On June 6, Californians will head to the polls to vote on Proposition 82, the Preschool for All initiative. If approved, it would provide three hours of voluntary daily preschool for every 4-year-old in the state. Is this a good move for California?
Susanna Cooper is the director of communications for Preschool California, one of the organizations pushing for approval of Proposition 82. Former syndicated columnist Joanne Jacobs is a freelance writer, blogger and author of the new book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds.
MONDAY, MAY 1
Cooper (11:42 a.m.): It may be too much to hope for, but at long last it feels like the debate around Proposition 82 – the Preschool for All Act on the California ballot June 6 – is moving away from the distracting controversy surrounding Rob Reiner and back to the substance of a potentially historic change in education policy. Should all children have an equal chance to get ready for success in kindergarten? Or should we continue to limp along with a grossly uneven playing field, in which middle-class and low-income and families are priced out of private preschool and frozen out of the scarce public programs that do exist. My organization helped develop the policy in the initiative, and we are proud that it has the interests of children as its focus. Unfortunately, the interests of children don’t sell newspapers. Controversy does. And Prop. 82’s anti-tax, anti-government opposition would much rather focus on Rob Reiner than on making an argument against the importance of preschool. Who wants to be against kids? The media has been nothing if not complicit, only too happy to focus on politics, distortions and hints of scandal. Case in point: A recent Orange County Register editorial cited a claim that Prop. 82 would help just 4% more children attend preschool. But that claim – put forth by initiative opponents like the Reason Foundation and too often regurgitated in print — assumes that the childcare situations that many children are in now are the equivalent of quality preschool. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. According to the Economic Policy Institute, just 25% of California’s public and private preschool teachers and administrators have bachelor’s degrees – a key measure of quality that would be assured by Prop. 82. After carefully examining data from the Census, the Bureau of Labor, UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of the Childcare Workforce and other sources, Preschool California estimates that just 1 in 5 children now has access to quality preschool. Editorials and news coverage too often center on the ever-predictable horserace – a recent Field poll showing that 52% of voters support Prop. 82, down somewhat from an earlier poll. The Register interpreted the slippage as a sign that voters are “catching on” to problems with the initiative. My take is quite different: Despite two solid months of nearly constant attack by opponents, mischaracterizations of the research, distraction tactics and not enough hard-nosed analysis by the media, Prop. 82 still commands a 13-point advantage among likely voters. It boasts a coalition – from local chambers of commerce (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland) to labor (SEIU and AFL-CIO) to teachers (California Teachers Association, the California Kindergarten Association and the California Federation of Teachers) to doctors and nurses (American Academy of Pediatrics – California and the California Nurses Association) – that represents a true coming together of diverse individuals and organizations to support what all California children deserve: A strong start in school and in life. |
Jacobs (1:18 p.m.): I disagree with Susanna Cooper’s framing of the issue. She says the question is: Should all children have an equal chance to get ready for success in kindergarten? I think the question is quite different: What’s the best way to prepare children for success in kindergarten? The answer to expand the number of high-quality preschools designed for the kids who really need help, children growing up with poor, poorly educated and non-English-speaking parents. These children can benefit significantly if their preschool teachers focus on developing language skills. Proposition 82 makes half-day preschool for four-year-olds an entitlement for all families, regardless of financial need and regardless of their children’s needs. This form of universal preschool is more than middle-class kids need: Educated parents can prepare their children for kindergarten without professional assistance. The very slight preschool benefit for middle-class kids fades out by third grade. Proposition 82’s universal preschool is much less than disadvantaged children need: The most effective programs for needy children start at earlier ages, run for a full day and include home visits to teach skills to parents. “Quality” has nothing to do with the percentage of preschool teachers with bachelor’s degrees, according to Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley professor of education and public policy, who I’ve always considered a true-blue liberal. In the April 4 Los Angeles Times, Fuller writes:
Why should taxpayers pay $2.4 billion a year for college graduates who aren’t more effective than teachers with two-year degrees? For that matter, parents of kids who are too young for the Prop. 82 subsidy are likely to pay a lot more for preschool — or discover their neighborhood preschool has folded because it can’t qualify for the state subsidy and can’t make a go of it without four-year-olds. Susanna asks: Should we continue to limp along with a grossly uneven playing field, in which middle-class and low-income and families are priced out of private preschool and frozen out of the scarce public programs that do exist. Well, middle-class families aren’t priced out of preschool. If they need day care, they choose the best progam they can afford based on their child’s needs. At-home moms who don’t want to pay for preschool often form play groups, so their children can socialize without cost. Low-income working parents may find it hard to afford a decent preschool yet earn too much to qualify for government progams. Offering developmental preschool to more low-income and moderate-income families would be a good idea — and it would cost much less than making half-day preschool a middle-class entitlement. |
TUESDAY, MAY 2
Cooper (10:45 a.m.): Joanne’s argument would hold more water if, in fact, middle class kids in California were doing just fine. The notion that only poor children struggle in school is a little old-fashioned. Half of our fourth graders failed to meet basic reading standards on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) last year, ranking California in the bottom along with Mississippi and Washington D.C. The strugglers are not just poor kids. Ed Zigler, founding director of the federal Head Start preschool program for poor children and emeritus professor at Yale, made a powerful case for universal programs in an April 23rd Sacramento Bee article . I’m reluctant to reduce his eloquent rationale to a laundry list, but in the interest of brevity, here are just a few of his arguments with some judicious edits.
