We owe our kids universal pre-school
Oklahoma is one of the leading states in providing students like Tre free, full-day pre-school. And the results are already paying off: according to a 2005 study, Oklahoma kids that went through pre-school showed vocabulary gains 28% higher than those of children without pre-school, and math gains 44% higher than non-pre-school kids. And we know that high-quality pre-school doesn’t just mean higher scores in elementary school. A now famous study in Ypsilanti, Michigan put low-income African-American children through two years of high-quality pre-school and at the same time recruited a control group from the same demographic who received no pre-school. The researchers checked back in when the children turned 40 and the results were stunning. Without any other interventions, the pre-school group was more likely to have graduated high school and less likely to have committed a violent crime. They also earned more money and were more likely to be employed.
But despite the powerful evidence of the life-changing and cost-saving potential of high-quality early childhood education only 59% of our poorest four-year-olds are in pre-kindergarten, compared to 90% of our country’s wealthiest kids. This hurts those kids’ futures and it hurts the U.S. I think we can all agree that our students need to be more, not less, prepared for life and for the workforce.
Blowback
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Wow. High bar, there …
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on February 16, 2013 at 4:23 PM
We owe our children good parenting, not ushering them off to institutionalized babysitting as soon as we get a chance.
melle1228 on February 16, 2013 at 4:25 PM
I don’t follow. How does good parenting accomplish our two-pronged goal of increasing the size of government and beginning the process of progessive indoctrination a year earlier?
-Friendly neighborhood libtard
Kataklysmic on February 16, 2013 at 4:29 PM
And by third grade, all studies show, the “benefits” of pre-K go away for the target demographic. This is about the birth rate dropping in 2010 among Latino immigrants. The babies not born in 2010 will not be asking for bilingual pre-k services in 2014. A dramatic drop like what is coming could lead to cries to end Head Start altogether. This is an attempt to save jobs for educrats.
Sekhmet on February 16, 2013 at 4:31 PM
Here’s a better idea:
Promote:
marriage between a man and a woman
children within wedlock
no children before age 20 and before graduating high school
Blake on February 16, 2013 at 4:32 PM
…according to computer models.
Saltysam on February 16, 2013 at 4:33 PM
I don’t buy it. I have a fourteen year old and a five year old. My husband and I made a deal that I wouldn’t work the first five years. And it has been hard. The five year gap in work also has made it hard to find work, but I digress.
My first child never went to day care, and my second child went 3 hours a week, because she begged at three because her neighbor friend went. They both went into kindergarten ahead of the class and stayed a head of the class. I volunteer at my five year olds class and I asked her teacher what differentiated the successful kids from the kids lagging behind. It wasn’t preschool. It was parent participation.
melle1228 on February 16, 2013 at 4:33 PM
“our children”? This just talks about one demographic and whether they can manage to graduate high school and their likelihood for committing a violent crime as the measures. How is that “our children” and how does it relate to normal people who don’t expect look at pre-school as some sort of way of keeping their kids from becoming violent criminals?
The lowest common denominator is not the fulcrum about which all of society is shaped … not in a sane society, at any rate.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on February 16, 2013 at 4:34 PM
“Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever”
V.I. Lenin
Stu Gotts on February 16, 2013 at 4:34 PM
Yep. This study is really addressing parenting and the idea that less time kids spend with bad parents is better for them. It has little to do with normal families and their kids.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on February 16, 2013 at 4:36 PM
Apparently generations of people survived and thrived without being shuffled off to pre-K vice being cared for by parents who loved them.
katiejane on February 16, 2013 at 4:36 PM
Socialist solutions have a fantastic track record of improving the lives of everyone. The Kibbutzim have been a great success especially in the area of child rearing, and Headstart has worked wonders for millions of Children
/delusional leftist
r keller on February 16, 2013 at 4:37 PM
how collectivist of you
newrouter on February 16, 2013 at 4:37 PM
…except that darn HHS study which showed program like Head Start to have no lasting effects, and thus a waste of money.
This is all about getting more public employee union members. Also progressives have fantasized for a century about eliminating the retrograde influence of parents. If the socialist system doesn’t have partial custody of the children until they’re six, they might become reactionaries against the collective. The toddlers must learn from the moment they can understand speech: “The Party is mother, the party is father, all allegiance belongs to the party”(TM: Khmer Rouge).
theCork on February 16, 2013 at 4:39 PM
Good parenting from two loving parents. Worked under our roof.
Maybe the poor struggling minorities should reconsider having babies when they’re 15 years old. And make sure daddy hangs around for more than a few months. Lack of free pre-school isn’t the problem. Parents with the maturity of a pre-schoolers is the problem.
fogw on February 16, 2013 at 4:40 PM
The last thing I’m going to do is turn my son over to the State even earlier.
p0s3r on February 16, 2013 at 4:40 PM
http://www.gopusa.com/news/2013/02/06/boys-scouts-delay-decision-on-accepting-gays/?subscriber=1
Some nice comments in defense of the BSA and a reason you won’t see the article posted here at HA.
Blake on February 16, 2013 at 4:42 PM
We OWE our children a primarily debt free nation and the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own with as little government interference as possible.
Individual parents owe their children a quality education. Asking others to foot the bill prevents parents from doing so, creates a negative influence on personal responsibility by arguing others are responsible for children’s educations, and allows education to become daycare.
astonerii on February 16, 2013 at 4:44 PM
Edelman is really promoting a job program for lefty teachers and their union hacks. It has nothing to do with what is best for children.
Blake on February 16, 2013 at 4:44 PM
Years ago when my oldest was 3 or 4, we were at a neighborhood picnic. I was talking to an older woman, retired teacher from the good old days when education actually took place in schools. She was watching the way my son was behaving and interacting when she said, “You stay home, don’t you? I can always tell.”
