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Earlier this week I was asked to comment on a new study of an old preschool program. The program in question is one of three well known (but geographically limited and now defunct) programs that have been found to have had lasting positive effects on participants. From their results, the authors concluded that the “impacts which endured [from the Chicago Parent Center program] provide a strong foundation for the investment in and promotion of early childhood learning.” By “investment” they seem to mean either state or federal government spending on pre-K programs.
Here’s the thing: yet another study of one of the few isolated programs already known to have had a lasting impact does nothing to support large-scale government pre-K programs. That’s because we have mountains of very good research that the signature federal pre-K program, Head Start, has been a failure despite nearly half a century of effort and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending. Even the Department of Health and Human Service’s own top-flight, large sample, nationally representative, randomized experimental study revealed that its impact doesn’t even endure beyond the first grade.
Kudos to the reporter for being open to this cold splash of reality. But here’s where the title of this blog post comes in… when it ran the story, the website of U.S. News and World Report adds the following postscript:
More information
For more information on early childhood education, visit the National Education Association.
Gee, I wonder if a national teacher labor union would support the massive expansion of federal funding for… teaching labor? Does USNews.com really not know how ridiculous this makes them look?
Waiter, Cancel That Order of Crow
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post writes today that she feels compelled to “eat at least a spoonful of crow.”
Her menu selection is driven by her assessment of President Obama’s “education reform” accomplishments to date.
The term “education reform” is meaningless. All it implies is that, in whatever small way, things will be done differently from the way they have been done in the past. Not necessarily better, or worse, just differently. Even the president’s painfully vague campaign message (“Hope and Change”) at least indicated that the sought-after change was supposed to be in a positive direction. “Reform” doesn’t even convey that — let alone giving any indication of the nature, rationale or evidence for the change.
So, yes, the president is “reforming” certain aspects of education. But whether it’s higher-ed, pre-k, or the qualified expansion of charter schools, the new form does not seem noticeably better than the old one.
Early Education: Lots of Noise, Little to Hear
This weekend, the Detroit News ran a letter to the editor taking issue with a piece I wrote about the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsbility Act (SAFRA). Strangley, though the main part of SAFRA deals with higher education loans; the bill contains new spending all over the education map; and I made no specific mention of early-childhood education in my piece (though there is an early-ed component in the bill); the letter is all about pre-K education.
That the pre-K pushers even saw my op-ed as something to write about illustrates how very agressive they are. Unfortunately, the letter also demonstrates how dubious is the message that they are so loudly and energetically proclaiming. Here’s a telling bit:
Economists, business leaders and scientists all know from cold, hard data that high-quality early education provides a significant return on investment in terms of education, social and health outcomes.
Whether pre-K education is worth even a dime all depends on how you define “high quality.” As Adam Schaeffer lays out in his new early-education policy analysis — and Andrew Coulson reiterates in an exchange with economist James Heckman — the “cold, hard data” say only that a few programs seem to work, and most don’t. Pronouncements about the huge returns on pre-K investment are almost always based on very small, hyper-intensive programs that would be all but impossible to replicate on a large scale. And the programs that do function on a large scale? As Adam lays out, they provide little to no return on investment.
The early-education crowd is very good at getting out its message. Too bad the message itself is so darn suspect.
More Undeserved Praise for Obama’s NAACP Speech
Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation is an affable and intelligent man. But he has gone round the rocker in regard to President Obama’s NAACP speech last week.
His review reads like promotional excerpts for a blockbuster movie; Don’t miss what critics are calling a can’t-miss experience . . . “transcendent” . . . “inspirational” . . . “honest, direct, bold.”
Why such superlatives? Because Obama is an “African-American president, speaking to the NAACP, and arguing for reform in our schools and responsibility in our homes and community.” Wow. Reform and responsibility?
Of course, as I point out here, the President OPPOSES the most direct and effective means of reforming education and empowering parents; school choice. And he supports expanding federal control of education from pre-k to college. Our President is working against reform and responsibility in education.
Our President has the nerve to lecture parents on the importance of getting involved as he supports ripping vouchers out of the hands of children in DC and elsewhere. He and his Congressional colleagues have effectively told thousands of District parents, who desperately want to direct their children to a better future, to shut up and sit down.
There is absolutely nothing to celebrate about a President who mouths nice platitudes while doing all he can to undermine the principles that underlie those sentiments.
Good Reporting Requires a Critical Eye
Preschool access and attendance is often presented as an unalloyed good that will bring a huge return on investment. It’s not, and there’s little evidence that the benefits outweigh the costs.
Yet the Washington Post brings us a story about the push for state preschool expansion with nothing but supporters of government finance and controlled preschool and no critical treatment of the supposed evidence offered by those proponents.
I strongly urge the media to talk to some folks who have a critical take of the push for universal preschool when they write an article. What they write might then read like a news story rather than a press release from Pew.
Monday Podcast: ‘The Push for Universal Pre-K’
The evidence is weak that Pre-K education improves the long-term prospects of public school kids, says Adam Schaeffer, Cato education policy analyst.
In Monday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Schaeffer explains why the push for universal preschool is really all about money, monopoly and misdirection:
The scale problem is a massive one and they haven’t really addressed it. State programs run into these problems as well. As they scale up the program, we see that there is no overall change in outcomes for the children in the state. Their test scores don’t go up.
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