122 Comments

I really want to read the study because I wouldn’t have predicted worse outcomes compared to the control group. I wouldn’t have expect better outcomes but it’s hard to be believe that more school makes things worse. I wonder if they have any theories why.

Expand full comment

Could be the attempts at forcing students to learn in a structured way at such a young age prematurely turn them off to schooling.

In my experience there can be big differences between kids who start kindergarten "early" or "late" depending on when exactly their birthdays were in the year.

Expand full comment

That is a good point. They should analyze the children by birth month in the non-control group to see if there is variation there.

Expand full comment

This is interesting. Is anyone familiar with studies that show how kids who are not ready to learn (I know this is hard to define since it’s not just age-related, would have to control for learning disabilities, etc.) do when forced?

Expand full comment
Jan 26, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer

No studies on hand, but Finland famously delays compulsory education until age 7 and Japanese K/PreK is all SEL and no academics. They get better PISA scores than US students who start math and reading earlier. Not conclusive, but suggestive.

Expand full comment
author

Completely common for a Finnish kid to not be able to read when they turn six. Come here to bourgie Brooklyn and if a kid isn't reading at six years old they'll call in an exorcist.

Expand full comment

I'm a librarian and people always say o, you must have been an early reader. Nope 6. One thing people don't think about is reading is somewhat physical. And all eyes don't have the capacity early. But yes, I hear people brag on early reading all the time and it's not a good measure of much.

Expand full comment

I want to read the study too. Counterintuitive for sure but stranger things are true.

Expand full comment
author

Sorry I was unclear - I have the study and have read it. I was trying to hint that I would give it to those who want to email me and ask for it.

Expand full comment

Thanks! I'll email you.

Expand full comment
Jan 25, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer

not sure if you can post links on here but have shared on google drive if anyone wants to read it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vfShplpa_dUXbPJNaKlFubli_OZDq5Jh/view?usp=sharing

Expand full comment
author

you're the real MVP

Expand full comment

What's interesting is that during World War II the U.S. had a very effective universal child care program. Under the Lanham Act, the federal gov. funded public care centers in communities where women had stepped up to help the war effort.

And these care centers were great in a lot of different ways. The teacher to student ratio was like 1:12. Teachers were actually well-trained (and paid). Some programs even provided dinners that mothers could take home when they came to get their kids. Sadly, the child care ended once the war did. But the fact that this was managed during a massive war effort suggests (more like proves) universal child care is more than feasible.

Expand full comment

haven't had a chance to read this but I wanted to ask...why is there no organization that provides things like free tutoring, free pre-k and free counseling in very poor areas of large cities? I get it, government is worthless, I agree, but there's no George Soros or David Geffen who can fund this? Isn't there at least ONE person in NYC who can draw up a business plan for a charity to takeover a small storefront or loft space to provide something like free pre-k? Free tutoring? Why are liberals still waiting for government to do something? It's been 70 years of Dept of Ed and inner city education is at the same place it was back then.

I get there's dumb conservatives in the sticks, but they don't advocate for big govt programs (at least not out loud), so let's get back to the situation at hand. Isn't there anyone out there who wants to start this charity and look for funding from a billionaire?

Expand full comment

For comparison, I believe it's Ron Perelman and Sheldon Adelson who entirely fund Taglit aka Birthright, a charity that sends Jews 18-25 on free trips to Israel, so, things like this are possible. Why's it still not being done?

Expand full comment

I mean, there are programs that do this (usually nonprofits). It’s just not universal by any means, and the quality varies widely.

Expand full comment

I'm talkin about a storefront in the worst neighboords in each of the 5 boroughs with dedicated teachers...so, pre-k during the day, tutoring after school, and counseling in the evening, not like a couple people in the neighborhood volunteering their time.

Expand full comment

Billionaires are rabid parasites. Do not expect anything useful out of those losers.

Expand full comment
Jan 25, 2022·edited Jan 25, 2022

From the abstract, the study participants are low income students who are part of an “oversubscribed” state-run pre-K program, who are randomly assigned to either attend pre-K (treatment) or be on the waitlist (control). Not having access to the article, I’d question how much external validity there is with this study. It seems a stretch to say that these results would hold among a general population of pre-K students (mix of incomes) and students attending non-public pre-K (not just state run) which may have better student/teacher ratios. One interpretation of the findings is that, for low income students, not attending pre-K (and potentially having more one on one time with a caregiver) leads to better outcomes than attending an over-crowded pre-K. I’d be skeptical to extrapolate more than that without seeing other research.

