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Will Universal
Preschool Give All Kids a Head
Start
Director, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/19/BAGKJCAU0I1.DTL
Democratic activist and child advocate Rob Reiner
www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/13195937.htmp
has collected the million signatures that guarantee
a place on California's June 2006 ballot for his
www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr05/yr05rel45.asp
"Preschool for All Act." The initiative, which
tax-funds preschool for all 4-year-old children in
the state, is part of a larger move toward
Universal Preschool (UP). Several states, including
Georgia and Oklahoma, have adopted the system;
other states, including Florida and
www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=28345
Arizona, are moving toward adoption.
Advocates view UP as an
educational 'silver bullet' that also counters a
slew of social ills including poverty, child abuse
and crime. Critics wonder why billions should be
tossed at expanding a school system that is so
grossly failing the children currently in its care.
Both sides agree: UP involves increasing
government's 'parental' role regarding children. It
involves a new bureaucracy that focuses on
4-year-olds.
UP proposals can be
confusing because its advocates often differ on key
questions such as the source of funding, the
inclusion of toddlers, and whether attendance would
be compulsory. General agreement exists on two
points however: preschool should be available to
all; and, UP benefits children.
If successful,
California's high-profile campaign may set a
standard for other states. Reiner's proposal is to
fund UP through a 1.7 percent increase in taxes on
annual incomes of $400,000+ for individuals,
$800,000+ for married couples; this would generate
an estimated $2.4 billion per year. Attendance
would be voluntary.
Reiner's campaign may also
serve as a model on how to turn UP advocacy into
governmental reality. In 1997, Reiner founded the
www.iamyourchild.org/
I
Am Your Child Foundation (now Parents Action for
Children) to fight "for issues such as early
education." In 1998, Reiner campaigned successfully
for home.earthlink.net/~aladato/reiner.html
Proposition 10, a ballot initiative to tax tobacco
products in order to fund preschool
programs.
That same year, a
California Department of Education (CDE)
www.4children.org/news/598unpre.htm
report called for a half-day of preschool for every
3 or 4-year-old by 2008. Two www.sen.ca.gov/sor/reports/reports_by_year/1998/98issu06.htm
bills before the '98 State Legislature
unsuccessfully attempted to establish the system.
By 2004, Reiner and the California Teachers
Association had qualified a UP initiative for the
ballot but ultimately withdrew it www.cta.org/News/2004/20040408_1.htm
in a joint statement.
In short, California has a
long history of activists working in concert with
www.cde.ca.gov/eo/in/se/yr05preschoolwp.asp
various bureaucracies in order to expand both the
reach and the funding of the CDE.
As usual, statistics and
studies have been flashed in support. Reiner
prominently cites a recent www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG349/index.html
study by the RAND Corporation, "The Economics of
Investing in Universal Preschool Education in
California." The study states a hypothetical point
with amazing precision, "Using our preferred
assumptions, a one-year high-quality universal
preschool program in California is estimated to
generate about $7,000 in net present value benefits
per child…using a 3 percent discount rate.
This equals a return of $2.62 for every dollar
invested, or an annual rate of return of about 10
percent over a 60-year horizon."
How could anyone object to
a system that makes money while helping children?
The answer is 64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:0kpQdejs3RoJ:www.heartland.org/pdf/21644a.pdf+%22early+intervention+studies+have+been+uncritically+appropriated%22&hl=en
"easily" and on several grounds.
First, www.pacificresearch.org/pub/cap/2005/cap_05-06-15.html
questions have been raised about the RAND study's
validity by both Princeton University and the
Brookings Institution. Even if valid, however, the
study focuses on "disadvantaged" children and its
findings may not apply universally. David Elkind,
professor of child study at Tufts University, has
criticized such "early intervention studies
[that] have been uncritically appropriated
for middle-class children by parents and
educators."
Critics point to Head
Start, a federal preschool program established in
1965. Head Start is merely one of the many local,
state, and federal government plans that have
funded preschool programs for 40 years. And, yet,
as the DC-think tank Cato www.cato.org/research/education/articles/nannystate.html
observes, "The most comprehensive synthesis of Head
Start impact studies to date was published in 1985
by the Department of Health and Human Services. It
showed that by the time children enter the second
grade, any cognitive, social, and emotional gains
by Head Start children have vanished…The net
gain to children and taxpayers is zero."
A California-based anti-UP
group -- confusingly named universalpreschool.com/"Universal
Preschool.com"
-- argues that government preschooling actually
harms children. For example, in her book
"Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care,
Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes",
Mary Eberstadt offers evidence that children who
are 'institutionalized' at an early age develop a
lessened ability to relate with peers, emotional
problems like depression, and score lower on
standardized tests. Since UP is both touted and
criticized as a form of universal and tax-funded
day-care, Eberstadt's analysis seems 'on point.'
Equally troubling is the
possible impact of UP on parental rights,
especially the right of parents to determine the
best education for their children.
Some UP proposals call for
mandatory attendance. For example, in 1999, former
Vermont legislator Bill Suchmann introduced a bill
to study the cost of compulsory preschool for both
3 and 4-year-olds. Other proposals verge on
compulsion by insisting that UP is necessary for
all children. As Suchmann argued, "many children do
not have parents available at home or even capable
of appropriate intellectual stimulation."
Such demeaning views of
parenthood only heighten fears of compulsory
attendance even in proposals that are currently
voluntary. Such fear is stoked by a raging debate
in the UK www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111101.html
over a bill based on research by its Department of
Education. The bill would require children to enter
a government program of supervision and education
www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/orl-brittots2405nov24,0,1102857.story?coll=orl-news-education-headlines
from birth.
This is the great danger:
the presumption that government can raise children
better than parents. If UP is voluntary, then it
may merely create another massive and
ultra-expensive bureaucracy that accomplishes
little. If it is compulsory, then UP will extend
the government's usurpation of parenthood so that
all 3 and 4-year-olds are under state
supervision.
©2008, Wendy
McElroy
* * *
Wendy
McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com
and a research fellow for The Independent Institute
in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of
many books and articles, including her latest book,
Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the
21st Century. She lives with her husband in
Canada. E-Mail.
Also, see her daily blog at www.zetetics.com/mac
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