Who owns your children, you or the government?
FOXNews.com - Views - ifeminists - Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start?:
"Democratic activist and child advocate Rob Reiner has collected the million signatures that guarantee a place on California's June 2006 ballot for his 'Preschool for All Act.'"
The Reiner plan means billions of dollars for more school buildings and more teachers and more bureacrats to manage the program. It also means a further assault on parental rights and responsibilities in favor of the idea that, since the existing school bureacracy is having so much success with K-12 education, we need to add to its duties the care of four-year olds.
Repeated studies going back almost four decades in the US have shown that educational benefits, if any, acheived by children enrolled in such programs are completely lost by second, third or fourth grade. But, when it comes to public policy, you can't keep a bad idea down. It just keeps coming back with a new name and a bigger budget.
The Reiner proposal would tax those making over $400,000 per year an additional 1.7% to generate $2.4 billion annually. If half of that goes to teacher salaries and union dues take 2.5%, that would generate an additional $30 million annually for the California Education Association - that's a lot of political muscle.
posted by J. Keen Holland @ 2:43 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Some children are ready to learn in a school setting at 4, some at 5 and others not until 6, or older.
The big problem, reflected in the data, is that children who attend pre-school and benefit from it then enter kindergarden with children who weren't ready at 4 and children who are still not ready at 5 and may not be ready until they are 6, or even older. All of the children are then taught at the same pace, which is tailored to allow the slowest and least ready children to learn. The children who attended pre-school and learned are thus not continuing to learn because they already know what is being taught, up to some point.
Ultimately, the rest of the children catch up to them, at which point the pre-schooled children no longer show any benefit of the pre-school experience. Imagine that!
The process produces "equal outcomes", or at least some (un)reasonable facsimile thereof. The government schools strike again.
Thanks for the comment, Ed; but the situation is even worse than you make it out to be. I have seen studies from urban, largely minority, school systems that showed children's IQs actually declining in the primary grades. What the government schools are doing to children would be a crime if anyone else did it.
It is a crime when the government does it too! I am in favor of a class action against the teachers' unions and the politicians who "roll over" on their behalf; treason may be a little over the top, but not too much.
Several months ago, the Secretary of Minimal Education had an Op-Ed in the WSJ in which she noted the federal goal of having children reading by the fourth grade. I will admit that fourth grade is better than not at all after 13 years of schooling, but it ain't exactly ambitious.
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