Nothing is better than nothing when it comes to pre-K – Orange County Register

It was a progressive Supreme Court justice, Louis D. Brandeis, who first described the states as laboratories that could “try out novel social and economic experiments without risk to the part the rest of the country.” This is an important aspect of our federal system, leaving most of the power at the state and local levels.

We’re seeing this play out in real time as Congress considers pre-K universal at the federal level. After the House passed President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) ​​plan in November — which includes pre-K — it looks like the bill has a good chance of becoming law. Fortunately, Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, was skeptical of the size and scope of the BBB and Mr. Derailment its segment.

Now a new one research from the American Psychological Association suggests the Biden administration should hit the pause button on their pre-K universalization plans. Researchers from Vanderbilt University looked at the impact of Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK) on children’s academic achievement and behavior through 6th grade. The results were a harsh rebuke of the Biden plan.

The Tennessee program has much in common with Biden’s plan. It is a full-time program (5.5 hours per day, five days a week) with paid certified teachers affiliated with elementary school teachers. It meets nine of the 10 “standards for high-quality pre-K” from the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER).

But students who participated in TN-VPK had worse results than students who did not. Any benefits gained in the program disappear by the end of kindergarten. In grades three through six, students who participated in TN-VPK performed worse on state assessments than students who did not participate in the program.

Behaviorally, the researchers found lower attendance rates and higher frequency of expulsions and suspensions among the TN-VPK participants. The authors note that these results “do not contradict findings from other studies of children who underwent group care during childhood.” They speculate that the negative outcomes may be related to center care, which deprives children of the independence that helps them develop intrinsic self-control.

This study comes at a critically important time, as Biden is continuing to push his pre-K plan of universalization. The administration should study Tennessee’s findings very carefully before proceeding because they do more harm than good. As Dale Farran, one of the authors of the Tennessee study, note“At least for poor children, it turns out that something is better than nothing.”

Despite what President Biden and his allies and Congress would lead us to believe, there is no single definition of “high-quality preschool.” A 2019 summary of early childhood education (ECE) research admits, “surprisingly there is little consensus on the specific characteristics or combinations of the most essential program features. to ensure the effectiveness of ECE programs.”

This is a crucial fact that too many advocates of kindergarten overlook – preschool doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all better than K-12 education. Pushing kids into centric models, which should happen with any tightly managed plan as smaller entities will have a harder time sticking to different tasks, seems to be the case. like it’s not the best thing for them. Based on her years of classroom visits, Farren says pre-K should include more play and encourage kids to explore their interests and less group instruction and stricter rules.