When you try to do everything for everybody, you can wind up not doing enough for the neediest. With the best of intentions, some want to take early childhood education down that path.
While signing the state’s new basic education bill Tuesday, Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed a section that promised preschool for “at risk” children. She said she wanted to offer preschool to all of the state’s 3- and 4-year-olds children.
She’s echoing what’s become a mantra among some advocates of early learning. The idea is that all children would benefit, so it should be offered to everyone.
The case for that argument is weak.
Three model early learning programs – in Chicago, Michigan and North Carolina – have conclusively demonstrated immense benefits from high-quality preschool. All three programs had two things in common: expensive, highly professional instruction, and a focus on children at high risk of failure in school.
It’s doubtful that all children come out ahead if they are enrolled in formal preschool at ages 3 and 4. Many families provide rich learning environments in their own homes. The children in those homes might even suffer if their parents are enticed into enrolling them in formal preschools.
What the three model programs have proven is that disadvantaged children stand to gain enormously from exceptional preschools. In this context, “disadvantaged” usually involves poverty. The effects of poverty are compounded when parents are abusive or neglectful, don’t speak English, have poor parenting skills, are alcoholic or drug abusers, or never finished high school.
Children from such homes typically enter kindergarten far less ready to succeed in school than children from other homes. And they have far more to gain from intervention before kindergarten.
What’s needed is an amply funded effort to reach genuinely disadvantaged children, many of whom now begin school with little exposure to books, limited vocabularies and low emotional security.
It will cost real money to make a difference for such children – and there will never be enough money to provide the best possible schooling for every 3- and 4-year-old in the state. Such money as will be available should not be spread thin; it should be targeted to those who need it most. Universal preschool would amount to another middle-class entitlement – an entitlement that no one has proven the need for.
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