I did a quickie piece this summer on the need for universal pre-school for PJM and forgot about it. They just ran it. The commenters predictably hated it and one calls me "Missy." Love it.
Still thinking about this post from Brian at CT. Are voter registration drives on university campuses really, truthfully about supporting Obama?
Apt. 11d 
CNN has an article about the nice people at Liberty University registering so that they can be the university that changed the world.
This scares the you know what out of me. We worry about competition against foreign nations and luring their best and brightest but if this place isn’t a Neo Con version of a Madrassa I don’t know what is.
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I liked your column. And the comments were great: “too bad you hate your kid” – yikes!
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Here are some issues with the preschool article.
1. You mention that the benefits of preschool don’t survive elementary school, because of problems with elementary school. Doesn’t this suggest that elementary school might be a more fruitful area for changes? We’re already paying for it anyway.
2. You downplay the academic value of preschool, focusing on social development. That’s probably the most suitable focus for a morning program for 3-year-olds who still haven’t mastered the potty or scissors and who still occasionally bite, but I think most 4-year-olds are capable of a lot more. Also, purely pragmatically, subsidized potty training is going to be a much harder sell with the PJM audience than reading and writing for four-year-olds.
3. You suggest preschool vouchers for existing programs. As I recall, all the preschool studies point to the (at least temporary benefit) of “high-quality preschool” programs. Are we so sure that even a fraction of existing preschool programs count as “high-quality”? (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good explanation of what “high quality” means in the preschool setting.) My youngest is now in a 2-day-a-week, five-hour-a-day parents’ day out program that costs $14 a day and is frankly a bit of a kinderkennel. I get dirt cheap babysitting and my youngest gets potty encouragement and social conformity and obedience training and regular access to a nice playground. That’s it. And that’s all he needs.
4. That is not true of children in general. I think it is a mistake to talk about preschool in general, when the needs of children from different kinds of homes are so very different. As I understand it, when children start school, one of the big socioeconomic gaps is in vocabulary. As far as I’ve seen, normal preschool is not the best setting for picking up large numbers of vocabulary words. Colors, numbers, letters, and weather terminology is about as far as it goes. That’s something, but we need to think more seriously about what deficits poor children have and what would be the most effective vehicle for remediating them. The Direct Instruction guys have some ideas, and they may be right. Personally, my instincts (as a former language learner and teacher) say that vocabulary is something that is easier to pick up in a one-to-one setting rather than in a big group. Over the years, I’ve had a lot of bright college student babysitters, and based on what I’ve seen of their interactions with my kids, I think that it would be very helpful to set up disadvantaged preschoolers up for playdates and chat with suitable college students for 2-4 hours a week (on top of the normal preschool schedule).
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Your point #1 isn’t really valid, I think, ’cause fixing elementary schools wouldn’t necessarily undo the deficits that children came with before then. The fact that benefits can disappear with poor elementary schools doesn’t mean that the converse is true.
I’ve mentioned before, I think the evidence that formal teaching of reading and writing to four-year-olds has any significant benefits is really really poor. I think it’s as flawed as trying to teach 10 month olds to walk in a formal walking program. Yes, some 10 month olds are ready to walk, and should be given opportunity to do so, and some 4 year olds are ready to read, and should be given opportunity, but ignoring development is like hitting your head against a stone wall, for no good reason.
On the other hand, most 4 year olds are developmentally ready to be taught social skills. If the PJM folks would be more likely to support having them trace letters but not how to work with others, well, I don’t know what to say about that.
I do agree with your #4 point, because I think nothing is true of children in general. I also don’t think we know how to remedy the effects of social environment. And I agree #3 because I do think the quality of the preschool matters a lot.
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“I’ve mentioned before, I think the evidence that formal teaching of reading and writing to four-year-olds has any significant benefits is really really poor.”
Isn’t that what the school-based pre-K programs are doing? When my oldest was in public pre-K in Washington DC, reading and writing was central. (The reading method seemed to involve a lot of showing the kids a sentence, saying the sentence, and then having the kids repeat the sentence in chorus (i.e. memorizing the sentence rather than sounding out), but that is neither here nor there.) I think No Child Left Behind has a lot to do with this sort of early academic focus.