Interesting that she didn’t ask what preschool he attended. Funny, that.
CJ on February 16, 2013 at 4:45 PM
^^^
Winner, right there.
But, of course, the government doesn’t trust you to buy your own health care, own guns, spend/save your own money. They sure aren’t going to trust you to raise your own children. Let alone educate them. At least according to progressive standards.
The earlier they get kids in school, the earlier they can get their hooks in them.
englishqueen01 on February 16, 2013 at 4:47 PM
Nonsense! I owe your kids nothing!
OldEnglish on February 16, 2013 at 4:51 PM
NO, NO, NO! Education is NOT a federal responsibility and I’m so sick and tired of the nonstop calls for ever more education spending as if it is some cure for deeper problems in our society.
Get the busybodies in the federal government out of our schools.
Charlemagne on February 16, 2013 at 4:54 PM
The funny thing is so many people think these kids OWE them! bah!
astonerii on February 16, 2013 at 4:58 PM
I agree. This is just a way to swell the ranks of unionized teachers and the union dues siphoned off for the Democrat party.
Charlemagne on February 16, 2013 at 4:58 PM
If this isn’t libtard indoctrinate-the-kiddies schtik disguised as educational concern, it’s entitlement-minded breederism.
Preschool, schmeschool. They’re too flipping young to learn anything scholastic at that age. And to HELL with the idea of it being universal! I’m already paying for K-12 education for everyone else’s kids…
MelonCollie on February 16, 2013 at 4:59 PM
Yes but those generations were racist, sexist, homophobic global warming deniers who belived in a magical sky friend. I’m not sure we can characterize their unenlightened existence as “thriving”.
-lib
Kataklysmic on February 16, 2013 at 5:03 PM
I’d like to see the results compared to a child with a stay-at-home parent during the pre-school years.
ButterflyDragon on February 16, 2013 at 5:03 PM
Each child is different, each child learns differently and at different speeds. Saying children are too young to learn is a cop out. Some will be too young, some will already be more advanced than what is offered.
That said, I do not think government should be involved in school at all, not even k-12.
astonerii on February 16, 2013 at 5:05 PM
We owe our kids liberty.
There’s more to childhood than higher test scores. How about a healthy home life and a solid relationship with two parents living in a free nation with a good economy.
It used to start at 1st. grade. Then some genius thought up kindergarten(which was suppose to be preschool). Then that wasn’t enough so we started pre-school. So where does “head start” fit in?
A free people built this nation with little more than a 6th grade education in one room school houses paid for by farmers.
That will never be topped by libs and their government school utopias.
JellyToast on February 16, 2013 at 5:08 PM
Education used to be a past time. Now it is like a job. Once you put your hours in, kids are no longer interested in doing it on their own.
Most of the best educated people in this nation’s history were self taught and saw it as a hobby or lifestyle to continue to learn.
astonerii on February 16, 2013 at 5:12 PM
Older generations didn’t have much in the way of preschool, yet they somehow managed to design and build Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the atomic bomb, the SR-71, put men on the moon, create Silicon Valley, etc.
Universal pre-school is simply a full-employment act for teachers and administrators.
Reno_Dave on February 16, 2013 at 5:15 PM
We owe the unions more teachers paying union dues. Because you know the pre-school teachers will have to be unionized.
ctmom on February 16, 2013 at 5:19 PM
This is why the GOP will never win. They refuse to take government out of education. Allowing it to be administered by Marxist’s.
The GOP will betray you
True_King on February 16, 2013 at 5:20 PM
… because the younger we start the liberal brainwashing, the easier children are to indoctrinate.
Pork-Chop on February 16, 2013 at 5:23 PM
Maybe we should redact that pesky HHS study.
Dern that HHS study anyway.
Besides, the federal gubmint has no business being in public education to begin with.
petefrt on February 16, 2013 at 5:44 PM
Liberals don’t educate. They indoctrinate. They want total control over your kid’s minds. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to make homeschooling verboten like it is in Germany.
Total mind control, for the kids, paid for by you, and enriching the stupid unions. To hell with it all.
tom daschle concerned on February 16, 2013 at 5:54 PM
We owe our kids parenthood, which we could more easily give them if the anti-American president wasn’t destroying our economy.
The Rogue Tomato on February 16, 2013 at 5:58 PM
Since libs don’t have many kids, they need to start in on your kids as soon as possible to turn your kids in liberal drones.
Kjeil on February 16, 2013 at 5:58 PM
Surprised? I’d be surprised if they didn’t.
petefrt on February 16, 2013 at 6:18 PM
This is primarily about indoctrination:
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism 326–327.
INC on February 16, 2013 at 6:47 PM
The Marriage and Religion Research Institute released statistics earlier this week on the benefits of an intact married family in which children grow up with both birth parents.
INC on February 16, 2013 at 6:54 PM
On Germany and homeschooling–I wrote up the Romeike case the other day. They are a family seeking political asylum in the U.S. due to persecution in Germany for their homeschooling. The DOJ wants to send them back.
The upshot of the brief filed by the U.S. Department of Justice is:
1. It’s not a violation of anyone’s rights to ban homeschooling.
2. Banning homeschooling doesn’t infringe on religious freedom, because not all families homeschool for religious reasons and not all Christians choose to homeschool. (This is the same angle we’ve seen played in Obamacare—the Obama administration asserting that religious freedom applies only to churches and not to choices made by individual Christians according to their personal beliefs).
3. Homeschooling is not an immutable choice.
INC on February 16, 2013 at 6:59 PM