Everybody say, "THANKS DEMOCRATS!" "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!"
Latest results from the first randomized control trial of a
state pre-kindergarten program found participants early gains
quickly transformed into worse academic performance, more
discipline problems, and higher special education placements
than children who hadnt participated. By second or third grade,
the nearly 3,000 children studied who participated in
Tennessees Voluntary Pre-K Program (TNVPK, or VPK) had
statistically significant negative results compared to peers who
mostly stayed home with their families.
One possibility is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, some
children may be better off academically ifinstead of attending
public pre-kthey stay at home at age four, says a study
summary from the Arnold Foundations Straight Talk on Evidence
research clearinghouse (h/t Jay Greene).
Tennessees pre-k program was touted as a national model long
before high-quality studies could be completed to test that
assertion. That is typical of preschool advocacy, which is lush
with foundation and government funds but low on reliable,
replicable benefits to children and taxpayers. Partly because of
this persistent PR push, two-thirds of four-year-olds and two-
fifths of three-year-olds currently attend pre-primary programs.
Half of that number are enrolled in government programs, a
proportion that has grown rapidly in the past few decades
despite parallel growth in government debt and deficits.
Benefit Promises Based On Hope, Not Experience
Tennessees pre-k program began in 2005. The state legislature
immediately expanded it the next year, then funded a doubling of
enrollment just two years later, before any reliable research
could possibly be conducted. Today, 18,000 at-risk four-year-
olds are enrolled.
Politicians like Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other
people paid to advocate government taking over child raising
have praised Tennessee pre-K and said it should be a model for
expanding such programs everywhere. The states pre-K
information page says the program is recognized as a national
leader in pre-K quality. The Straight Talk study summary notes
the programs quality appears to be fairly typical of state pre-
k programs around the country.
Critics of our study have argued that the effects reflect the
unusually poor quality of the TNVPK program. We demonstrate that
measured classroom quality in the TNVPK classrooms was virtually
identical to that in programs that have been lauded by pre-K
advocates, the Vanderbilt University authors noted in
discussing earlier negative results they found during this nine-
year study.
In 2014, The New York Times said its become standard for both
Republican and Democrat politicians to support pre-K spending as
an essentially vote-buying tactic. The article also noted
advocacy groups have snookered business leaders into believing
that preschool can help address the social fallout from
Americas increasingly degraded family relationships,
particularly the spike in children born to unmarried mothers and
harm to children of normalizing divorce. Business leaders also
have incentives for taxpayers to subsidize working mothers:
doing so takes pressure off them to negotiate employment
conditions more favorable to mothers and increasing the labor
pool depresses wages.
More Details About the Study Findings
At the end of one year in Tennesees pre-k, participating
children scored better on academic measures than non-
participants did, such as letter recognition and sounds. But
during just one year of kindergarten, non-participating children
not only caught up to the preschooled children but surpassed
them. This effect persisted through third grade, where VPK
participants scored lower on the reading, math, and science
tests than the control children with differences that were
statistically significant for math and science.
In math, the VPK group scored 0.12 standard deviations lower
than the control group, which equates to roughly 13 percent less
growth in math achievement than would be expected in the third
grade year, the Straight Talk summary explains. In science,
the VPK group scored 0.09 standard deviations lower than the
control group, which equates to roughly 23 percent less growth
in science achievement than would be expected in the third grade
year.
The study also found that preschooled children had more negative
feelings about school in first grade, broke school rules more
often, had more language problems especially in kindergarten,
than peers who didnt attend the state program. Of the children
studied who did not attend the Tennessee program, 63% received
home-based care by a parent, relative, or other person; 13%
attended Head Start or what parents described as a public pre-k
program; 16% were in private center-based childcare; 5% had some
combination of Head Start and private childcare; and childcare
for 3% was not reported.
As for special education placements, it was unclear from the
study whether slightly higher special-ed labeling for preschool
attenders was because attending preschool caught existing
problems earlier or children were overlabeled as special needs
simply for being younger and less mature. The authors note: the
overwhelming majority of special education designations in VPK
were for speech and language issues, a domain in which
development is especially varied for 4-year olds. Once a child
has received a special education designation, it is difficult to
lose it.
Why This Study Deserves More Weight than Others
While preschool-pushers insist that results like this dont
match the consensus of people whose job security and prestige
are contingent upon government funding advocacy research and
consuming more of family life, the two only large-scale, gold-
standard studies of government preschool unanimously find long-
term disadvantages to children.
