Is the Impact of Pre-K on Children Negative? — Tipping Point New Mexico
Paul sits down with Katharine Stevens, CEO of the newly-launched Center on Child and Family Policy, to discuss New Mexico's growing pre-K push. This fall, New Mexico voters will vote on proposed use of New Mexico's Land Grant Permanent Fund to fund universal pre-K. "Pre-K for all" is a compelling political slogan. But voters should heed the exceptionally rigorous research recently released by Vanderbilt University, which found that Tennessee's universal pre-K program actually had negative impact on children by the time they reached third grade.
FURTHER INFO:
Flaws with UPK approach:
PROOF POINTS: In two places, researchers find problems with expansion of free pre-K (Hechinger Reports on recent NYC and Tennessee studies)
Pre-K Quality Stalls in New York City (Recent study by Bruce Fuller, Berkeley education professor, on NYC universal pre-K)
Scaling Up Pre-K Statewide: Experimental Evaluation of the Policy (presentation on Tennessee study results by Dale Farran)
A top researcher says it’s time to rethink our entire approach to preschool (NPR article on Tennessee study)
Interactive map with data on New Mexico’s school achievement
Other approaches to improving outcomes for low-income children that we should be spending money on instead:
Healthy Steps improves pediatric services provided by Medicaid, aiming to leverage the underutilized potential of the current system. The program is expanding with a $39 million national scale-up grant recently received from Blue Meridian Partners.
Centering Healthcare Institute improves prenatal care through group medical visits, provided at the same cost as existing Medicaid-funded prenatal care but shown to get much better results.
See Also
Op-Ed ~ August 11, 2020
Op-Ed ~ September 22, 2015
Podcast ~ December 10, 2020