Zigler, who knows a little something about the pitfalls of targeted programs, concludes: “Poor children will get free preschool when all children get it. That is the only way.” Joanne’s assertion that middle-class families are doing just fine in the present preschool “system” doesn’t square with reality. Middle class children don’t have good access to quality programs. A recent report by the law enforcement group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California placed the average cost of part-time preschool in CA at over $4,000, well over full-time tuition to the state university system. High quality programs cost far more – double university tuition in some communities. From the report: “The high cost of preschool helps explain why most children from both low-income and middle-income families are unlikely to be enrolled in any program at all, and why very few are likely to be enrolled in a quality preschool. Middle-income families, earning between $30,000 and $60,000 in 2000, are particularly hard hit. Higher-income families are 43% more likely to enroll their children in preschool than middle-income families. Children from these middle-income families are almost as unlikely as low-income children to be enrolled in preschool. A family of four earning $50,000 has no money left for preschool after taking care of its most basic needs, such as housing, food and health care.” The argument over whether this system should be universal strongly echoes the argument a century ago about public kindergarten. Nobody asserts any more that universally available kindergarten “is more than middle-class kids need.” Imagine if we had built a K-12 system just for poor kids, and let the middle class families fend for themselves by paying out of pocket. Harsh as the truth may be, programs build for poor children tend to be poor programs. We need a preschool system in whose success a broad swath of society is invested. And I would love to see journalists be more discriminating in their choice of academic counsel in the preschool debate. Bruce Fuller’s assertions about preschool’s effects are out of step with mainstream research on this subject. He has been using research on a large sample of mostly childcare programs and using it to draw conclusions about what Prop. 82 would accomplish, even though he and just about everyone in his field knows that the two are in no way equal. Research on truly quality programs – those taught by well-trained teachers – shows that the benefits are real and lasting, from improved reading ability, to less need for grade retention and special education, to higher graduation rates, and the profound social and economic benefits that follow all of those education gains. Fuller is getting lots of attention, and working overtime to get it, but he is making strange, unsupported claims that leave him increasingly marginalized in the academic community. Just recently, on a telephone briefing call for journalists in which Fuller presented an analysis of Prop. 82 and sold it as a “Stanford-U.C. Berkeley” document, the dean of the Stanford School of Education crashed the briefing to announce that she had not seen the analysis and to distance Stanford from Fuller’s work. The San Francisco Chronicle covered the spat. I’ll get to the issue of bachelor’s degrees – which deserves more thoughtful treatment – in a future post. |
Jacobs (3:40 p.m.): Yes, some middle-class kids do poorly in school, but there’s no evidence that preschool attendance provides a lasting benefit for middle-class students. In fact, the evidence that preschool improves school achievement relies on intensive, full-day programs, including home visits, for low-income children. The Rutgers’ stats merely show that a small percentage of children from affluent families have learning problems — not that they have problems that would have been solved if they’d attended preschool. It’s likely that most of them did attend preschool — probably a high-cost preschool with well-educated teachers. Preschool is not a silver bullet for all learning difficulties. Yes, most four-year-olds have working parents. They need full-day child care, which Prop. 82 won’t provide. By raising preschool costs, the inevitable result of requiring a bachelor’s degree for teachers, Prop. 82 will make it harder for parents to afford preschool for children under the age of four. In addition, I question whether Prop. 82 regulations define “quality.” I think parents may prefer care by a grandmother or neighbor to care in a group setting. It’s a matter of personal preference. I worked part-time when my daughter was young. I wanted a responsible, warm person to care for my daughter when she was a baby and toddler. I planned to handle the education side myself. My daughter learned to handle group activities in day care when she was three. If she’d waited to master circle time skills till she was five, I’m sure no permanent educational handicap would have resulted. Just because children enjoy preschool doesn’t mean it’s essential — except for kids who aren’t getting the stimulation, language development and pre-reading skills they need at home. I agree that the current eligibility system for state-funded preschool is too low and that it’s crazy to cut off eligibility without a slidi ng scale. That’s easily fixed. Targeting state-funded preschool to children who are poor or have special needs is “offensive and counterproductive?” Why? We target lots of