Pre-K is a better investment than the stock market
The most influential are the Perry Preschool Project and the Carolina Abecedarian Project. Those are two randomized trials, conducted in 1960s Michigan and 1970s North Carolina, respectively. Participants have been followed ever since so as to ascertain long-term outcomes in terms of things like incarceration rates, teen pregnancy, average education level, average income, and more. Because the studies were randomized, we can know beyond a reasonable doubt that any significant differences are due to the influence of the preschool programs.
Both found huge economic and social gains to high-quality preschool. The upfront costs of each were relatively high, with Perry costing about $18,000 a year initially, but the return on investment was, as Obama said, enormous. The best work on Perry, in particular, has been done by James Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago who won the 2002 Nobel prize for his work on improving econometric methods. He put those skills to use evaluating the benefits of preschool programs.
Heckman and his coauthors started from the observation that those who received preschool in the Perry experiment ended up earning more money — and thus paying more taxes — as well as using fewer criminal justice system resources (because they committed fewer crimes) and receiving less in the way of welfare, food stamps and other transfer payments.
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How about giving kids a stable home, isn’t that a better investment?
thebrokenrattle on February 13, 2013 at 10:18 PM
Decades later, libs are still flogging the Perry Preschool Project and the Carolina Abecedarian Project. Aside from the sketchyness of the studies themselves, the fact that libs don’t have more recent examples tells you how well the Party of Science has been at replicating those extreme results.
Karl on February 13, 2013 at 10:32 PM
At that age, the most important thing they can learn is to keep their little fannies in their seats and to wipe their own little tushies. You can teach that at home and save yourself $18k.
Blake on February 13, 2013 at 10:35 PM
At first glance I read that as “Pmag”.
Bishop on February 13, 2013 at 10:37 PM
Actually, a lot of things are better investments than the stock market. For example, I wish I had cleaned out every bit of saving and investments in November and bought AR 15′s. Would have made a freaking fortune. The way most of my stocks have done in the last 4 years, just buying donuts and coffee would be a better investment.
MikeA on February 13, 2013 at 10:38 PM
Aren’t a lot of the early studies like the one cited here often found to have cherry-picked the kids who got the “treatment,” namely pre-school, and there were other characteristics in the home that would have led to success anyway? Initial studies on what became Section 8 started with good, involved parents who were glad to take the experimental vouchers so that their academically successful kids would quit getting beaten up by gangbangers.
When the program is taken fully online, and a lot of the filters to participation go away, the gangbangers just followed the successful kids to the nice schools. The same is likely with universal pre-k. In fact, studies later than the ones cited here found just that—pre-k was ineffective, because the home environment was more important in determining the future success of the kid than whether he had another year of schooling.
Bear another thing in mind as well: In 2010, the birth rate took a sharp dip, sharpest among Hispanic immigrants. Those kids not born in 2010 will not be demanding bilingual pre-k in 2014. Empty classrooms will demand to be closed.
Sekhmet on February 13, 2013 at 10:39 PM
Most of the kids I went to preschool with are in prison.
besser tot als rot on February 13, 2013 at 10:54 PM
Pre-school used to be called “babysitter” and it was a hell of a lot cheaper…
Results were better too…
Tim Zank on February 13, 2013 at 11:11 PM
If it is such a good investment… Then by all means, Parents, Spend the money on it.
Nowhere in the Constitution (or in a relatively sane world, even) is the Federal Government supposed to ‘invest’.
LegendHasIt on February 13, 2013 at 11:57 PM
Well, if we live in a total state then education won’t make much of a difference as long as we obey rather than think.
AshleyTKing on February 14, 2013 at 12:01 AM
I don’t know about these Cadillac preschools, but last time I looked, your run-of-the-mill gubmint preschools (Head Start) were showing no lasting gains. What modest advancement their kids showed in the first grade, disappeared by grades 3-5.
petefrt on February 14, 2013 at 12:28 AM
What a load of diaper filling.
John the Libertarian on February 14, 2013 at 1:18 AM
Studies have shown a substantial overlap between people who believe sentences containing both of these phrases, and bridge purchasers.
No, the fact that results were found with such small samples is one of the least striking things ever. It would be astonishing if you didn’t find differences in a number of different variables. And the harder you look, the more “striking” results you’ll find.
