Today’s article from Intellectual Takeout Dale Farran spent a decade studying over 1,000 kids who went to a state-run pre-kindergarten—and a control group of kids that wanted to, but didn’t get in. She is shocked and dismayed by what she discovered: By 6th grade the pre-K kids were doing worse all around: worse reading, math and science scores; more learning disorders; and more discipline problems, including serious ones that got them suspended. “It really has required a lot of soul-searching,” Farran told Anya Kamenetz on NPR. Now she’s pondering “what were plausible reasons that may account for this.” One theory she has is that the free pre-K doesn’t look like pricey … [Read more...]
New Vanderbilt Study Casts Serious Doubt on the Benefit of Universal Pre-K
From an article in the Missouri Education Watchdog In 2009 Vanderbilt University began working with the Tennessee Department of Education to evaluate their Voluntary Pre-kindergarten program (TN-VPK). As more states begin pumping thousands of dollars into their early childhood education programs, evaluation of the effectiveness of such programs becomes absolutely essential for any legislature, who wishes to be good fiscal stewards of the people’s money, when considering the implementation, continuation or expansion of a statewide pre-school program. The findings of the 2 year study of 3,000 randomized participants, A Randomized Control Trial of a Statewide Voluntary Prekindergarten … [Read more...]