An Opposing View on Preschool

08/27/2011

An Opposing View on Preschool

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
Maya Angelou

In an article, "Protect Our Kids from Preschool," in the Wall Street Journal (August 22, 2008), Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell from the Reason Foundation, attacked Barack Obama for his support for preschool education. They cite evidence that sending 4-year-olds to preschool is not good for them. Here is some of their evidence...

In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the nation's report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.
Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now — two major organizations pushing universal preschool — refuse to take this evidence seriously. The private preschool market, they insist, is just glorified day care. Not so with quality, government-funded preschools with credentialed teachers and standardized curriculum. But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia — both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago — paint an equally dismal picture. A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP. Oklahoma, in fact, lost ground after it embraced universal preschool: In 1992 its fourth and eighth graders tested one point above the national average in math. Now they are several points below. Ditto for reading. Georgia's universal preschool program has made virtually no difference to its fourth-grade reading scores. And a study of Tennessee's preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus non-preschool kids on any subject after the first grade.
If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada's C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity, and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

Using Research as a Curriculum Tool

Research is often viewed as something done by a college professor that has no relation to the day-to-day life in an early childhood program. The 16-page Beginnings Workshop curriculum resource, "Action Research", gives concrete guidance on how teachers can use research methods to resolve challenges they face in their classrooms. "Action Research" is just one of more than 90 Beginnings Workshop curriculum units available from Exchange.

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