RINO in Name Only on February 14, 2013 at 5:40 AM
GOOD PARENTING is a better investment than Pre K and better yet it is free to not only you, but the taxpayers.
melle1228 on February 14, 2013 at 7:42 AM
The government just can’t wait to start indoctrinating children can they?
Dollayo on February 14, 2013 at 8:04 AM
Now there’s a better investment.
TexasDan on February 14, 2013 at 8:06 AM
Haha! That is EXACTLY what I have been hearing & seeing in all of the teacher conferences I have to attend (& boy are they usually worthless as hell).
So the Ed establishment is telling me the HS teacher that the data shows no gains in the Head Start program that are lasting.
And I’ll tell you, every year I teach, the kids seem to be getting dumber & dumber. I’m not kidding you. I am seeing significant drop in ability with each new freshman class.
And I teach in 2 different high schools now for 2 years at the same time. I have noticed it over at the other school as well.
This is a cultural phenomena. And it has everything to do with the state divesting parents of their responsibilities.
Head Start is free day care for poor people.
You are better off caring for your own child than you are shipping a 3 yo to head start. Perhaps there are individual head start programs that are better than others just like there are good & bad babysitters.
My daughter is a single mother (saw that coming & did she listen? NO!) & she was lucky enough to find a woman who is the greatest lady in the world to my granddaughter. She & her teen daughters love my granddaughter like their own bcs they’ve been watching her while mom works since she was 4 months old & now she’s 3. But not everybody’s that lucky.
Take care of your own kids people if you can.
Kindergarten’s also a damned waste of time.
Badger40 on February 14, 2013 at 8:55 AM
It is not lost on me, that many towns have restricted the age to enter kindergarten…for whatever reason they give…so that Ready kids have to wait to enter kindergarten if their birthday doesn’t match the town’s starting date.
Some parents hold their youngsters out of Kindergarten because they don’t want them to be the youngest in the class…my son went to school with quite a number of boys a full year older than he was.
It is not true everywhere, but in some states the requirements of Kindergarten include a lot of hoop jumping that did not exist in the past. Perhaps Kindergarten could be returned to being Just Kindergarten for kids 4 1/2 to 5 years old, to solve this problem of needing Pre K paid for by the town. Plainly the problem is 6 yr olds in the Kindergarten room.
Used to be, if you did not graduate from Kindergarten you could stay another year. Used to be, that there was Tracking in elementary school so that students could proceed at their own rate, and others were not held back waiting for the those with slower progress.
But it also didn’t used to be that parents were looking for schools to be their daycare for pre K kids.
Where the social engineers want kids that age in a classroom because their parents are not succeeding, I think we need to look at removing the kids completely from the unhealthy situation, especially kids who are born with fetal alcohol/drug syndrome…they should be removed immediately from the mother. The problem is NOT the need for pre K, it is a need to solve all these other problems, which someone thinks pre-k will solve, when there is empirical evidence that those students NEVER catch up to their peers, and Head Start is the wrong therapy.
Fleuries on February 14, 2013 at 8:57 AM
Check out the abundance of Headstart programs in violence-prone Chicago (see map view) and all these stats about the alleged benefits of preschool can be thrown out the window into the trash.
What America needs is fewer single mothers and an abundance of fathers.
As for investments in Wall Street, these are voluntary investments made by individuals and cannot be compared to the involuntary confiscation of income via progressive taxation.
CC: Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel
Buy Danish on February 14, 2013 at 9:07 AM
‘Fraid so.
Abelard on February 14, 2013 at 9:48 AM
0.0 Yikes. I…wish I could do more than to say I’m very sorry.
Myself, I’m eternally grateful for my mother not shipping me off to preschool. When I was a small tyke I remember her saying I would only go to kindergarten and only when the law required it. My response! “YAAAY! That means I get to stay with you longer!” And I darn well meant it.
Parents, hold on to your kids that little extra time. Someday the kids will be like ME – college graduates thinking with a tear in their eye “was it really that long ago that mom packed me a snack for my first day of school?” And they’ll be glad for every day they didn’t have to go earlier than their peers.
MelonCollie on February 14, 2013 at 10:18 AM