I’m not crazy about extensive writing practice for preschoolers, but reading is a different matter, and a three-year-old can learn a lot with it still being fun. The Leapfrog reading videos are very good (I especially like the silent e one) and my 3.5-year-old likes working with magnetic letters and sounding out short words with his dad from the computer (ZOO, ROOM, HIT, etc.). I haven’t really pushed it–I’d like him to get out of diapers first.
“On the other hand, most 4 year olds are developmentally ready to be taught social skills. If the PJM folks would be more likely to support having them trace letters but not how to work with others, well, I don’t know what to say about that.”
It’s a question of audience. Laura’s PJM commenters clearly believed that social skills can be taught less formally than in preschool, and they are ticked off at the idea of their taxes going up when the preschool gains evaporate later in elementary school. To them, it sounds like burning money–their money.
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I like http://www.starfall.com/
Yeah, and a bunch of Pre-K programs (for 4-5 year olds) might be about reading drills. But, that doesn’t change my essential discomfort with it (and, I’ll note that the aging of the K population is contributing too). These days, a kid born in August would be really young for K, in most school systems. We’re asking 5 year olds to do the work of 6 year olds, and then holding the 5 year olds back in Pre-K so they can learn to read.
And, I think that part of the reason all this happens is that people hope that all children can meet the standards set by the top 10% or 1% in any developmental continuum for an age.
For example, I try very hard not to demand that my daughter meet Jonah’s (hypothetically) soccer playing standards or some other kid’s piano playing standards. But, I encounter a not infrequent number of parents who look at what my daughter is doing in her areas of strength, and compare.
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Laura, I should post about my community service project because it involves encouraging young people to vote. I read Brian’s post with great interest, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t hoping for new Obama voters. HOWEVER, I also live in southern New England, and the fact is that most people here vote Democrat anyway, so I’m not making a difference that way. But I emphasize very strongly in class and to our CS partner that this is not an advocacy project. In fact, we have a kind of agreement (in class) not to talk about whom we are supporting in the election.
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I’m liberal and opposed to government-run preschool. We need to figure out regular school first. If people need daycare for financial reasons I’m open to various funding for that. Your reasons don’t add up to a mandate for universal preschool when the budget is tight. You must know that.
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When the budget is tight… Yes, well every policy decision right now is questionable. There are people who are going to say that we also can’t afford health care, public schools, new roads, and all that. I am not convinced that universal pre-K is a frill. With the amount of people using it and paying for out of their pocket, I would say that pre-school amounts to a tax on families. In tough budetary times, working families are going to need help.
I’m not sure why offering universal pre-k would hurt efforts to improve regular education.
BTW, I don’t care if I enrage the PJM commenters. I like to make them angry.
I don’t think that classroom skills can be taught at home. I can teach my kid to read at home. I can’t simulate a classroom setting with other three year olds learning in a group situation.
Pre-schools can be about more than social skills. The good ones probably are. They can, at least temporarily, level the playing ground among kids. I downplayed it in my piece in part because I was responding to a study that found the academic benefits were short lived and because I riffing off of my experiences.
I wrote this article in summer before the economy took a nose dive. Even though I feel passionately about this issue, the reality is that progressive social/education policy may have to sit on the back burner for quite a while.
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When I was first signing my daughter up for the public pre-K in DC where she eventually went, I was leery about the whole thing. As a three-year-old, she went 9-12 five days a week (theoretically–she was sick a bunch, plus we tended to stroll in around 9:30 or later). The pre-K was five days a week, 8:40-3:15, and counted tardies. I fretted a bit about the length of the day to the pre-K teacher, and she explained that they had academic requirements to meet, and they needed all the time they could get. The school is about 40% white, has lots of embassy and other foreign kids bungeeing in and out, has 20% free and reduced lunch (low for DC, I realize), and currently has a 10 at greatschools.net. With NCLB looming in the background, there was no way that this pre-K class was going to be kicking back and fingerpainting all day. At least when we did it, public pre-K was a big serious hairy deal. (Perhaps coincidentally, my daughter used to give me a 30-minute monologue in the morning, explaining why school was no fun and learning was no fun, but she did that for preschool, too.)
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I’d be interested to read your heavy-duty arguments for universal preschool, when you have the time. I’m persuadable.
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