Do Early Childhood (pre-K) Programs Work? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    At their regular monthly meeting on March 22 the Beaufort County Board of Education heard a report on the PreK program in Beaufort County. The video below allows you to hear and see the presentation by Ms. Teresa Smith, Pre-School Coordinator for BCS.

    Ms. Smith reported that there are 11 Pre-K classrooms at 4 sites, Chocowinity Primary (3), Eastern (5), Northeast (2) and Snowden (1). Each class has 18 students so there are 180 students served throughout the county. Funding comes from a combination of "More at Four", Title 1 and Exceptional Children's funding. Students apply and are screened for eligibility. More apply than can be accepted so there is a waiting list.

    Exceptional children's services are provided at various sites throughout the county on a "resource" basis for about 35 students, with that number changing all the time. These services included exceptional children in private, church and home day care centers. Of the 180 student enrolled, 33 have disabilities. And most of the 35 students served in other sites are exceptional students.

     Commentary

    Ms. Smith made an excellent presentation. However, she committed the same sin we have complained about over and over again with regard to such presentations. There was nothing included in terms of providing solid data with which the School Board or the public could assess the effectiveness of these programs.

    Probably there is no other program that is more dubious in terms of its effectiveness than are early child care programs. Whether you choose to call them child care or early childhood education, Pre-K or whatever, the fundamental question remains: Other than providing babysitting services (or child care if you prefer) there are serious issues with whether these program make a substantial difference in the long run in these children's success in elementary, middle and high school. Most of the evidence is anecdotal; that is, subjective assessments based on someone's "gut feeling." And of course, the people who have a vested interest in the program always "feel" it does wonders.

    But most empirical studies of early childhood programs before age five usually fail to show any substantial difference between students who were in such programs and those who were not. And what differences there are typically are lost by middle school.

    Yet spending of taxpayer dollars in early childhood education is one of the fastest growing areas of educational costs. Thus, it raises the question of whether the benefit is worth the cost, which are extraordinarily high for most of these programs. And of course the question arises as to whether than same amount of money spent some other way might produce better results.

    The early childhood programs are immensely popular. But studies have shown, supported by common sense, that one reason they are so popular is that parents want child care paid for by someone other than themselves.

    But in one of the most extensive reviews of the research on early childhood education programs, the Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation concludes that the benefits, other than custodial child care, derived from these programs are not justification for the enormous amount of taxpayer money being spent on them.

    If you are really into this issue, we would suggest you go to the end of Burke's report and click on the link to the references he cites. There you will find a very recent longitudinal study just released by the National Center for Educational Statistics which shows some interesting facts.

    This study tracks students born in 2001 until they entered regular Kindergarten. Once again the "bottom line" statistic that came up as mentioned above in most other studies can be simply stated: "there is more statistical difference within the students in the treatment group (those in EC programs) than there is between these students and what might be expected in the total population (control group). Now that is stat speak for a simple conclusion: The programs do not make much difference.

    Hopefully, Beaufort County's program is better. But the point is: We don't know. They apparently have not thought about assessing the program in terms of whether students who go through the program do better, say in middle school and high school, whether they drop out less or any other standard of measurement the School Board might establish for these programs.

    Our gut feeling is that these programs are very good and needed. That is particularly true for Exceptional Children. Early intervention with certain student, autistic children for example, are literally invaluable if run well. But we also suspect that some of these students are simply benefitting from taxpayer paid child care and that raises a number of issues to the extent that it might be true, not the least of which is how students should be selected to be included versus those whose parent must foot the bill at private or church day cares. And that, of course, raises the real question here: Do the public programs do a better job than the private programs? Would a voucher system be more cost effective?

    Unfortunately, BCS does not seem to be concerned about such questions.

    But another thing the NCES study shows is that the "achievement gap" among various ethnic groups of really young students exists long before they enroll in school and EC programs do little to eliminate that gap. We think that has significant implications for schools, not the least of which is how they deal with "Limited English proficiency" students. If you study these results closely you have to question whether the extant LEP approach is effective. But that is another story for another day.

    What our School Board should have spent the night discussing after Ms. Smith's presentation was whether the money being spent on "Pre-school" could be more effectively used if spent elsewhere; such as: better vocational programs, particularly at the middle school level, enriched Academically Gifted programs, re-instatement of the dual enrollment program in our high schools, getting more students taking more advanced courses (paying for AP exams etc.)

    And once they got a handle on those issues they should have quizzed Ms. Smith and Mr. Abele on the impact of "blended" programs. Now there is one that would have really helped our Scholld Board members become more effective educational decision-makers...and maybe, just maybe, have helped turn the tradegy that is S. W. Snowden around.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.