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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Aug '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
The purpose of Headstart and Childcare is part of the feminist project to recode the family. I know some young people who went to college who cannot afford to start families of their own yet. Why should they pay when they were responsible?
Garrett Petersen: 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. · 16 minutes ago
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Such programs have short term benefits for low income families that also happen not to be stable, loving and supportive. And, before the age of three, daycare type programs have disadvantages for all children. Govt. should not be pushing such programs as a generic positive, for they are not.
Apr '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
James Pethokoukis (quoting Charles Murray):
Yabut, since when did it ever matter if a government social program worked? And when did it ever pan out that a program "paid for itself"?
Nobody's fooling themselves here. You act like the issues raised in your post would or should be part of the calculus.
Heh.
Mr. Pethokoukis, whether tongue in cheek or not, you haven't even begun analyzing the merits of the program.
The question Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will ask is: how many federal bureaucrats can we hire?
Let's say that with this program we might be able to hire 6,000 clerks and administrators to implement it. At least at the outset.
Well, obviously this would be a worthwhile program!
Nov '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Percival: 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. · 1 hour ago
But you don't understand these are really good alphabet blocks and Barney videos!
Feb '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Head start is a failure. Public schools in many locales are complete failures. This is more about conditioning young minds to accept statism from a very early age. Once the program has been active for a few decades, the agenda education begins. Remembering songs to Mao, Stalin, and PolPot. Waiting for our Great Leap Forward.
Dec '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
If it is such a great idea, why oh why do those dollars have to go up to the federal level and then back down through the state to the local level? All that does - besides redirect other people's tax dollars - is allow the federal and state levels to take a cut. I wonder just how much that cut would be. 20% per level of government?
Jun '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
No, it's not worth it. The more we spend the worse it gets. Until people give enough of a crap to educate and read to their own kids, it's futile.
Conservatives Should dismiss it out of hand. It's just another way to increase Government.
May '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Those families are not stable, loving, or supportive because why?
Why is it to be the responsibility of the taxpayers who suck it up to make sure their families are stable, loving, and supportive to make it right?
It becomes clearer, and clearer that if you play by the rules, you're a chump whose function in life is to pay to pick up the slack for the people who don't.
Nov '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
"...but it will give you a lot more teacher union members, and the dues go to the Democratic Party." -- Michael Barone, 02/13/2013
Feb '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Brent - if you're saying we should cancel Head Start to save taxpayers I probably would agree. We have spent 100 to 180 billion for the Head Start program since 1965. With such poor results there has to be a better way to save taxpayers from throwing away more money.
BrentB67
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. · 4 hours ago
Jul '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Give me a child for 7 years, and I'll give you a communist....
Sep '10
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Yes, they should. Yes, they should. Yes, they should. Yes, they absolutely should.
The rest of this post is pure wonk-bation.
Besides, this guy isn't here to discuss or debate. He is here to make pronouncements. The last time commented on one of his posts was August! He writes and then goes about his busy life making more declamations.
The position itself is typical of those are ostensibly "conservative". They always give credit to big government ideas in their critiques of Democrats.
I'll note also, the possibility that someone is actually a conservative goes down in proportion to how often they use the word and how prominently it occurs in their writings and speechifying. Here it happens to be the very first word.
In fact after hearing this man's position on immigration and his feeble arguments, I don't pay any attention at all, other than to warn others off.
May '12
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Sweezle: Brent - if you're saying we should cancel Head Start to save taxpayers I probably would agree. We have spent 100 to 180 billion for the Head Start program since 1965. With such poor results there has to be a better way to save taxpayers from throwing away more money.
BrentB67
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. · 4 hours ago
7 hours ago
I am saying exactly that and cancel every federal education program. To date I am unaware of any program that confiscates money from states to send back with strings attached that is considered a success or better left to the states.
Aug '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
jkumpire:
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.
When Our Fair City started a 4K program in the public schools, the privately-run (mostly church-run) preschool programs experienced an immediate drop in enrollment. Naturally. Because, hey, all-day for free vs. three-days-a-week for a small tuition, you tell me which one people are going to choose?
I worry most about boys in a program like this.
Feb '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
As J. Goldberg would say, all that big governemnt "help" is eroding the family unit (the only thing that can really bring stability and alleviate poverty), necessitating more government programs which only further decay the family and society, and so-on and so-on...
But hey, a $13 to $1 return on investments! Wow!
Edited on February 14, 2013 at 7:51pmFeb '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Franco
The rest of this post is pure wonk-bation.
Hilarious, and I agree.
That's why Ricochet strikes me as a western saloon at times. If you come in pamphleteering inside the beltway proposals from a liberal think tank we don't necessarily mind, but the piano will go quiet, members will look up from their glasses, and you better start explaining yourself, or you could wind up flying through the large window out front(metaphorically of course).
Mar '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
You know how to deprogram a communist?
Communism. Never been known to fail.
Mar '11
Re: Is Obama's Pre-K Plan Worth $100 Billion
Antiphon
Franco
The rest of this post is pure wonk-bation.
Hilarious, and I agree.
That's why Ricochet strikes me as a western saloon at times. If you come in pamphleteering inside the beltway proposals from a liberal think tank we don't necessarilymind, but the piano will go quiet, members will look up from their glasses, and you better start explaining yourself, or you could wind up flying through the large window out front(metaphorically of course). · 21 minutes ago
"Son, you'd better smile when you call me a Keynsian."