Expand full comment
author

I just told you that we have decades of negative studies that are right in line with this one.

Expand full comment
Jan 25, 2022·edited Jan 25, 2022

Skimming the lit review of the article, the authors suggest that findings in this area are more mixed and that their article is one of the first, methodologically rigorous examinations of longitudinal effects.

They cite several studies that point to positive impacts of pre-K on literacy, math, and language skills on kindergarten entry (page 2). Other work on the medium term (3rd/4th grade) impacts are mixed and sensitive to specification of the statistical model. The Boston study (Weiland et al 2020) found essentially no difference between the pre-K and non pre-K attendees when looking at outcomes in the third grade.

The article’s discussion focuses on the novelty of their negative findings compared to the literature and general expectations.

Expand full comment
author

I don't mean to get frustrated with you, but I have read almost every study of note in this domain for at least a decade. I also linked to a piece that contains references to a great deal of information that I have previously synthesized. I have also written in the past about why there is an intense, funding-driven reason that education researchers have a profound optimism bias.

I assure you, this is not my first rodeo.

Expand full comment

> it’s hard to be believe that more school makes things worse

Expand full comment
author

It's hard to believe the results of the double slit experiment.

Expand full comment

Yes!

Expand full comment

(I was quoting someone else in the comments on this post. The leading ">" is the syntax for quoting text in Markdown, which I find very readable even when it's not converted to HTML.)

Expand full comment

I wasn’t trying to say that the study was wrong - just that without further explanation it’s hard to accept at first glance because it’s shocking, especially given that we do eventually send kids to school! School as whole is just seen as good. Their theories at the end of the paper help reconcile that tension.

Expand full comment

That's a Bayesian way of thinking (I think, I'm sure people will jump in to tell me I'm wrong) - your prior is that its very unlikely that pre-K harms children, so you require stronger evidence to accept that hypothesis.

Its not an irrational way to think. If there were 20 studies prior that only showed that pre-K had no effect positive or negative, and then there was this single study with a negative effect, its reasonable to not trust it.

Freddie responds that there are results like this in a few more studies. You'd have to look at a meta-analysis to see how often a negative result occurred.

Expand full comment

I know – and I think my quoting you might come across as flippant.

But I think you inadvertently demonstrated exactly what Freddie finds frustrating. As Gnoment mentions, in a 'Bayesian' sense, your prior is that school is very good and you are very confident of that too. But from Freddie's perspective, or mine (having followed, at a distance, news about the relevant research), the evidence and research just doesn't support this. I think the evidence also points to the rest of 'schooling' as being a big waste, for the purpose of 'education' anyways, but your belief is VERY common and extremely resistant to any contrary evidence.

And that's, maybe not good, but definitely not 'bad'. The same phenomena is extremely common, across basically every subject or area.

Expand full comment

In a different study showing the negative effects of a state funded pre-k program, they point to how the positive research regarding pre-k is associated with two specific programs. Those two programs are not typically implemented because they are seen as too expensive. Not to say that those two programs are perfect, but it would just figure that we're doing all of this and it's not even replicating the initial programs. "State investments in pre-k are most often justified by the expectation of long-term effects (e.g., Executive Office of the President of the United States, 2014; Heckman, 2006). This expectation derives mainly from longitudinal research that reported positive outcomes on school completion, employment, marriage stability, criminal behavior, and the like for two model programs – Perry Preschool, mounted in the 1960s, and Abecedarian, begun in the 1970s. Both programs served a small number of children in a single location, and neither has been fully replicated in contemporary publicly funded programs. Indeed, the political feasibility of implementing them at scale is doubtful. These programs would cost more than any state currently allocates – $20,000 per child per year in today’s dollars to implement Perry and $16,000–$40,000 for Abecedarian (Minervino & Pianta, 2014)." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200618300279

Expand full comment

just wanted to say that I love these education-and-quantitative-metrics posts :)

Expand full comment

Obvious proof that we need pre-pre-K

Expand full comment

Intrauterine classical-music-playing microchip

Expand full comment

Too late. Need to educate them before their parents meet.