state programs to people in need. Means-testing is not expensive. All public schools qualify students for free and subsidized meals. The same mechanism could be used for preschools. With the $2.4 billion it would cost to boost preschool attendance from 66 percent to 70 percent of four-year-olds, we could pay for full-day preschool for poor kids and for moderate-income kids and have money left over to improve K-3 education, which is the real make-or-break time for students. I don’t think it’s true that “Poor children will get free preschool when all children get it. That is the only way.” After all, California already provides free preschool to some poor children, though not enough. In any case, this is a political argument that assumes middle-class people are too greedy to help anyone but themselves. I know that Prop. 82 claims to “tax the rich” not the average citizen, but it’s state tax money that would otherwise be available for other purposes. Democrats have proposed other worthy programs to be funded by a surtax on the rich. Is preschool for the middle class more important than health care for the poor? All young people need an education. But there’s no evidence they need a state-regulated education starting at the age of four. Preschool is not the same as kindergarten. And kindergarten remains optional because we’re not sure every five-year-old is ready for school. Let me add that many, many researchers — not just Bruce Fuller — have looked at the effects of preschool. There’s been concern for years that the benefits fade even for poor children, especially if the programs don’t involve parents. This is a quality issue that Prop. 82 ignores. I resent the implication that Fuller, a Berkeley professor and a member of PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education), which includes Berkeley, Stanford and UC-Davis professors, is out of the mainstream or “strange.” Let’s argue substance. I haven’t made any Meathead jokes. |
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3
Cooper (9:23 a.m.): Joanne, I’m grateful you have resisted the Meathead jokes. One of our challenges in this campaign has been to remind voters that this is about far more than one man – that it is in fact about kids – and than there are many, many thoughtful Californians who support Proposition 82. As part of that effort, Preschool California has launched an email campaign featuring weekly messages from leaders like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, California Kindergarten Association President Armando Argandona, and today’s guest messenger, California Police Chiefs Association President Steve Krull, who speaks for 120 chiefs, sheriffs and DAs in support of the initiative. See all their messages, including photos of these folks when they were still playing with play dough, here (you can also sign up to receive the rest of the emails, featuring elected leaders, heads of large organizations, and a few celebrities other than the guy who used to play Meathead, between now and election day). Your last post mentioned the choices you made for your own child, and I want to pick up that theme of choice. Prop. 82 has been criticized by some private providers who fear it will put them out of business by asking them to meet new quality standards, foremost an early learning credential for preschool teachers who work in the publicly funded system. But one of the many strengths of Prop. 82, in fact, is that it builds on the existing diverse patchwork of programs – including school-based, private, non-profit, family child care homes and faith-based providers. Responsibility for administering the system rests not with local school districts, but with county superintendents of education, who are instructed to include all providers who meet important quality standards – not an unreasonable expectation in exchange for public funding. This county-based governance model is designed to avoid a top-down, cookie-cutter approach from the state Department of Education, and to expand real choices for families (too many of whom have no choices now, other than to get in line.) Many, many providers welcome this approach. Key provider associations, including the CA Head Start Association and the California Association for the Education of Young Children, were at the drafting table and made sure the initiative language was inclusive. Both associations endorse Prop. 82. An entire organization of 40,000 private providers Early Childhood Educators for Preschool for All, has sprung up with the sole purpose of supporting the initiative, and, once it passes, having a strong voice at the table during the drafting of regulations that will guide implementation of the new law. They see opportunity for children and families but also professional opportunity for preschool teachers and administrators, whose wages and training has declined alarmingly in California over the past two decades (see the Economic Policy Institute’s 2005 study, Losing Ground). Preschool teachers make on average half the wages of kindergarten teachers; do we really think their work is less important? There’s fear out there among some providers who worry about their future. Several things to remember: Many parents will continue to use private programs that do not choose to participate in the system, just as parents choose private K-12 schools now. (My son is 4: His private preschool program in downtown Sacramento always has a waiting list and is