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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-12-04

Not Exactly The Strongest Argument

On the front of the Denver Post Editorial Page this morning is a one-sided defense of preschool, and, in particular, the recent voter-approved tax increase that will fund preschools for all eligible Denver children. The title of the article is "Value of preschool proven," but here are the statistics cited to justify that title:

The Perry Preschool Study done by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation is the longest running study of the impact of high quality preschool, having followed program participants through age 40.

When comparing the program group (children who received high quality preschool) with the no-program group (children who received no preschool), researchers found that 65 percent of the program group graduated from high school compared to 45 percent of the no-program group.

At age 40, 60 percent of the program group earned above $20,000 compared to only 40 percent of the no-program group. And 36 percent of the program group had been arrested more than five times, compared to 55 percent of the no-program group.

I'm not sure I would EVER use 65 percent graduation rate as a positive; nor would I consider $20,000 or a FIVE-ARREST minimum as useful benchmarks for any justification of an educational program.

Seriously. "Oh, really? Only 45% of your subject have been arrested at least FIVE times? Why, you must be so proud . . ."

You hear statistics like these, and the first question has to be "from where are you drawing your population?" And the second question has to be "do they live anywhere near me?"

I might suggest--however humbly--that the population of the study might have experienced far more positive long-term success in life if they had, in exchange for preschool, a strong father in their lives. Show me THAT study, then let's talk about a huge taxpayer expenditure.
Posted by: Michael / 12/04/2006 12:54:00 AM

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