The authors of the Tennessee study explain the disconnect by
noting that most studies on preschool programs either focus on
immediate rather than long-term effects or extrapolate from two
boutique, decades-old, and very expensive experiments that
produced small, unreplicated benefits to their approximately 100
total participants. The authors discussion of the significant
weaknesses of studies that supposedly substantiate the current
consensus is worth reading.
When dealing with a voluntary program with childrens
participation always a matter of self-selection by parents, it
is difficult for researchers to ensure that they are comparing
outcomes for pre-k participants and nonparticipants who are
similar in all ways that matter prior to their differential pre-
k experience. The result is an uneven and inconclusive research
literature, they note.
By contrast, the Tennessee study was able to randomize its
sample and provide a control group because more people applied
than the program could accept. So slots were randomly offered
and both participants and applicant nonparticipants were
studied, providing a rare opportunity for the most rigorous
study possible because the only noticeable difference between
the two groups was joining or not joining the program.
Attempts to Suppress Study Findings Almost Work
Bias in the early childhood field almost suppressed this studys
findings. In a study note, the authors explain that when their
early findings were positive, they received loads of excited
attention from media and academia. But when their longer-term
findings, out in 2015 and this spring, showed a reversal of the
initial benefits the Vanderbilt researchers received massive
pushback.
[Later negative] findings were not welcome. So much so that it
has been difficult to get the results published. Our first
attempt was reviewed by pre-k advocates who had disparaged our
findings when they first came out in a working paper we know
that because their reviews repeated word-for-word criticisms
made in their prior blogs and commentary. We are grateful for
an open-minded editor who allowed our recent paper summarizing
the results of this study to be published (after, we should
note, a very thorough peer review and 17 single-spaced pages of
responses to questions raised by reviewers).
Randomized control trials are considered the gold standard of
medical and social science research because they offer the
highest reliability of results. The only other such high-quality
study to be conducted on government preschool programs, the
federal evaluation of Head Start, found similar results. What a
surprise: that federal evaluations results were also delayed
and suppressed.
The Tennessee and federal studies provide uniquely credible
evidence on the topic, says the Straight Talk summary. Other
studies of public or private preschool programs have had
weaknesses that limit the reliability of their findings, such as
lack of random assignment (e.g., Oklahoma universal pre-k,
Chicago Child-Parent Centers) or small samples and imperfect
randomization (e.g., Perry Preschool Project, Abecedarian
Project).
The Best Research Supports Parenting, Not Childcare
While people paid to advocate government preschool responded
with one of their standard lines, that the results merely
indicate the need to spend more and try harder, the study
authors note we do not yet have a basis for improving state-
funded pre-k programs that is grounded in empirical evidence
relating program characteristics to child outcomes. In other
words, we have no reliable research that tells us how to improve
preschool programs, so any efforts in that direction are
essentially stabs in the dark.
Indeed, the evidence we do have suggests that kids would be
better off at home, even if their families have less money than
others do. In its research review, the study cites research that
shows parents of all income levels have stepped up their
parenting game in recent decades, possibly making older study
findings, the source of most positive results, obsolete.
Comparing 19982010, [other researchers] found that parents
increasingly structured their childrens experiences to focus on
learning opportunities such as those that involve computer
access, more books in the home, and enrichment activities
organized specifically for children. It is especially notable
that the socioeconomic gap in these practices narrowed over this
period with low-income parents showing stronger increases in
their investments in their children than more affluent parents.
This conclusion is also bolstered by the academic literature
finding that adoption is the number one most effective way to
improve a deprived childs life outcomes. Since, of course,
adopted children dont share their adoptive parents genetics,
the major boosts they get from being adopted have to come
exclusively from a combination of environment and parenting. So
if parenting is likely whats going on here, perhaps efforts
would be better directed that way instead of towards removing
children from homes, especially since parents are already
getting aboard that train.
Another reality, one of the best-documented in social science,
is that children who live with their married, biological parents
are the best protected against virtually all negative life
outcomes. Reading to small children and turning off screens also
have well-documented positive effects. These are things that
almost all parents can do for their children, yet despite their
far stronger record and far lower costs to taxpayers they are
not encouraged at anywhere near the level of government
preschool programs. For the best interests of children and
society, that ratio needs to flip, stat.
The study authors also pointed out, as preschool skeptics have
for decades, that the persistent fade-out of any positive
effects indicates its pointless to add preschool to government
education until the upper grades are more effective: It is
doubtful that anything done in pre-k can have sustained effects
if the gains made there are not supported and extended in the
schooling that follows.
Pew Research Center polling finds 59 percent of American adults
think the kids are better off when one parent stays home to
raise them. It looks like the research supports their common
sense.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/19/study-finds-kids-attend-
government-preschool-learn-less-misbehave/