Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Conservatives shouldn’t dismiss out-of-hand President Obama’s universal pre-kindergarten plan. US education certainly needs all the help it can get. The White House plan will likely resemble a nearly $100 billion (over ten years) proposal fashioned by the Center for American Progress. Here are its key elements:
– The federal government would, on average, match state preschool expenditures up to $10,000 per child per year.
– This funding would allow families with children ages 3 and 4 to voluntarily send their children to a full-day (nine-hour) public preschool program or to choose a shorter-day alternative.
– Preschool would be free for children from families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.
– Children from families above 200 percent of the poverty line would be charged a sliding tuition co-pay, ranging from about 30 percent of the cost to 95 percent of the cost (for families above 400 percent of the poverty line).
Why would this be a good investment of public funds? Well, the CAP study points to research of intensive pre-K education from economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman. His work suggests, CAP explains, “a very high return on investment” — perhaps as high as $13 in benefits to the general public for every $1 spent. Heckman looked at two programs, the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project, that decades ago randomly assigned 200 poor kids into control and treatment groups. While the programs did not permanently raise IQs, the kids who received the enriched education had better outcomes as adults than those in the control group. They earned more, were more likely to stay off welfare, more likely to stay out of jail, and more likely to own a home.
But of course, those weren’t universal pre-K programs. They were small-scale programs targeted at low-income kids. Are the Perry and Abecedarian experiments scalable and applicable to a wider population? Grover Whitehurst of Brookings points out several caveats:
1. Perry and Abecedarian were multi-year intensive interventions whereas state pre-K programs are overwhelmingly one year programs for four-year-olds.
2. Costs per participant for Perry and Abecedarian were multiples of the levels of investment in present-day state preschool programs, e.g., $90,000 per child for Abecedarian.
3. Both Perry and Abecedarian were small hothouse programs (less than 100 participants) run by very experienced, committed teams, whereas widely deployed present day preschool programs are, well, widely deployed. The circumstances of the very poor families of the Black children who were served by these model programs 30 to 40 years ago are very different from those faced by the families that are presently served by publicly funded preschool programs. For example, nearly half of the four-year-olds in Head Start today are Hispanics, whereas there were no Hispanic children in Abecedarian or Perry.
4. And 40 years ago other government supports for low-income families were at much lower levels and pre-K was not widely available for anyone, much less the poor.
Now, we could supplement Heckman’s work by examining the results of a current-day and much broader program of childhood educational intervention, Head Start. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help CAP’s case. Researchers have found that initial positive impacts from the program don’t persist into middle childhood. Discouraging? You bet. But policymaking is supposed to be fact-based, not wish-based. Charles Murray:
Toward the end of his career, sociologist Peter Rossi, a dedicated progressive and the nation’s leading expert on social program evaluation from the 1960s through the 1980s, summarized his encyclopedic knowledge of the evaluation literature with his “metallic laws.” Rossi’s iron law was that “the expected value of any net impact assessment of any large scale social program is zero.” His stainless steel law was that “the better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero.”
To me, the experience of early childhood intervention programs follows the familiar, discouraging pattern that led him to formulate his laws: small-scale experimental efforts staffed by highly motivated people show effects. When they are subject to well-designed large-scale replications, those promising signs attenuate and often evaporate altogether.
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May '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Sorry, but this scheme like Pigford and countless other schemes from the Obama administration is another form of reparations.
May '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Starting kids, particularly those that have not had much verbal stimulation in the home, one year earlier in school is a good thing to do and the Murray maxim notwithstanding, is probably good public policy. But it should be offered to those in need, in order to keep the costs manageable, and it should be funded and operated locally. The unspoken part of the president's agenda is for the federal government to gradually take over education broadly.
Also in the SOTU was a reference to the potential need for government to take over accreditation -- a role currently relegated to peer review.
Oct '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Folks, you don't understand this is another middle class entitlement as well.
Private daycare and preschools are big business and heavily licensed by states. Many of these places are small independent small businesses. The Feddies want to throw a bunch of $$$ into the system along with the government ball and chain to control the market while supposedly helping poor and stretched middle-class families educate their kids and save a few bucks.
Of course it has all the drawbacks of a large government program, but most people won't care, they will hear about the sugar and not taste the bad medicine going down with it.
The plan is only based on one long-term study? Are you kidding? This is the Titanic disaster writ large.
Sep '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
I thought the pre-school portion of the speech was the most surreal. Here is the President of the United States in his big annual speech telling us that expensive pre-school education is a the elixir for all our worries. It reduces violence and teen pregnancy; it helps kids read, work and graduate. We know it works. It's a well documented fact. The Overwhelming Judgement of Science said so itself.
That's right, people who can afford hundreds of dollars a week in pre-K ed are better off. This was our President's educational awakening.
Aug '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Subsidized Pre-K in California has made it nearly impossible for my wife and me to afford Preschool in SoCal. We're talking $1,600 a month for 2 kids.
May '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Isn't it true that the long-term effects of Headstart are essentially zero. Also, imagine a perfect Sweden where the vagaries of birth are mitigated by an infinitely generous society. What would then separate people? Only biology. When social inequities are erased only biology remains. And there will still be sharks and minnows. Unfortunately.
