DE BLASIO AND DEMOCRAT MAYORS PUSH FOR MORE PRE-K MONEY FROM THE FEDS - DESPITE PROOF THAT PRE-K IS A WASTE OF MONEY BECAUSE IT DOESN'T HELP THE KIDS

POLITICKER: WASHINGTON — Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio went down to Washington, D.C. today to meet with President Barack Obama, emerging emboldened that a “progressive movement” was sweeping the nation.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, which included 15 other newly-elected mayors, Mr. de Blasio said it was clear to him that the fight against inequality–which formed the centerpiece of his campaign–was gaining steam far beyond the five boroughs.  

“You can’t have a room full of mayors–literally every corner of the country–all spontaneously saying to the president of the United States the same exact things from their own experience: Something’s going on here … So what we have to do is organize it and amplify it,” he told Politicker. 

“It was very interesting: a lot of them talked about pre-K, a lot of them talked about early childhood education as one of the breakthrough things we have to do to change the dynamics, a lot of them talked about their growing poverty levels and how it was undermining the future of their cities. So I think there was a really organic unity among all of us of the fact that this is the issue of our times. Fighting inequality is the mission of our times,” he said. 

... The group also talked specifically about the value of universal pre-K–another central point of Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign. “There was real passion in the president’s voice when he talked about how fundamental it is to move forward an early education agenda in this country and I think we all now know clearly that he will be a partner in all we need to do,” he said. 

Later, Mr. de Blasio said that he hoped he and his fellow mayors would be able to come together to help push early education advances, just as current Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined with other city heads to advance issues including immigration reform, climate change and gun control–“but with a different approach.”

BUT STUDIES PROVE THAT THE EARLY EDUCATION PROGRAMS THE SO-CALLED "PROGRESSIVES" ARE PUSHING DOESN'T HELP THE KIDS.

PROOF FROM THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTE - (A LIBERAL THINK TANK): New Evidence Raises Doubts on Obama’s Preschool for All: Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst | November 20, 2013 11:00am

Last week legislation was introduced in the Senate and House to create federally funded universal pre-k for 4-year-olds.  The details of the legislation are largely consistent with the White House proposal, called Preschool for All, that was announced in the president’s state of the union address in February. 

The rhetoric around the introduction of the legislation includes the by now entirely predictable and thoroughly misleading appeal to the overwhelming research evidence supporting such an investment.  For example, Senator Harkin, the lead author of the Senate version of the legislation, declared that “Decades of research tell us that … early learning is the best investment we can make to prepare our children for a lifetime of success.” 

By way of background, I’m a developmental psychologist by training and spent the majority of my career designing and evaluating programs intended to enhance the cognitive development of young children.  For instance, I directed a national Head Start Quality Research Center; created a program, Dialogic Reading (which is a widely used and effective intervention for enhancing the language development and book knowledge of young children from low-income families); and authored an assessment tool, the Get Ready to Read Screen, that has become a staple of early intervention program evaluation.  My point is that I care about early childhood education and believe it is important – as witnessed by how I spent my professional life for 30 years. 

My career since 2001 has largely been about advancing evidence-based education, which is the endeavor of collecting and using the best possible evidence to support policy and practice in education.  Since the president’s state of the union address, I’ve been writing that the evidence is decidedly mixed on the impact of the type of preschool investments the president has called for and that we now see in the legislation introduced in Congress.  It may seem in the pieces I’ve written that I’m wearing only my evidence-based education hat.   

But in fact if you’re an advocate of strengthening early childhood programs, as I am, you also need to pay careful attention to the evidence – all of it.  Poor children deserve effective programs, not just programs that are well-intentioned. 

Unfortunately, supporters of Preschool for All, including some academics who are way out in front of what the evidence says and know it, have turned a blind eye to the mixed and conflicting nature of research findings on the impact of pre-k for four-year-olds. 

Instead, they highlight positive long term outcomes of two boutique programs from 40-50 years ago that served a couple of hundred children.  And they appeal to recent research with serious methodological flaws that purports to demonstrate that district preschool programs in places such as Tulsa and the Abbott districts in New Jersey are effective.  Ignored, or explained away, are the results from the National Head Start Impact Study (a large randomized trial), which found no differences in elementary school outcomes between children who had vs. had not attended Head Start as four-year-olds.   

They also ignore research showing negative impacts on children who receive child care supported through the federal child development block grant program, as well as evidence that the universal pre-k programs in Georgia and Oklahoma, which are closest to what the Obama administration has proposed, have had, at best, only small impacts on later academic achievement. 

Here I want to draw your attention to a newly released study of Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK). TN‐VPK is a full day pre-k program for four‐year‐olds from low-income families.  It has quality standards that are high and in keeping with those proposed by the Obama administration under Preschool for All, including the requirement of a licensed teacher in each classroom, no more than 10 children per adult, and an approved and appropriate curriculum.  

The study, conducted by a stellar team of researchers at Vanderbilt, began in 2009.  It is a randomized trial (the gold standard for evaluating program impacts) involving about 3,000 four-year-olds whose parents had applied for their admission to oversubscribed TN-VPK programs.  A lottery was used to select those to whom an offer of admission was made.  Those winning the lottery constitute the intervention group.  Those losing the lottery constitute the control group.

RTWT - WHICH INCLUDES AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDY WHICH CONCLUDES PRE-K DOESN'T HELP THE KIDS.

THE LEFT DOESN'T ACRE THAT THE PROGRAM SUCKS AS FAR AS THE KIDS GO BECAUSE THE LEFT SUPPORTS IT AS A DOLE OUT FOR THE NEA, A MAJOR PART OF THE DEMOCRAT MACHINE.

A MACHINE THAT ELECTED DE BLASIO.

PROGRESSIVE POLITICIANS CARE MORE ABOUT THE MACHINE THAN THEY CARE ABOUT THE KIDS.

IF THEY TRULY CARED ABOUT THE KIDS, THEN THEY'D ADVOCATE PROGRAMS THAT HELPED THE KIDS - AND NOT JUST THE TEACHERS AND TEACHERS' UNIONS.