Preschool better for kids than giving money to their parents
Vancouver Sun
December 7, 2006
Editorial: By: Geoff Johnson, a retired superintendent of schools, consultant and writer who lives in Mill Bay.

EXCERPT

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." -- Lewis Carroll

Yet another study, yet again the same undeniable conclusion: Preschool is better preparation for kindergarten than government-funded home care. This time it is a study assessing the skills of 7,748 children with follow-up testing at Grade 1 and Grade 3 and published in the highly regarded Early Childhood Education Quarterly.

Many of the other studies, both here and in the United States, have been conducted not by early childhood advocates but by right-leaning bastions of pragmatism like the U.S. based Business Roundtable, the Economic Policy Institute and the Rand Corporation. In fact, the bibliography attached to the Business Roundtable report Early Childhood Education: A Call to Action from the Business Community reads like a who's who of Wall Street.

All these reports say essentially the same thing: Well-designed and appropriately designed early childhood intervention programs have been shown to yield benefits in academic achievement, social behaviour, educational progression and attainment, diminished likelihood of delinquency and crime, and labour market success.

The Rand research goes even so far to suggest that "well-designed early childhood intervention programs have been found to generate a return to society ranging from $1.80 to $17.07 for every dollar spent."

None of these reports advocate the Canadian Conservative government plan of simply handing over a monthly $100 cheque to the parents of preschool children. The same notion of expenditure without accountability, which seems to provide comfort to legislators, would likely create outrage in the boardroom.

Probably the most frequently quoted study of Early Childhood Development Programs is the High/Scope Study of the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Mich... At age 27, 117 of the original 123 subjects were located and interviewed.

During elementary and secondary school, Perry School participants were less likely to have been placed in special education classes, had significantly higher achievement scores at age 14 and by age 27 four times as many program participants as non-participants were earning self-sustaining incomes.

The Rand Corporation broadened the scope by studying 19 different early intervention programs, all of which demonstrated "significant and sizable benefits in at least one of the following domains: Cognition and academic achievement, behavioural and emotional competencies, educational progression and attainment, health and labour market success."

And still no report on the benefits of handing over a cheque to the families of preschoolers. Why? Because the money has gone to homes, not the development of more preschools.

A well-developed ECDP should, according to the joint report from The Business Roundtable and Corporate Voices for Working Families, not only provide positive learning experiences but include healthy nutrition and environments conducive to learning.

All this takes some serious money to accomplish and most studies warn against simply increasing participation without ensuring program quality which, they emphasize, includes appropriately trained and committed early childhood teachers.

Partnerships, the study says, are a key component of successful ECDPs, partnerships which create effective and efficient governance mechanisms that support community planning, program development and oversight. Lewis Carroll derided large-P politics as the school of "Reeling and Writhing" where was taught "the different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction and Derision." But the early educational experiences of our preschoolers must not be limited by the theorists of that school.

No. We must do better than that by the very young, much better. It is the wisdom found in credible research and every thoughtful parent's experience, not sycophantic large-P politics that should drive the needs of our national agenda for early childhood development.