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This video from ReasonTV shows you today's universal pre school education programs.

Transcript

Universal Preschool Reason.tv. Male: When already doing this we just can’t say “Hey the system is rotten and giving a more doable just to make it more rotten.” Female: The people that are more advocates for this kind of government run state run pre-school system believe that this time they will get it right. Female: They’re trying to for me get rid of day care providers trying to say you know the pre-school program in the school district is better but it’s not better. Female: Universal pre-school is a big mistake. Universal Preschool A silver bullet for education reform or a waste of money? Nick Gillespie: (Editor-in-Chief reason.tv) There’s a vigorous debate of the country right now surrounding early childhood education. One thing everyone agrees on is that or educational system is in trouble. Lisa Snell: (Director of Education and Child Welfare Reason Foundation) If you look at all different kinds of measures of student achievement what you really see is like a flat line. Dr. Edward Zigler: (Professor of Psychology, Emritus, Yale University) We’re like 15th or 16th in industrialized world. It’s simply not good enough. Lisa: In fact we actually score worse now on things like the SAT than we did in 1971. Edward: We keep wanting to find some silver bullet you know we pass this bill or that bill but nothing is working. Nick: The latest silver bullet is called the Universal Preschool. A plan that would make publicly funded preschool available to all 4-year-olds on a voluntary basis. Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida already have Universal Preschools programs in place and the movement is gaining momentum. Female: The push to start early has some powerful champions including both the democratic candidates. Hillary: I’ve advocated universal prekindergarten. Obama: For every dollar we invest in these programs we get 10 dollars back. Nick: If adopted Barrack Obama’s educational plan would increase Federal outlays to early education programs by 10 billion dollars. Lisa: Well right now the universal preschool the idea of the earlier you start with the child the more of an advantage they will have has really taken hold of the imaginations of you know the people that run public education in America. Edward: There’s nothing more important than terms of life performance than school readiness. Nick: To make their case Universal Preschool advocates rely on studies of 3 model programs. These studies show that intensive early interventions in the lives of poor children can save taxpayers money over the long term by for example reducing drop out rates and criminality. Edward: We have got data that shows the cost benefits. These should not be thought of as cost but as investments in human capital. Nick: Critics argue that these studies are irrelevant to discussions of universal preschool because they’re based on small expensive programs that provided poor families with a wide range of interventions over several years. Lisa: These kids got iron fortified formula. They got parent training. They got all kinds of interventions that don’t really look like kind of proposals that we have today for Universal Preschool Nick: The best evidence for the effectiveness of Universal Preschool programs comes from states like Oklahoma which has had Universal Preschool for a decade. Female: Oklahoma is one of just 3 states that offer free preschool to any family that wants it. Children who attend pre school here scored 52% higher in reading and 21% higher in math and those who didn’t’ Nick: Children who attend preschool in Oklahoma do score better on tests in kindergarten but those results have pure to fade out within a few years. Lisa: In 1998 before they started doing Universal Preschool, they scored above average for all of the states in the United States. 10 years later after they’ve been implementing universal preschool they now score below the national average and 4th grade reading in math. Nick: In Oklahoma like the rest of the country 70% of 4 year olds attend preschool. Since there is no obvious demand and we already have programs like head start for children what exactly is the argument for providing publicly funded preschool to all children. Edward: Like Oklahoma and Georgia both have programs just for 4 kids. The realize quickly to maintain these programs and allow them to grow. You have to serve middle class children as well in order to have that constituency that get legislators say we’re for this program. Nick: Mia Levi is the owner of the Manhattan Academy, a Montessori school in Manhattan Beach, California. Mia: There’s a certain segment of children whose families cannot afford preschool if you want them to have preschool help them but you don’t need to waste money taxpayer scarce dollars on children whose families don’t need that kind of assistance. Nick: We all want high quality care for our children so how does the current competitive system stack up. Edward: There’s no argument to quality of child care in America by every measurement and every study we have indicates it’s somewhere between core and mediocre. Lisa: Probably the best judge of outcomes for a 3-year-old is the parents right. Nick: In recent statewide surveys 80% of parents gave their child care providers grades of A or A+ even though the current system doesn’t appear to be broken Universal Preschool would attempt to fix it by requiring teachers to have credentials. Lisa: So right now in the United States a lot of people in the lower economic strata serve children and sometimes those workers are actually the sole income earners of their families. You know they have started single women businesses. You know they’ve done a lot of things for their communities but they don’t necessarily have credentials so they would be the first losers. Nick: Marcella Graves owns a home day care and preschool in Fresno, California. Marcella: What gives me most joy is the children watching them grow, learn, learn from other children, learn to give, care for each other. I love my job it gives me great pleasure. Lisa: A person that wants to work with young children is really a saint I would say because it takes a lot of patience. Anyone that has ever spent a day with 4-year-old knows that it can be a long day. It’s not about sitting them down for hours and having them learn and practice. It’s about engaging them and making the day interesting. Marcella: If Universal Preschool starts tomorrow it will put a lot of license providers out of business. I don’t have time to go back to school to get my B.A. and work a full time business. Edward: In business, I mean there are concerns about staying in business. My concern is about development of our nation’s children. Nick: Adopting Universal Preschool would result in a dramatic decrease insurance for parents. Mia: Once you start a universal program there would be universal standards so what you’re talking about is more of a homogenous kind of an environment and it will be losing out on some of the magic that is preschool. Lisa: You know another loser would be a lot of the none profit groups that already serve children like the YMCAs and the boy’s and girls’ clubs and local churches and community organizations it’s very difficult to compete with free. Nick: Universal Preschool credits argue that competition is the best way to make sure we have high quality preschoolers. Mia: Our schools are of a high, high quality. We’re always reevaluating what we’re doing if we didn’t we would be closed down. Public schools they’re not closed down they get to keep going. They get to keep dong what they’re doing. Nick: So what do you think is Universal Preschool the best way to fix our educational system? Lisa: We have to ask our self where will we invest our scarce resources. Will we invest them in universal preschool or the results largely fade out by the 4th grade or we consider what we need to do with K12 to make our schools more competitive in general. Edward: It’s not sufficient for us to say K12 is failing. We all kind of agree that it is. They got to fix that system. Lisa: In the United States we do have choice and education, we have choice in preschool and we have choice in college. It’s just that K12 sector where the government and individuals seem to be skeptical or have a hard time with the idea of choice and competition. Edward: Public schools are the back bone of this society. They’re not going to get rid of public schools. If they’re not good enough we’ve got to change them. Mia: I think that that the public school system should take a lesson from some of the private sector and watch how we are handling the operations of our school. Lisa: What we need is more choices and more competition so that kids have the right of exit so they can move from one program to another without being tied or obligated to stay at one school that’s not working for them. Nick: For ReasonTV I’m Nick Gillespie.