Sara Mead of the New America Foundation, one of the growing number of pre‑K pushers, takes issue with my pointing out that Oklahoma’s NAEP scores suggest no return on their massive and celebrated investment in preschool over the past 18 years.
This is just one small item in a box full of evidence that suggests preschool has at best a negligible impact on long-term student outcomes. There are a lot of problems with the edifice of misinformation and misunderstanding that the preschool activists have built. So, this will be an epic four-part series of posts. It will test my resolve and yours, but we must sacrifice for the greater good. Can you handle this much pre‑k?
Sara correctly points out that the fact that Oklahoma’s performance has fallen and then stagnated compared to the national average is not definitive proof that pre‑k failed to have a massive positive impact on student performance; many things could have happened to cancel out improvements from preschool … like a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants, or any number of changes in the educational system. (Considering the sloth-like speed of the government school system in executing any substantive change, I propose that this last concern be dismissed outright.)
So let’s take a look at some of the big factors that could have wiped out the huge academic boost preschool activists claim pre‑k provides; income levels, poverty rates, and Hispanic population.
The percentage of students of Hispanic origin in Oklahoma is still very low – at eight percent, it’s less than half the national average of 19 percent. So let’s turn to the most important factors correlated with student performance, income and poverty:
We can see here that in Sara’s favorite pre‑k impact subject, reading, Oklahoma has not improved at all compared to the national average despite a massive and acclaimed investment in government pre‑k (and the nation as a whole has actually declined in its performance on international tests relative to other wealthy nations).
Oklahoma’s poverty rate has bounced up and down around an average of 16 percent higher than the national average, with no trend at all. Per-capita income has stayed at least ten percent lower than the national average but has trended ever so slightly higher.
So I challenge you, Sara, and any other preschool activist out there, to find the nefarious factor that has destroyed all the gains from pre‑k. By all means, take this data and run it through statistical software with whatever controls you’d like related to documented demographic and education changes (as long as you include the national averages as a control). I’d do it myself, but I’m sufficiently convinced already that the null hypothesis won’t be rejected.
I offer a gentleman’s bet that you’ll find no significant positive correlation between the number of children attending pre‑k and NAEP scores in 4th or 8th grades.
More on the poverty of preschool claims soon …
