Victoria Jones
Thomas
SEGL 102
1 May 2013
Revision of Preschool Necessity in the United States
I chose this paper to revise because I thought it could use the most improvement over all my papers. I went through the paper reading it out loud to make sure it is easy to understand, the wording is not awkward to read, and the reader would not be confused trying to read and understand the purpose of the essay. I corrected some grammatical errors and made sure to elaborate on the quotes that I chose to use in the essay and changed the wording of some paragraphs so the wording is not so stiff.
Anyone involved in the educational system in the United States would tell you there is controversy in everything concerning the lives of youth today. One of the controversies that can sometimes be overlooked is the need for regulated preschools. Several programs have been put into affect across the country to provide preschool for 3-4 year olds, but most have failed. Some people believe that there isn’t even a need for preschools, that children can enter kindergarten and be on track. An article posted in the New York Times entitled Getting Preschool Education Right, states that “Countless studies have found that preschool education has real value, both for the children and for society as a whole. But design is obviously crucial” (“Getting Preschool Education Right”). There are pros and cons that weigh on whether either solution would be a success, but both sides agree that something needs to be done so money isn’t being squandered on nothing. Researchers have discovered that preschool education positively affects learning and development enough that a child can move from the 30th to the 50th percentile on standardized tests when entering kindergarten (Barnett).
There are several different people who are influenced in this argument of preschool necessity. Obviously, the most important person is the child; would a student entering kindergarten benefit or suffer from a required preschool program? The parents would also be positively or negatively affected. They obviously want their child(ren) to succeed, so would a preschool program help them in their success? Teachers and principals would also be affected by a decision to change preschool. For a kindergarten teacher, it would be much easier to get a student on or ahead of their levels for reading, writing, and math if the student already has a good background in these subjects, so having a required and regulated preschool program would be very helpful. Principals are evaluated by the success of their students, so a preschool program could in turn help raise test scores for the schools. Whether one agrees that we need preschools or we don’t, everyone can agree that some kind of action needs to be taken to change the federal Head Start program which was created to aid these students, teachers, and parents–and it should be done quickly.
On February 12, 2013, President Obama gave his State of the Union address at a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill. Obama’s speech as quoted in Joy Resmovits’ article “State Of The Union Proposes Major Preschool Expansion”, detailed his plan to
“work with Congress to provide all low- and moderate-income 4-year-old children with high-quality preschool, while also expanding these programs to reach hundreds of thousands of additional middle class children, while also incentivizing full-day kindergarten policies, so that all children enter kindergarten prepared for academic success” (Resmovits).
President Obama’s plan; however, does not involve preschool programs designed for middle class children, they were focused on lower class children (Alger). Sharon Wrobel wrote an article, “From Threat To Opportunity: A Head Start Program’s Response To State-Funded Pre-K” that details supporters of the Head Start program see it as “focusing on the ‘whole child’”, for example; it provides physical, mental, and oral health services as well as nutrition and parenting, career, and educational assistance for the families of the students. Head Start is also seen by many as better at aiding students who are disabled, and students with disabilities are often referred to Head Start by state funded preschools.
The plan laid out by President Obama adds funding to the Head Start program, which many believe is failing. An article by Andrew J. Coulson, who is the director of the Cato Center for Educational Freedom, which was posted in the New York Post, describes an experiment done on a group of students who were just finishing first grade. Students were randomly assigned to the Head Start “treatment” group or the non-Head Start “control” group. The students were given 44 academic tests, and the results showed that “only two seemed to show even marginally significant advantages for the Head Start group” (Coulson). An evaluation of Head Start in 2010 showed that any results of the Head Start program in children were gone by the end of third grade, and some even by the end of first (Alger). In an Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis by G.T. Henry, C.S. Gordon, and D.K. Rickman, students who attended state prekindergarten greatly outperformed the Head Start students. Both groups were given four cognitive assessments: “Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement III; Letter-Word Identification Subset, Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement III; Applied Problems Subset, and Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS).” The Tulsa Public Schools’ prekindergarten and the Tulsa Community Action Project Head Start in Oklahoma were also studied, and similar data was found. Both programs were found to have positive effects on the students, but the students in the prekindergarten outperformed the students who were in the Head Start program (Wrobel). This shows that the Head Start program is not the best program to prepare our students to succeed.
