Pre-School Might Not Be Effective

See The 'Universal Pre-K' Fallacy: Free school for 4-year-olds? Sounds great. Too bad it is of no educational value and the cost would be staggering by Red Jahncke, president of the Townsend Group, a management consulting firm in Greenwich, Conn. From the WSJ, 10-17-13. Excerpts:

"There is no research supporting the president's proposition that formal schooling can begin effectively in preschool, even if it is delivered as rigorously as Mr. Obama proposes: that is, by college-educated, certified public-school teachers "paid comparably to K-12 staff," who provide instruction in "small class sizes" following a "rigorous curriculum."

In 2005, the RAND Corp. conducted a general survey of early education programs and research. Rand found only 20, mostly very small, programs or studies that showed any "evidence of effectiveness." Note the absence of the word "educational" in RAND's description.

Head Start was the only large program in RAND's 20. And that $8 billion-a-year program has been found to be ineffective in educational terms by most research. That includes the "Head Start Impact Study," a multiyear study conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services during the Bush and Obama administrations. Released in December 2012, the study found "no significant impacts" in education—in the short or long term.

Even the assertion that preschool yields better "life outcomes" is suspect. Preschool doesn't lead to significant improvement in elementary and secondary school achievement, and thus not to college or trade-school matriculation. The linkages should be continuous: Better preschool education should lead to better elementary and secondary-school performance, which in turn would lead to postsecondary education, jobs, crime-free adolescence, stable family formation, etc."