Fixing Checker Finn’s Preschool Bandwagon

Checker Finn, a former assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush administration, and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post calling on advocates and policymakers to “slow down the preschool bandwagon.”

Finn is a critic of the movement towards universal pre-k, which he views as unnecessary, unduly focused with inputs over outcomes, inadequate to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged youngsters, and a distraction from the more pressing need for K-12 school reform. Instead of universal pre-k, Finn argues that policymakers should focus resources on providing more intensive interventions, narrowly targeted to the most at-risk little ones.

We actually agree with Finn about some (though certainly not all) of his concerns-where we differ is in the course of action policymakers and educators should take in response to them. And some of his assertions are just plain wrong, because he’s also working off outdated information and missing some relevant facts.

Let’s start with some things Finn gets wrong. For example, he claims that all the evidence for pre-k’s effectiveness comes from costly boutique programs targeting poor children. It’s true that the first programs to provide such evidence were small and targeted to very at-risk youngsters. But that criticism hardly applies to the Chicago Child Parent Centers, which have provided high-quality pre-k and support in the early elementary grades to thousands of Chicago youngsters. Children participating in CPC were less likely to be held back in school, to be identified in special education, or to drop out than their control group peers, and they also have better outcomes as adults. It’s hard to argue that such a program-which was run by the Chicago Public Schools, hardly an agency known for its unique effectiveness-isn’t scalable given sufficient public resources.

Finn also plays fast and loose with the data on the numbers of children enrolled in pre-k programs, repeatedly lumping in children cared for on an ad hoc basis by relatives and neighbors with those enrolled in high-quality pre-k programs, to try to claim that most families already have access to pre-k. In reality, only about two-thirds of 4-year-olds, and less than half of 3-year-olds, attend either pre-k or center-based child care programs, and many of those programs do not meet quality standards needed to support young children’s learning.

Finn is skeptical of advocates’ claims that that many preschools and child care centers serving our nations’ children are of very low quality. But there’s an odd contradiction here, because Finn is also highly critical of the quality of the Head Start program, despite widely recognized evidence that Head Start, whatever flaws it has, offers higher quality early education experiences for children than the typical preschool or childcare option available to families today. Either quality matters or it doesn’t. And the bulk of the evidence says that it does-and that it’s not good enough in most programs serving young children today.

It’s unfortunate that Finn has chosen to take such an adversarial approach here, because some of his criticisms of the push for universal pre-k are in fact quite valid. But pre-k advocates are unlikely to listen if they see him as an enemy.

For example, we strongly agree with Finn’s recommendation that efforts to boost children’s early learning must be paired with school reforms that improve the quality of standards, curriculum, and teaching that children experience once they enroll in school. That’s why New America’s Early Education Initiative focuses on reforms that create a seamless, high-quality early learning experience for children from pre-k through 3^rd grade. And that kind of experience must include many of the features-stronger standards; better alignment of standards, curriculum, and instruction; and highly skilled teachers-that school reformers have long advocated for K-12 schools. But unlike Finn, we believe that the process of implementing high-quality pre-k programs and creating alignment between those programs and our elementary schools can in itself be an important tool for advancing elementary-level reforms. New Jersey’s most successful Abbott districts provide one example of how this can work.

There’s also something to Finn’s argument that pre-k advocates have been perhaps too focused on inputs as measures of quality. Many of the criteria currently used to evaluate quality in pre-k programs-adult:child ratios, whether or not teachers have a bachelor’s degree-are pure input measures. But there’s a good reason for this: Many existing preschool and day care programs do not even have the basic level of input resources needed to allow you to get to quality. If a provider does not have enough money to maintain a stable workforce of teachers with good verbal skills, affection for children, and some understanding of child development, it cannot offer a quality program. Period. Given the reality that many providers today don’t have that basic level of resources that provides a necessary precondition for quality, it’s reasonable for quality conversations to include attention to resources.

But that doesn’t mean that input resources are the same as quality. Ensuring that all teachers have bachelor’s degrees, and all classrooms have at least two adults for 20 children will not magically usher in early childhood nirvana. As the pre-k movement makes progress towards putting in place the basic resources needed for quality, it needs to devote increasing attention to putting in place the structures, incentives and, yes, accountability, needed to ensure that children are actually getting high-quality instruction and interactions from those bachelor’s degreed teacher. And that, as K-12 reformers like Finn know, is incredibly difficult work.

Fortunately, smart early education experts are already thinking about and working to build the kinds of structures and systems needed to make real quality-not just input quality-a reality in pre-k classrooms. Just last week, New America held an event on this very topic, looking at how a quality initiative here in D.C. helps pre-k teachers use data to deliver high-quality instruction to all students and to target effective interventions to those that struggle. A growing number of states and programs across the country-including Head Start-are turning to the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), an observational tool developed by researchers at the University of Virginia that measures the quality of interactions between adults and children in early childhood classrooms. Research shows that children whose pre-k and early elementary school classrooms perform better on CLASS learn more in those classrooms. But before these and similar strategies can make meaningful progress in improving pre-k quality, pre-k programs need adequate resources. Successful implementation of these strategies also requires some type of comprehensive infrastructure supporting and monitoring early childhood programs-something that currently does not exist, but that universal pre-k programs can help to put in place.

Finn, however, seems unaware, or perhaps simply uninterested in these and other emerging models being used to drive quality in pre-k classrooms. That’s unfortunate, because these same models also have potential to help improve quality in K-12 education. CLASS, for example, is available for use in elementary school classrooms, too. CLASS has been used to document the unfortunately low quality of many early elementary school classrooms, and it can also be used as a basis for professional development designed to improve early elementary school teachers’ teaching.

We hope that pre-k advocates will listen to Finn’s valid criticisms and respond to them productively. Much of our work here at New America addresses these very issues.

At the same time, we have to see a form of victory for the pre-k movement in the thrust of Finn’s article. While Finn is critical of universal pre-k, he also advocates strongly for a more targeted investment in the most at-risk students, for whom he sees quality early education-including pre-k and birth to three services-as an important part of efforts to close the achievement gap. The fact that Finn, a conservative, and many of his fellow conservatives are increasingly coming to adopt this view, and to support some form of public investment in quality pre-k for at-risk children, is in itself a triumph for the pre-k movement. The debate over whether or not pre-k should be universal (and we think it should) need not stand in the way of conservatives, such as Finn, and universal pre-k advocates working together to advance quality of early learning opportunities available to our most disadvantaged youngsters.