Although there are many critics of President Obama’s plan to provide more funding to Head Start, most do not provide an actual alternate plan for preschool. Critics say that a national preschool program has already been tested and failed and that Head Start “is hampered by inconsistent standards and low pay for teachers, who are typically paid less than public school educators” (Rich). Head Start already receives annually, about $7 billion in federal money, and the Health and Human Services Department has began implementing changes to the Head Start program, including structured evaluations of classrooms and requiring local providers to compete every five years for financing (Rich). One of the only alternate plans for preschool is explained in the New York Post article by Andrew J. Coulson. Coulson states that “A federal program that pays private-school tuition for poor DC families, for instance, has been shown to raise students’ reading performance by more than two grade levels after just three years, compared to a control group of students who stayed in public schools. And it does so at about a quarter the cost to taxpayers of DC’s public schools” (Coulson). This program however, has been terminated as of 2009, when Democrats in Congress “pulled the plug” on its funding because of President Obama’s budget proposal cutting all funding for the program.
Some people, like President Obama, believe that the Head Start program can work to prepare our children for kindergarten if we put more money into it. This program provides preschool for low income families, but is it actually helping the children who are a part of it, or could it be hurting them? In 1998, Oklahoma passed a law for a state-funded preschool program for all four-year olds, but this program has faced some difficulties. With the number of children enrolling in the program soaring, the school districts are having issues finding spaces for these students to go. Some classes are now being taught in shopping malls because there just isn’t enough room for the classes in the schools (Banchero).
There are other schools that have implemented similar preschool plans into their schools; in particular, Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Students who attended the Perry preschool program were followed into adulthood and were discovered to have “lower dropout and arrest rates and higher incomes than those who had not attended” (“Getting Preschool Education Right”). These outcomes from the Perry system are almost identical to those of President Obama’s plan for preschool, but President Obama has a completely different plan for how to achieve these outcomes. In an investigation by James Heckman, it was found that $7-12 was returned to society for every $1 spent on the Perry program. Heckman is a Nobel Prize-Willing economist.
Universal Preschool is an idea that some critics of Obama’s plan for extra funding for Head Start are discussing. One of the issues that have come up with Universal Preschool is the funding. According to The State of Preschool Report of 2008 conducted by the National Institute for Early Education Research, of the 80% of four-year-olds that attend preschool, about half attend a private preschool, and half are in a public preschool program like Head Start, state pre-kindergarten (preK), or special education (Scholastic Administrators). In the article, “Universal Preschool: Is It Necessary?, Kim Oliver Burnim, who is a teacher in Silver Spring, Maryland, is quoted as saying that “The most learning we ever do in life is from zero to five years. Many kids are at a disadvantage”. Students who attend an ineffective preschool program aren’t learning as much as they should and the most important learning years are being wasted.
This program, however, also has some critics. Chester Finn Jr., who is the president of the Thomas Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C., says that most 3 and 4-year-olds arrive in kindergarten “ready to succeed” because they are already in preschool or daycare. He believes that Universal Preschool cannot prepare deeply disadvantaged children for kindergarten. The damage that has already been done with children in homes that are in deep poverty is just too severe and cannot be reversed with the plans in action.
A failing preschool program can lead to the failure of a child in the rest of grade school and can ultimately lead to high dropout and arrest rates. Our society needs to come together and realize the issue that is indeed existent, and find a solution to the issue of failing preschool programs, because the programs that we currently have in the schools are not working to prepare our children for kindergarten and grades above. As something that leads to the success or failure of society, school should be taken very seriously and in many cases is not, especially preschool.
Works Cited
Alger, Vicki E. “Obama’s Underperforming Preschool Plan; Head Start Brings Children to a Standstill.” The Washington Times 27 Feb. 2013. LexisNexis Academic. USC Upstate Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
Banchero, Stephanie. “Public Preschool’s Test Case: Oklahoma’s Expanded Access Shows Benefits, Hiccups; Classes in Strip Malls.” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 6 Mar. 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2013.
Barnett, W. Steven, and Ellen Frede. “The Promise Of Preschool: Why We Need Early Education For All.” American Educator 34.1 (2010): 21+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. USC Upstate Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
Coulson, Andrew J. “Head Start: A Tragic Waste of Money.” New York Post. NYP Holdings, Inc, 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 07 Mar. 2013.
“Getting Preschool Education Right.” The New York Times 16 Feb. 2013. LexisNexis Academic. USC Upstate Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
Resmovits, Joy. “State Of The Union Proposes Major Preschool Expansion.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.
Rich, Motoko and Meggan Haller. “In Alabama, a Model for Obama’s Push to Expand Preschool.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
Scholastic Administrators. “Universal Preschool: Is It Necessary?” Scholastic, Helping Children Around the World to Read and Learn. Scholastic, Sept.-Oct. 2009. Web. 07 Mar. 2013.
Wrobel, Sharon. “From Threat To Opportunity: A Head Start Program’s Response To State-Funded Pre-K.” Journal of Health and Human Services Administration 35.1 (2012): 74+. Academic OneFile. USC Upstate Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
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