Expand full comment

Good grief...you regular people (that is not librarians) are outdoing me. I can send a copy to anyone, but looks like you have solved that! klmccook at gmail.com

Durkin K, Lipsey MW, Farran DC, Wiesen SE. Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children's achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Dev Psychol. 2022 Jan 10. doi: 10.1037/dev0001301. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35007113.

Expand full comment

I have wondered (but not looked into) how pre-K compares to head Start? Anyone?

Expand full comment
author

Please note the edited footnote

Expand full comment

Paywalls should not exist for government supported work. Many are fighting for this (and not yet succeeding). Aaron Schwartz tried. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

This study was supported by tax dollars. It states:

"This research was supported by the

U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences Grants

R305E090009 and R305A210130 and the U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development Grant R01HD079461-01"

Expand full comment
deletedJan 25, 2022·edited Jan 25, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

SPARC is trying: https://sparcopen.org/

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

what's really crazy is that libraries have to pay huge sums to be able to access these research articles for students and you'd think a state university using tax money to buy access could at least open these to all the people who paid taxes for the research in the first place (the grant via US taxes, then the journal via state taxes). If you are a person not connected to a university you've paid for it twice and still can't get it..Do I make sense? It sounds so unfair as I write this. BECAUSE IT IS!

Expand full comment

It’s a horrible tragedy. Aaron Swartz tried, and died for it. He committed suicide out of desperation when facing jail time. Meanwhile, the FBI were acting like Pinkertons for the publishing houses, cracking down in order to save corporate money. Who works for whom?

Expand full comment

This is so counterintuitive it makes my head hurt.

Is there an explanation as to why it doesn't help when it seems it should?

More pertinent, is there an explanation for why middle class (and up) parents are convinced it's essential? They devote gobs of resources to their children's pre-k education.

Is that all fruitless? Or does their conduct indicate an explanation for what's going on - that what's essential is not just any pre-k instruction but really high-quality stuff.

That would explain these parents' actions - they compete not to secure just any pre-k for their kids (that's taken for granted) but for spots high-quality programs (indicating they think the difference is meaningful), and be consistent with this study, I think.

Expand full comment
author

I mean the discouraging results are in line with many studies, and the negative results much in keeping with the previous Tennessee VST results and the often-cited Quebec study. As for why... typically the problem is fadeout. Stuff that appears to make a difference early on ends up making no difference the further out you go. This is true of all manner of interventions, not just pre-K. And it fits with the very sturdy observation that the more someone ages, the more alike they become their genetic parents in IQ and proxies like years of education. One explanation would be that the effects of the environment are swamped over time by growing independence of children, who thereafter have the ability to fit their level of intellectual environment to their genetic predispositions. This is called the Wilson effect. As you can imagine, it's controversial.

Expand full comment

Data controversial? Or politically correct controversial?

Expand full comment

wouldn't fade out just lead to similar outcomes between groups?

Expand full comment

Do the authors of the paper have any theories as to why the effect would be negative? I can certainly speculate myself, I'm just curious. Where I'm standing, if pre-K does indeed cause children to become meaningfully academically worse later in life, that should also give one pause about supporting universal child care in general, not just because the supposed academic benefits aren't real.

Expand full comment

They suggest it fits with other findings on center-based group care being associated with worse behavioral outcomes. It could be because adults manage the class, so the children don’t develop self-control in the way they would have otherwise. And the teachers’ “flat to negative affect” could result in negative attentional biases.

Expand full comment

Ah, thank you, good to know. That seems to support my concern regarding universal child care. Although having said that I tend to find it more likely that the overall effects aren't meaningfully negative anymore than they are positive.

Expand full comment

They would test this in a super high needs population. It's the sample and cohort selection.

Expand full comment

Interesting for us ed nerds - thank you. Tech is the obvious answer. Instead of investing mega $ that go down the drain in labor costs and overhead, simply provide every 4 year old in the USA with a huggable toy containing a voice synthesizer and enough AI programming to conduct intelligible, age-appropriate conversations that include a healthy dose of complex sentences and high school vocabulary words. Of course, we'll need a huge supply of them and they should come with a selection of different voices and dialects. They'll also have to be small enough to fit in a kid's backpack. Problem solved - Leo the Lion for the 21st century!

