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Competing Visions
Project Head Start was created during the heady, idealistic days of the mid-1960s. Through two seminal victories, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the...
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Preschool Puzzle
Last year, more than 30 states increased public funding for pre-K education. Advocates Pre-K Now and its congressional allies are pushing for new federal spending and regulations. Some analysts project...
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The Preschool Picture
The campaign for universal preschool education in the United States has gained great momentum. Precisely as strategists intended, many Americans have come to believe that pre-kindergarten is a good...
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Will Universal Preschool Help Poor Kids?
Chester E. Finn, Jr. talks with Education Next about the contradictions behind the push for for universal preschool. For more on this topic by Chester E. Finn, Jr., please see The Preschool Picture in...
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The Problem with Preschool for All
The campaign for universal preschool has gained great momentum, but a troubling contradiction casts a shadow over this movement. The main argument that preschool advocates make is that we need to give...
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Fix the Preschool Misstep
In “Early Childhood Misstep” over at Forbes.com, Chester E. Finn, Jr. dissects the “Early Learning Challenge Fund,” the House’s effort to boost early childhood programs run by the states. He writes:...
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Will Congress Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut?
Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (November 4) about a bill passed by the House that would send $8 billion to states to boost the quality of preschools and expand...
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A New Start for Head Start — If Congress Doesn’t Get in the Way
The Head Start program has needed a radical overhaul for the past 45 years, i.e. ever since its founding and its near-immediate demonstration that it doesn’t do much lasting good by way of readying...
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Obama for Governor!
Maybe Barack Obama should follow the Pope’s example and resign—but then he should run for governor, presumably in Illinois (where he would definitely be an improvement on the last dozen or so)....
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What We’re Watching: Assessing the President’s Preschool Plan
Sara Mead and Russ Whitehurst assessed President Obama’s preschool plan at a panel at the Fordham Institute, with Mike Petrilli moderating. For more on preschool, please read “What Happened When...
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The Trouble With Economists
Some of my best friends are education economists. That’s right. Economists have added a whole lot to the education discourse in the past decade. They’ve shed light on dubious assumptions and frequently...
View ArticleThe Pre-K Problem: A Great Investment or Passing the Buck?
It was a remarkable thing, perhaps historic: three of the four essays on the New York Times op-ed page of January 30 were devoted to one subject. “Pre-K, The Great Debate,” was the headline over Times...
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Does Pre-K Work? It Depends How Picky You Are
When I headed the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, I was sometimes called into meetings organized by the Office of the Secretary that were responsive to requests by...
View ArticleCan Pre-K Blaze the Way to Disruption?
Pre-K is getting a lot of media attention lately, whether it’s De Blasio’s call for tax increases to fund pre-K in New York City, states growing their budgets to accommodate more pre-K seats, or, of...
View ArticleNow You’re Entitled To Your Own Facts Too
Something unsavory is underway at the Department of Education and in the world of pre-school zealotry. They seem to be merging—and in so doing they risk the integrity of our education-data system. My...
View ArticleThe NCES, NIEER, and Spinning Preschool Data
The early-childhood folks didn’t much like it when I faulted NCES for relying on the Rutgers-based National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) as the source for federal data on “the state...
View ArticlePre-Kraziness
Way back in 2000, the United Nations went through an elaborate process of setting “millennium development goals” for the world. To be attained by 2015, these were, of course, entirely laudable—e.g.,...
View ArticleIs It Quality Or Quantity That Counts? By Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Ah, January is upon us: The wind is howling, the thermometer is plummeting, and we are greeted by the nineteenth consecutive edition of Quality Counts, Education Week’s compilation of mostly useful...
View ArticleIs a Massive New Set of Federal Regulations the Best Way to Reform Head Start?
As I’ve previously written too many times to recall, for all its iconic status, the Head Start program has grave shortcomings. Although generously financed and decently targeted at needy, low-income...
