Early Ed Watch

Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell are back in the op-ed pages again today with their "preschool is bad for our kids" argument. Writing this time in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Reason Foundation authors present an argument almost identical to an op-ed they wrote for the Wall Street Journal in August. They say that the evidence of the benefits of preschool are exaggerated: achievement gains fade by the end of elementary school, and some studies correlate preschool attendance with slower emotional development.

In this article, Dalmia and Snell come armed with the same set of test score data and studies that suggest that preschool doesn't work. As we wrote before, the authors choose their evidence selectively, ignoring the fact that test scores in states with universal preschool such as Oklahoma and Georgia have risen among those students who attended preschool. Moreover, the other studies that show null or negative benefits of preschool mask the underlying issue affecting those results: quality. Research shows that the best-performing preschool programs are those that are adequately funded, have highly-trained teachers, and are aligned with the K-12 system in order to sustain the advances of preschool through elementary school and beyond.

We sure had to wait for it, but a question about education finally made it into last night's third and final presidential debate. Here is what the candidates had to say on early education:

BOB SCHIEFFER: The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement, in math and science competence, from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world. The implications of this are clearly obvious. Some even say it poses a threat to our national security. Do you feel that way and what do you intend to do about it?

SEN. OBAMA: ... In some cases, we are going to have to invest. Early childhood education, which closes the achievement gap, so that every child is prepared for school, every dollar we invest in that, we end up getting huge benefits with improved reading scores, reduced dropout rates, reduced delinquency rates. ...

SCHIEFFER: Do you think the federal government should play a larger role in the schools? And I mean, more federal money?

SEN. MCCAIN: ...spending more money isn't always the answer. I think the Head Start program is a great program. A lot of people, including me, said, look, it's not doing what it should do. By the third grade many times children who were in the Head Start program aren't any better off than the others.

Let's reform it. Let's reform it and fund it. That was, of course, out-of-bounds by the Democrats. We need to reform these programs. We need to have transparency. We need to have rewards. It's a system that cries out for accountability and transparency and the adequate funding.

 

 

Over the past 6 months, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about educational innovation, because Andy Rotherham and I have been writing a paper for the Brookings Institution on the federal role in supporting educational innovation. One of the things that’s become increasingly clear to me is that the early education sector is much more innovative—and offers a much more hospitable climate for innovators—than the K-12 education system.