.
None of the states that made the biggest gains in fourth-grade reading scores between 1992 and 2005 had universal pre-K programs in place. And reading and math scores stagnated even as the number of 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool quadrupled over the past four decades.
Of course, access to free, tax-subsidized preschool sounds great to many parents, but they might not be so enthusiastic if they knew about two 2005 studies — from Stanford University and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — that discovered less social development and more behavior problems in children who spent the most time in preschool.
And then there’s Berkeley sociologist Bruce Fuller, whose 2007 book “Standardized Childhood” warns of the dangers of “state-run systems that would corral all young children into standardized preschools” where they can be culturally and politically programmed at a very early age.
Instead of creating yet another education bureaucracy of dubious value, the District should spend the money rescuing children already stuck in its K-12 disaster instead.
