California voters, be prepared to hear a lot of the following:

 ”Right now in the United Sates there is a preschool crisis: families are on waiting lists and kids are going without services. This initiative will fix this problem in our nation’s largest state,” said Reiner, chairman of Parents’ Action for Children and the driving force behind the California preschool act (an initiative that will provide government-paid preschool to all families, regardless of income level). 

Who could possibly argue with the concept of “universal preschool?” Quite a few people as it turns out.  According to the Pacific Research Institute, the case for universal preschool is much more porous than Reiner and other supporters would have Californians believe.

Proponents will cite a RAND report that claims that every tax dollar invested in preschool will generate up to four dollars in a variety of societal benefits. RAND is an excellent and trustworthy research institution but this study had a small sample size that making it questionable whether a universal statewide program could attain similar success.

The evidence from Georgia, one of only two states with a statewide preschool, is not encouraging. In 2003, Georgia State University researchers found that after tracking students for five years, any test score gains from preschool “are not sustained in later years.”

Finally, RAND and other preschool boosters point to France, which has a universal pre-K program. Yet, the truth is that U.S. fourth graders out score their French counterparts in international reading tests. Only in later grades do U.S. students fall behind their foreign peers, which indicates that the U.S. problem isn’t lack of preschool, but lack of quality education in post-elementary grades.

Preschool for all is a seductive proposition, but the reality is that the purported benefits would likely be much less than what Rob Reiner and his cohorts are promising and the costs will likely be more. We are certainly for imporving education, even if it means spending more money. However, we are dubious that this is the highest and best use of additional funds. Furthermore, there are some serious questions about the specifics of the measure (e.g., teaching requirements) that make it an even more dubious initiative. These will be topics of future postings.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 at 8:43 am by Insider and is filed under (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.