Joanne Jacobs wonders if "universal" is synonymous with "low-quality" when it comes to preschools.
(From the Globe):
Most social science researchers agree that, as the Ypsilanti experience showed, intensive, high-quality preschool offers significant benefits for poor children. For many, that is reason enough to support public preschool.
But beyond that, researchers say, the science gets a bit murkier. If the children are middle class, or the preschool is not so fabulous, the impact is less clear-cut.
For example, a recent study of Oklahoma's statewide program to provide preschool for 4-year-olds found large benefits for children poor enough to qualify for a subsidized or free school lunch, and almost none for children who could afford to pay full price...
The problem with the research, said David Blau, a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina and author of "The Child Care Problem," is that it focuses on very high-cost, high-quality programs unlikely to be duplicated in a broad public system. "What we don't know," he said, "is whether, if you scale it down, you get proportionally smaller but similar kinds of benefits. If you cut the costs in half, do you get half the benefits? Or is there some threshold before you get benefits?"
(Joanne's comments):
Blau is right on target. Head Start and state-funded pre-schools for the poor rarely provide a high-quality program; it costs too much, even for a small group. "Universal" pre-school inevitably would be the sort of program that duplicates what happens in middle-class homes and isn't intensive enough to help truly disadvantaged children.
I think commenter Bill is right on target, too:
But, like Head Start, we will have created another group of agencies, with no sunset. It will not be necessary that they accomplish anything; like Head Start they will squirm and writhe away from any meaninful measurement of their effects.
Do we really imagine that the same establishment that has given us nearly terminal mediocrity in our public schools will do any better here?
Good point. I'd expect the same outraged cry that follows any testing or assessment of Head Start programs to be attached to this "universal" preschool, which means yet another expensive program with unknown efficacy.
Posted by kswygert at April 1, 2004 01:42 PM