Comments on: What Happened When Kindergarten Went Universal?

By: Universal preschool brings less than universal benefits « Kansas Education: Public Policy in Kansas and Beyond

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:28:32 +0000

[...] in several states, “even large investments in universal early-childhood education programs do not necessarily yield clear benefits, especially for more disadvantaged students.” Cascio is a professor at Dartmouth College. [...]

By: William Grimes

William Grimes — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:16:06 +0000

The leaps in kindergarten enrollment described in the article did not occur against a stable social background. The relevant decades, 1960′s-1980′s, saw significant increases in black illegitimacy and single parenthood, factors which have been associated with lesser educational outcomes.
Perhaps the potential benefits of expanded preschool education were negated by these changes in social behavior.

By: Ken Larson

Ken Larson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:59:11 +0000

Kindergarten is a German word and was likely introduced to our lexicon by Henry Barnard when he headed the first federal Office of Education in 1869. Yep, 141 years of state “interventions” with the result that most citizens don’t know their Constitution and cannot put the Civil War in the right century. That’s something for teachers to discuss at a job review.

Maybe we should be paying more attention to stuff like this:
“Whether we can “teach ourselves” is a worthy reflection. We are haunted by the famous, but rare, “self-taught man,” as we are of those few intellects which seem to have no need of being taught. We all acknowledge that we have much to learn from others. There seems to be those few who learn directly from what is. But it is the experience of our kind that teachers can give us ways to meet the reality before us that will shorten out efforts. The good professor can take us to what is most essential more quickly than the one who does not know the order of his discipline. The teacher’s authority is not itself but truth to which it leads both student and teacher. The teacher takes the student not to himself but to the truth, which both, student and teacher, hopefully, come to see. Teaching itself is a service to truth, which is its end.”

Link at http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1377&theme=home&loc=b

By: Dick Schutz

Dick Schutz — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:24:05 +0000

“What happened to the children” in kindergarten and in subsequent schooling when the “consequence” data in the study remains a black box. The state funding did as much as funding alone can be expected to accomplish. It delivered “universal” enrollment.

The racial differences obtained cannot be attributed to the state funding initiative; There were too many other other determinants in play in school and out of school to support this post hoc, propter hoc contention.

It’s certainly true however, that it’s unreasonable to expect that state funding of universal preschools ALONE will have any more effect on the variables examined than the state funding of universal kindergarten had. Black boxes can be replicated. That’s the only replicable aspect of the study, but it’s an important conclusion.