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Pre-K and Charter Schools: Where State Policies Create Barriers to Collaboration
Click to enlarge You don’t have to be a diehard liberal to believe that it’s nuts to wait until kids—especially poor kids—are five years old to start their formal education. We know that many children...
View ArticleIn New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio’s Initiatives Threaten to Widen the...
The sweetest and shiniest word in the progressive lexicon is “universal.” It connotes equity, equality, and above all fairness. As a practical matter, however, these lofty ideals are undermined when we...
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The Charter Model Goes to Preschool
A pre-K class at Renaissance Charter School. Over the past 20 years, both charter schools and pre-kindergarten education have taken on increasingly prominent roles in the schooling of America’s...
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Why the Federal Government Should Subsidize Childcare and How to Pay for It
Executive Summary Most families need childcare. Childcare is expensive and licensed center-based care is unaffordable for families of poor to modest means. There is broad public support for more...
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Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten? – by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
In his 2008 blockbuster, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that a person’s age relative to his or her cohort is a key predictor of success. That is, the older you are in relation to your...
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Rigorous Preschool Research Illuminates Policy (and Why the Heckman Equation...
I have previously written about the extent to which advocates for greater public investment in center-based programs for young children, including some education researchers, misrepresent the quality...
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Adding Pre-K to Renaissance Charter School – by Rachel Hollander
The Pre-K classroom in The Renaissance Charter School where I teach is part of the Pre-K For All initiative implemented by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio when he took office in 2014. The...
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EdStat: 48 Percent of Parents Support Testing Preschool Students – by...
The International Early Learning and Child Well-Being Study, a new test that’s been termed the “Baby PISA” by critics, seeks to gauge which types of early childhood education are most effective....
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What is the Market Price of Daycare and Preschool? – by Grover J. "Russ"...
Executive Summary How much do parents spend on center-based daycare and preschool for their young children? In other words, what is the market price of these services? The answer is important for...
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EdStat: The U.S. Federal Government Spends Roughly $26 Billion Annually on...
How much are individual households spending to send a child to a center-based program—in other words, what is the market price of child care? This can be difficult to determine, because the government...
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EdStat: Parents Pay a Median Price of $8,320 a Year for Eight Hours a Week of...
How much do parents spend on center-based daycare and preschool for their young children? Using nationally representative data from the 2016 Early Childhood Program Participation Survey, Russ...
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More Evidence That Benefits of Government-Funded Pre-K Are Overblown – by...
Executive Summary There is a strong and politically bipartisan push to increase access to government-funded pre-K. This is based on a premise that free and available pre-K is the surest way to provide...
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EdStat: From 2002 to 2017, the Percentage of Four-Year-Olds Enrolled in State...
From 2002 to 2017, the percentage of four-year-olds enrolled in state pre-K rose from 14 percent to 33 percent. Right now, there is a strong and politically bipartisan push to further increase access...
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Pre-K Helps Test Scores in Short Run But Hurts Them Later – by Jay P. Greene
The Arnold Foundation’s Straight Talk On Evidence web site provides a very useful summary of a recently published large RCT on a state-funded pre-K program in Tennessee. Consistent with a previous,...
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EdStat: At Best, Increasing Pre-K Enrollment by 10 Percent Would Raise a...
Does free pre-K education have predictable and cost-effective positive impacts on children’s academic success? According to new correlational analyses, the positive associations between NAEP scores...
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Accountability for Early Education — A Different Approach and Some Positive...
Early childhood education in the United States is tangle of options—varying in quality, price, structure, and a range of other dimensions. In part as a result, children start kindergarten having had...
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EdStat: State Spending on Preschool More Than Doubled between 2002 and 2016,...
State spending on preschool more than doubled between 2002 and 2016, from $3.3 to $7.4 billion (constant 2017 dollars). However, a range of research also shows that many early childhood programs do...
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EdStat: 38 States had Statewide Quality Rating and Improvement Systems for...
Outcomes-based accountability has come to preschools in the form of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). QRIS give ratings to early childhood education and care settings based on a variety...
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