Protect Our Kids From Preschool Hype, Round Two

Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell are back in the op-ed pages again today with their “preschool is bad for our kids” argument. Writing this time in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Reason Foundation authors present an argument almost identical to an op-ed they wrote for the Wall Street Journal in August. They say that the evidence of the benefits of preschool are exaggerated: achievement gains fade by the end of elementary school, and some studies correlate preschool attendance with slower emotional development.

In this article, Dalmia and Snell come armed with the same set of test score data and studies that suggest that preschool doesn’t work. As we wrote before, the authors choose their evidence selectively, ignoring the fact that test scores in states with universal preschool such as Oklahoma and Georgia have risen among those students who attended preschool. Moreover, the other studies that show null or negative benefits of preschool mask the underlying issue affecting those results: quality. Research shows that the best-performing preschool programs are those that are adequately funded, have highly-trained teachers, and are aligned with the K-12 system in order to sustain the advances of preschool through elementary school and beyond.

Given that more and more working parents are signing their kids up for preschool, the question shouldn’t be whether or not to have preschool, but how to make preschool better. If anything, the evidence that Dalmia and Snell cite demonstrates the need to do more to extend interventions up into the early years of elementary school, to ensure that the gains of pre-k last through the third grade and beyond, rather than do less to help our youngest learners.

David Kirp of the University of California and the NIEER’s Stephen Barnett also have an excellent rebuttal to Dalmia and Snell’s argument, outlining the weaknesses of the research they use to support their claims. Several other early education experts, including some of the researchers cited by Dalmia and Snell, defended preschool in letters to the Wall Street Journal. If you missed them, check it out.