Evansville Observer: Con: Pre-K push will spend billions, fail as miserably as Head Start -- GazetteXtra

Friday, March 22, 2013

Con: Pre-K push will spend billions, fail as miserably as Head Start -- GazetteXtra

Con: Pre-K push will spend billions, fail as miserably as Head Start -- GazetteXtra

1 comment:

Katy10:33 PM
When will the politicians learn to read the full studies before pontificating about the results? The High Scope Perry Preschool Project longitudinal study explicitly states that the delivery model of their preschool program must be strictly adhered to in order to reap the benefits they have found. Highlights of that model include a 6 to 1 student to teacher ratio, all teachers with Masters degrees in child development and intense home visitation. Can anybody envision public schools delivering that as a universal preschool model? Oh, by the way, it started at age 3.

Anybody in Wisconsin who thinks 4K is the magic bullet should consider that Milwaukee has had it for about 25 years. You know, the worst school system in the state? Fat lot of good it's done them. But, as with a disturbing number of educational initiatives, everybody was happy to jump on the newest bandwagon and now Evansville is the only area school without 4K, giving it a competitive disadvantage. It's never really been about the kids and how to serve them. It's about increasing enrollment and revenue. But, as anybody knows who has paid attention to this issue, the schools that added 4K in a desperate attempt to increase enrollment experienced the same false enrollment bump ECSD had from 2003-2006 after implementing full day kindergarten. We're nearly back where we started from at that time because HELLO, it didn't really add a grade like adding 4K does. In spite of that, I have seen enrollment data from many schools that show a three year bump in enrollment (the numbers are based on a three year rolling average)followed by a decline at the same rate as before. The Gazette has featured more than one district in which this happened, including Janesville and Edgerton, I believe. So even the intuitive sense that one would get a true increase is not borne out in the long run.
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