The Problems with Universal Preschool

The push for universal preschool began with the Head Start Program, a government aid program to low-income families that currently provides options including full-time classroom instruction or in-home social worker visits. In February, President Obama announced his intention to increase and expand government-funded access to preschool beyond low-income families to the middle-class as well.

As of 2012, American confidence in public schools is at a new low, since Gallup instituted the Confidence in Institutions poll in 1958. Only 29% of Americans have “quite a lot” of confidence in our public school system. Over the thirteen years that the majority of American children spend in the public school system, our schools have a poor track record in serving students. Nevertheless, the American people are being asked to invest billions of dollars in expanding the institution that is already overwhelmed and underperforming.

Universal preschool is unnecessary. Almost three-quarters of American children under the age of five are already enrolled in preschool of some kind. What’s more, the benefit to children who participated in government-funded preschool programs is debatable, at best. There’s been a great deal of debate over the findings of studies that track the outcomes of children who participate in programs like Head Start. While certain studies that targeted very small groups of high-risk children, spending far more in intervention than could ever be institutionalized at the national level, did produce significant long-term benefits to the children involved, the large-scale programs functioning with funding and standards similar to the public school system at large produced insignificant long term benefits.

“However, averaging across all children, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through first grade, a potentially important finding for children’s longer term development.”

–  Head Start Impact Study- Final Report, Department of Health and Human Services

If you don’t like taking the government’s word for things (including its own failings), both conservative and liberal think tanks agree. Further support is added by the results of Oklahoma and Georgia’s state education policies, which have offered universal preschool for almost two decades without demonstrating any advantage over the national average.

Universal preschool is inadvisable. Weigh the dubious benefits of universal preschool against its downsides: diminished family ties, increased taxpayer expense, and the further overburdening of the public school system. The years before preschool are a crucial time in which mothers and their children form close bonds, which can determine the strength of family bonds for the rest of that child’s life. Children already see less of their mothers than ever before in an era of two-income households; should they spend a great deal of time being schooled outside the home during the time when most mothers are most available to their children? The expansion also asks for billions of dollars in funding, allegedly paid for by a doubling of cigarette taxes (decreasing consumption and ultimately requiring the education expansion to be paid for through traditional revenues). Lastly, the public school system is already quite overwhelmed by lack of funding, constant testing, and increased national standards (thanks to No Child Left Behind), that the White House has taken to issuing waivers to release entire states worth of public schools from the standards Congress voted them to be held to. This not only undermines the rule of law as the executive branch unequally applies acts of Congress to states, but also demonstrates a serious problem with the expectations and measures of our already-existing public school structure.

Those who support universal preschool certainly espouse a good goal: assisting all children in receiving the best education possible. But common sense demands that when one observes a problem plaguing an institution (undereducated public school graduates, especially from low-income families), the solution isn’t doing more of the same. We cannot improve the problems of the public school system by inflicting it on children from the time of their birth. Clearly, there is something missing in education organized and implemented by the federal government. We should look elsewhere for the solution.