very highly regarded in the community. Whether or not the preschool owner decides to participate in the public program, I don’t think she will go wanting for applicants to her full-day program, and her program also accommodates children 2 and 3 years old.) The Early Learning Credential requirement doesn’t kick in until 2014 – providing lots of time for current and aspiring teachers to get additional training. And unlike many other proposals that increase standards but don’t provide the means to meet them, Prop. 82 includes significant funds to help teachers go back to school, and money for colleges to develop the coursework to train them. If Prop. 82 doesn’t pass on June 6, you will very likely see movement in the Legislature to begin expanding access to preschool. That will mark lawmakers recognition that preschool has risen quickly as a priority issue for Californians – all in all, a good thing. But I would be surprised if any expansion approved by the Legislature included the mixed-delivery model that is the hallmark of the initiative. It would more likely to be a purely school district-based program. That would succeed in increasing access, but not necessarily diversity or choice for parents using the system. And that would be an opportunity lost. |
Jacobs (1:34 p.m.): As Susanna writes, many child-care providers would like $2.4 billion in state funding every year. Preschool teachers must love the promise of doubling preschool teachers’ wages so they’ll earn as much as kindergarten teachers. Furthermore, Prop. 82 won’t fund child care or preschool for children under the age of four or full-day care, so private preschools will be motivated to run split programs with lower-paid, less-educated teachers for younger children and college-educated teachers for four-year-olds. I suppose afternoon care for preschoolers could be provided by lesser-paid teachers as well. However, I have no faith this can be done without tons of regulation — he who pays the piper always picks the tune — red tape and much higher expenses. Montessori schools wouldn’t be able to mix children who are two, three and four years old without finding college graduates and paying public-teacher salaries. In schools trying to run a split system, lower-paid teachers would demand more money. Why should caring for four-year-olds be worth twice as much as working with three-year-olds? Do we love two-year-olds less than three-year-olds? There would be pressure to expand state funding to younger children. Preschools that refuse to take Prop. 82 money will lose 90 percent of their four-year-olds, if the K-12 model prevails. (About 10 percent of K-12 students attend private schools.) Many preschools won’t be able to afford this. It’s not a business with a high profit margin. Preschools that do take Prop. 82 funds will charge more for higher-paid staff, driving up prices for parents with a child under four; parents who need full-day care for four-year-olds will pay twice as much for the half day that’s not state funded. In addition, Prop. 82 will boost significantly the demand for college graduates with a teaching credential, making the predicted teacher shortage even worse. Yes, it will drive up salaries even more, but that will drive up costs even more. There also are costs for administering a system that funds four-year-olds — but only if their preschools meet certain requirements. Someone has to monitor preschools to see if they’re meeting the rules and telling the truth about their enrollment, etc. Perhaps current teachers, most of whom don’t have four-year degrees, will be able to meet the Prop. 82 requirements, but I think most will not qualify. For years, school districts have tried to get teachers’ aides, nearly all of whom are bilingual, through four-year college programs. It’s very tough for women who are working six to eight hours a day and usually raising children to take and pass college classes at a rate that will get them a degree before they’re ready to retire. If an aide knows that eight or 10 years of evening classes will pay off in a college degree . . . Well, it’s an awfully long haul. Despite all the help districts provide, only a few aides stick with these programs and earn a degree. It will be just as difficult for current preschool teachers to finish college while working — and very few can afford to quit work to go to college full-time. Susanna thinks the alternative to Prop. 82 is an expanded state-run preschool system. If this were targeted to low-income children, with a sliding scale for moderate-income children, it wouldn’t compete with private preschools, who have few subsidized slots. Rand researchers write: “Targeted programs providing free preschool only for low-income children would cost less (than universal preschool) and can be expected to generate higher returns per child.” I’m speaking (on May 17 at 5:30 pm) at Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia, which serves many disadvantaged black children. The school starts with “4K” — a year of kindergarten for four-year-olds that prepares them for an academic kindergarten program for five-year-olds. This has proven very successful in preparing students for success as they move through the elementary grades. I’m sure 4K isn’t the right approach for all students, but this school designed its program to meet the needs of the children it had come to know. Private donors were willing to provide the money and to keep funding it when the school had evidence of effectiveness. If Prop. 82 doesn’t boost elementary school achievement for all or most or any students, if the benefits fade after a few years or the costs get out of control, California won’t be able to redirect the money to other priorities. Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiative to fund after-school programs? Research has shown no academic gains for kids in after-school programs. It’s quite clear the money could be spent more effectively for other education purposes — the eight-hour school day has proven very effective for poor kids — but the money is tied up. Funding is limited. We can tax smokers and tax the rich. A fat tax probably is the next big thing. But we’ll never have enough money to do every nice thing that might be done. And, at some point, the rich are going to move to Nevada, smokers will buy tax-free cigarettes from Indian reservations, etc. (I have a personal interest: My fiancé moved to Illinois, his home state, to escape California taxes — paying taxes on capital gains for stock donated to charity was the last straw — and wants me to move there too.) I think we as voters and taxpayers have to make choices about where to set priorities and how to spend scarce resources. Paying for every child’s preschool takes billions of dollars that could be spent far more effectively. |
THURSDAY, MAY 4
Cooper (9:05 a.m.): Heavens, Joanne, at least allow the Rand economists to finish their paragraph. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in which researchers Karoly and Bigelow attempt to correct recent Times distortions of their findings, the two also write: “On the other hand, paying for preschool for all eliminates the bureaucracy for determining which children are eligible each year (some children would be classified at-risk one year and not the next). It would avoid stigmatizing children in targeted programs. And it would make sure preschool is available to all children who can benefit.” A little more about “all children who can benefit.” William Gormley, who directs Georgetown University’s Center for Research on Children in the U.S., has followed children in Oklahoma’s universal preschool system and found that children from all ethnic groups and across all incomes benefit from quality preschool programs taught by well-trained teachers. Also from the RAND op-ed: “Children from working-class families and middle-class children face many of the same problems as children in poverty. Half of all children who repeat a grade in school, and half of all high school dropouts, come from families in the middle 60% of the income ladder. Any benefits of preschool realized by children from these families push the return from investing in preschool even higher — from $2.62 to $4 depending on the assumptions of preschool benefits.” I am sorry to cut it short for today. I leave you with a challenge. It strikes me that it is awfully easy to sit back and spin doomsday scenarios about government proposals, finding every imaginable pitfall and unintended consequence. Actually, I know how easy it is. I was an editorial writer at the Sacramento Bee for over a decade, and this is pretty much what pundits and commentators do. It is far harder to actually come up with a program that has a chance of working in our admittedly imperfect system. Joanne, what would it cost to take, say, all the schools in the bottom half of the API in California and do something along the lines of the nice 4-K program you describe at |
Jacobs (4:24 p.m.): Universal preschool proponents have been citing the Rand report, which is based on an intensive program for disadvantaged children, as support for the idea that half-day preschool for all kids will boost achievement and save taxpayer money in the long run. But Rand acknowledges this is not a clear or easy decision. That paragraph ends: “Whether these benefits are worth the cost is for voters to decide.” Voters should consider the alternatives. The $2.4 billion for a preschool entitlement for all four-year-olds could fund full-day preschool for high-need children, with money left over. Instead of spending $4,300 per child for all four-year-olds — with most of the money going to middle-class families — California easily could fund an extra year of kindergarten at low-performing schools, again with money left over for other needs. If the surtax passes, generating $2.4 billion a year, private donors wouldn’t be needed. But let’s say there’s no extra tax money to expand early learning options for needy kids. Donors probably would model the program after the successful Chicago program for low-income children that Rand studied, including parent training and home visits, and hire researchers to evaluat long-term results. That’s what philanthropists do these days. They look for evidence of effectiveness before they give and check to see for effectiveness after they give so they can decide whether to continue funding. You don’t see philanthropists funding free preschool for middle-class children. Means testing is a lot simpler than you think. All public schools do it for the school lunch program. Some parents underreport income; nobody calls in when their income rises. If a few ineligible kids get benefits, that’s no big deal. Even a loose means-testing program saves a lot of money at $4,300 a year. States with universal preschool are not education leaders. You write: “William Gormley, who directs Georgetown University’s Center