Pre-K Is for Bureaucrats, Not Kids by Phyllis Schlafly December 18, 2013
In an attempt to shift public discussion from the Obamacare train wreck, as well as toady to the feminists, Barack Obama is again promoting universal tax-paid daycare for preschoolers. But spending $75 billion on free preschool for all won’t work any better than the numerous times it’s been tried before.
Progressives don’t call it spending but instead use the code word “investments” to disguise tax increases. Obama wants to line up big-business support with a fairy tale that daycare “investments” will pay off by turning out kids who will be better trained for school-to-work.
Lobbyists for early childhood education (pre-K) always cite the Perry Preschool Project conducted years ago in Ypsilanti, Michigan, as their model. But it was based on separate classes of six preschool-age children, each class taught by a well-trained teacher with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education plus extra training in a special curriculum.
Each teacher conducted a two-and-a-half-hour-daily class with the children, and then had a 90-minute visit at each child’s home in the afternoon. The mothers in the Perry Project were required to be stay-at-home moms, married, and supported by the husband’s income.
Obama’s top economist, Austan Goolsbee, bases the argument that expenditures for universal pre-K education will produce social goodies by citing the Perry Preschool Project. But the Perry results have never been replicated . . . .