Expand full comment

Not American, so can anyone explain what they do in pre-K?

It seems way too young to begin education...

Expand full comment

I'm not a pre-K teacher, but as a substitute I covered pre-K sometimes. Class content, activities, and curriculum vary wildly: sometimes it's just supervised nap & recess time with a bit of structured play, song, and dance; on the other end of the scale, you have some foundational literacy & numeracy work like recognizing individual letters and single-figure numbers, listening & comprehension activities (e.g. recalling details from a story after finishing it). There's a bit of data tracking & recording for ESL and kids with disabilities.

Expand full comment

I sent my daughter to private pre-k/preschool. It's what kindergarten used to be when I was a kid. Learn letters and numbers. Play with toys. Sing song. Get used to idea of going to school to ease the transition to full-on schooling. Meet some other kids and get some socialization.

Expand full comment

Addendum to this question for anyone else coming in to answer it - just on a really basic level, how old are the kids in these preschool programs? Do kids who do preschool generally do it for one or two years? How many hours, generally?

These conversations are always very confusing for me because where I live ‘kindergarten’ and ‘preschool’ are two names for the same thing - that thing little kids do when they’re 3 and 4 years old, before they start real school at 5

Expand full comment

At our preschool, kids can start at 12 months if they are walking. The toddler program lasts til about age 3, and then the early childhood program lasts until the child is ready for kindergarten (5 or 6). Parents choose when to start, and a lot of parents wait until the child is 3 or 4.

There are a lot of different options for days and times. We have the option of 3 days or 5 days per week, and we can choose his hours within those days. In theory he could be there from 7 to 5 every day, but we do 9am-3pm five days per week which is the most common.

Expand full comment

It sounds fairly comparable to the system I’m used to, except with different names for everything. So, for instance, your ‘early childhood program’ would be our ‘3- and 4-year-old Kinder’ … except that we retain a possibly-artificial distinction between ‘doing preschool’ and ‘just childcare’

When my kids were in preschool, the ‘childcare kids’ would get walked across from the childcare building to the preschool room at about 9, “do Kinder” with the preschool kids for a few hours, then head back to the childcare building after lunch. I was not wholly convinced that the hours ‘doing Kinder’ were substantially different from the hours ‘in childcare’ but the distinction seemed to be important to someone!

I do know my kids had a great time doing it, though, and that’s the big deal as far as I’m concerned

Expand full comment

My child goes to a Montessori preschool. I can live with the idea that it has no effect on his future outcomes, but the negative effects are concerning. A lot of these education posts are ultimately reassuring: Just keep them alive and they’ll be fine. But not this one. It’s worrying that a RCT shows more future behavior problems in the preschool group.

We chose his preschool because it seemed like a nurturing environment. The ratio is 7:1 (often less because of absences) and it’s a spacious classroom with lots of different things to do. The Montessori style means he gets to follow his interests for much of the day. They seem to coddle the kids as you’d expect for the price. Plus, he likes to play with other kids (he’s an only child).

I guess I’m just trying to justify my choice. No effect is okay, but I hope it’s not harming him. 😕

I wish we had more research on the characteristics of schools associated with these outcomes (along with the effect of various options, like how many days per week, whether to go full or half day, whether to do summer program). But there would be huge selection problems in any attempt to study these things outside of random assignment, and you can really only do random assignment for government programs.

Expand full comment
author

Keep them alive and they'll be what they'll be. You can't make them into start students. But you can make sure they're fed, clothed, stimulated, and loved. Ultimately that's the most important thing.

Expand full comment

My (only) child was in preschool but not for "school" because I worked and I never expected it to be an educational opportunity--just like what you describe--fun place with other kids. There was no testing of any sort. Teachers were good with kids but in a fun way, not a teacher way.

Expand full comment

If he comes home happy most days, it is DEFINITELY NOT harming him!

My mantra for my kid was that if she could read by HS graduation, and was reasonably happy along the way, it was all good. And it was.

Expand full comment