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Education Realist's avatar

No less a hardass than Charles Murray pointed out that preschool would be a great way to help poor kids stay in a warm, safe, place and should be funded on that basis. Or, as I put it:

"Maybe we’d stop holding preschool responsible for long-term academic outcomes and ask instead how it helps poor kids with unstable home environments and parents with varying degrees of competency, convincing these kids that their country and community cares about them and wants them to be safe."

https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/philip-dick-preschool-and-schrodingers-cat/

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Carina's avatar

My kid attends a pricey Montessori preschool. We just received his first progress report, and it’s 17 pages. They are tracking so many things. For example, he has improved in the area of “plant polishing.” I didn’t even know you were supposed to polish plants.

I am willing to believe pre-K makes no difference in longterm education outcomes. Most research that claims effects is plagued by selection bias, and the few with random assignment aren’t promising. But I do find value in the experience he’s having this year, just as a 4-year-old, verses what he’d be doing in daycare. They’re paying so much attention to his development, working with him on social skills (key for an only child) and providing a huge variety of indoor and outdoor activities for him to explore. Plus there is a ton of communication with parents on how he’s doing.

It has value beyond the impact on his future grades, or his future anything. I’m glad he’s having a good experience this year because that matters to me all by itself. So I’ll never say that we shouldn’t bother with pre-K just because it doesn’t improve future scores. (Not that Freddie is saying that.) I’m glad it exists.

Ideally, all parents should have the option of preschool or daycare, and both should be free.

It’s frustrating that we need to claim effects on future test scores to justify funding for families, because all of the false or inflated claims just lead us further into fantasyland where school solves social and economic problems.

Anyway, it looks like the pre-K funding in BBB had been gutted (source: Matt Bruenig’s Twitter). Same with childcare funding. So not much will change.

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