Oct '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Fresh off its great success subsidizing college education, the Feds want to do the same thing at the other end of education? What could go wrong?
Edited on February 14, 2013 at 2:17amOct '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
No thank you.
May '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
As Alvin and the Chipmunks sang "Who cares what the orchestra costs?"
A $10,000 match for the states would come up to $20,000 per child per year?! [Redacted for CoC]!!!! Another clear sign that people have lost their minds.
This will be popular of course. More union members to pay dues that go to elect Democrats. More years of government-supplied baby-sitting.
Research has shown that Head Start has no lasting effect. What reason is there to believe this would be effective?
May '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
The answer to our education problem is to confiscate $60Bn from citizens in the states, send it to Washington DC, borrow another $40Bn from those yet to be born (at least those that make it past planned parenthood), create a huge administration to manage it, send part of it back to the states with a laundry list of instructions written by unions, attorneys, and lobbyists?
Conservatives should be on every street corner shouting at the top of their lungs against this kind of nonsense.
Nov '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
But I don't see education under the list of Article I Enumerated powers. I don't think there's a James Meredith situation happening either. If conservatives didn't want to support the George Bush/Ted Kennedy education stuff, why shouldn't they dismiss Obama education spending for our broke nation.
Indoctrination from the cradle to the grave...
Ask Derb about Head Start which he says has never statistically shown signs of helping any child.
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2013-01-19.html
"HHS tracked 5,000 children who either did or didn't participate in Head Start. It followed their progress from ages three or four through the end of third grade. What did it find? Same thing all the previous studies found: that whatever immediate benefits the preschoolers got from Head Start had disappeared by First Grade. The Head Starters and the non-Head Starters were indistinguishable in achievement or attitude. Bottom line here: Since Head Start began in 1965, U.S. federal taxpayers have spent nearly 200 billion dollars on a program that does nothing at all..."
Apr '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
What is better for a young child....a two parent household or government sponsored preschool? Lets spend some NIH money on that study. Better yet, lets just ask Dr. Carson.
Sep '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
It's hard for me to believe that any amount of pre-school is going to make up for parents who don't read to their kids or provide them with a stimulating home life. I have heard about some successful programs that teach young single parents how to parent, since so many who become single parents were badly parented themselves, and have no idea how to love and teach a child. It's probably better to spend the money there.
May '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Just for fun let's say that government spending on pre-school is the elixer to solve all social and educational ills (it isn't, but please humor me).
Why does the federal government need to be involved? If a program such as this is so effective won't citizens of the 50 states be supporting it in majority and ready to pay for it without debt?
How is this better off on the Federal level?
Feb '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
If Head Start costs federal taxpayers $8,000 per child and it fails to improve their cognitive abilities, and it creates poor peer relationships and lower teacher-assessed math ability, why should we add another program run by the government and expect better results?
Why not use the federal money to create vouchers for parents to use at the preschool of their choice? Those private programs that are too costly for many parents to afford.
Edited on February 14, 2013 at 1:22amDec '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Even if childcare had no direct benefit to the kids, there is an argument for subsidizing it. James, you probably know this better than I do, but I believe it's the Corlett-Hague theorem that says that an optimal commodity taxation scheme should place a higher tax on those things that are complimentary with leisure. Childcare is a substitute for leisure (when the kids are at preschool the parents can work), so a subsidy to childcare would tend to make work more attractive, which would partially cancel out the disincentive effect of the income tax, thus making the entire tax system less distortionary.
Of course, having the government actually run the program means inefficiency and waste. It would be better to subsidize private preschools.
Mar '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
A 13-to-1 return?
So, if we "invest" $1.3 trillion in alphabet blocks and Barney videos, we'll just glide right out of debt, and have enough left over to invest in perpetual motion technology!
Happy days are here again.
May '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Sweezle: If Head Start costs federal taxpayers $8,000 per child and it fails to improve their cognitive abilities, and it creates poor peer relationships and lower teacher-assessed math ability, why should we add another program run by the government and expect better results?
Why not use the federal money to create vouchers for parents to use at the preschool of their choice? Those private programs that are too costly for many parents to afford. · 11 minutes ago
Edited 5 minutes ago
Federal money = my money and yours. We should keep it and raise our kids with our own resources.
Nov '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Nick Stuart:
More union members to pay dues that go to elect Democrats. More years of government-supplied baby-sitting.
· 42 minutes ago
Absolutely right, and this will also keep union teachers employed as the birthrate continues to go down. You can bet, too, that the argument will be made that this "schooling" is of critical importance to children's development and should be extended to younger and younger children.
May '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Moms, hand your kid over to the government creche within 72 hours of delivery. Frees you up entirely from the drudgery of childcare and you can be back to work within a week. Bright, refreshed, and ready to take your place among the taxpayers who keep the whole thing going.
You can check the kid out as required to accessorize your life. Leave him or her in when you don't want to be bothered.
It's much better for the child you see.
Those mouth-breathing bitter clingers who resist will be required to get with the program so they can't impart their outmoded, racist, sexist, homophobic bigoted worldview on the taxpayers of the future.
What's not to like?