for Research on Children in the U.S., has followed children in Oklahoma’s universal preschool system and found that children from all ethnic groups and across all incomes benefit from quality preschool programs taught by well-trained teachers.” If they benefit significantly, why are Oklahoma’s reading scores so low? Oklahoma has offered free preschool to all children since 1995; Georgia’s program started in 1998. Yet the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ analysis of the change in fourth-grade reading scores from 1992 to 2005 found both states were in the bottom 10. Oklahoma’s reading scores have fallen. A Georgia study finds no difference in scores between children who enrolled in the state’s preschool and similar children who did not. I suspect any benefits have faded away by fourth grade because the children who needed the most help didn’t get enough to make a lasting difference. I did a column some years ago on the Abcedarian Project in North Carolina, which provided free child care and preschool starting in infancy to children of very poor single mothers. The care was full time and provided by well-trained staff, though not with bachelor’s degrees. It focused on developing language skills. Abcedarian graduates did significantly better than the control group all through school and into early adulthood; They were more likely to graduate, be employed, stay out of jail and off welfare, etc. Most didn’t do well in life, but they did so much better than others from very poor families that the long-term cost savings were significant, even though Abcedarian is costly. I talked to the professor who’d launched the project. He emphasized that programs like Head Start come too late and do too little to make a lasting difference. It takes a lot to change the life prospects of poor kids. Half a loaf is worthless, he said. "Quality" preschool for needy kids looks very different and costs a lot more than "quality" preschool for children with educated parents. I don’t think we can afford to pay for both. I’d gladly give my charitable dollars to give poor kids a chance to catch up. In fact, that’s where most of my donations go now. I really don’t want to give my tax dollars to subsidize middle-class parents. |
FRIDAY, MAY 5
Cooper (8:50 a.m.): Thank you, Edspresso, and thank you, Joanne, for the opportunity to talk about an issue of such great importance for California children, their families, and society. I’ll leave you with four reasons Prop. 82 deserves support June 6.
Thanks again for the opportunity to debate. |
Jacobs (4:19 p.m.): Prop. 82 proponents are making pie-in-the-sky promises they won’t be able to keep. Currently, 66 percent of California’s four-year-olds attend pre-school. Prop. 82, at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion a year, would raise that to 70 percent, according to the Legislative Analyst’s estimate. Is that going to turn students into achievers and cut the crime rate? Don’t hold your breath. Susanna says on ly 20 percent of four-year-olds attend a “quality” preschool? That’s only true if quality is defined as college graduates as preschool teachers. But research shows preschool teachers with a two-year degree are just as effective as teachers with a four-year degree. So the 20 percent figure is meaningless. Prop. 82 will raise costs dramatically without raising quality. Other states have tried for the pie without success. Oklahoma started universal preschool in 1995: Elementary reading scores have declined, while other states are improving. Georgia started in 1998: Preschool grads do no better in school than children who didn’t attend preschool. The only programs that have proven to be effective are designed much differently than Prop. 82’s three-hours-a-day preschool. These full-time, language development programs with strong parental outreach compenents are far too expensive to offer to every four-year-old, but would be affordable if targeted to disadvantaged children, who need learning and social skills. RAND studied a Chicago program that targeted poor children’s learning needs and included tutoring through third grade. Parent participation was a key component. Arthur J. Reynolds, the lead researcher, said, "We are confident that participation in the Child-Parent Center Program from ages 3 to 9 years was the source of the group differences at age 20 years." That’s a quality program — that bears no resemblance to the kind of preschool experience funded by Prop. 82. Prop. 82 proposes a watered-down program targeted to middle-class parents’ desire for free child care. It’s like taking a medicine for the sick, cutting the dose in half and giving it to everyone, whether they’re sick or not. Universal preschool will cost California $2.4 billion a year without making a significant and lasting difference for children. Ideas that might be much more effective won’t get funding because the state will be taxed out. When Californians realize it’s not working as promised, they’ll be stuck with it. The habit of passing an initiative to fund pet programs is one the state should try to break. We did it with the cigarette surtax to fund programs for kids in their first five years. That produced a pot of money to pay for ads claiming every child needs preschool. I think Prop. 82 will pass on June 6. I’ll hope for pie in the sky but I’m predicting pie in the face. And what goes with pie? Edspresso! Thanks for the chance to be an Edspresso debater. |