My first pre‑k post showed that Oklahoma’s 4th grade reading NAEP scores have dropped and stagnated compared to the national average, and that changes in poverty levels and per-capita income can’t explain why we don’t see improvement from the state’s model investment in preschool.
Regardless of the evidence that there is little or no long-term effect from preschool, the critics will always point to the remaining shadowy corners of uncertainty. With so many possible confounding variables, it is impossible to control for them all. There might be some hidden, overlooked factor that canceled out the real, substantial long-term effects.
That’s correct. Highly unlikely in the case of the spectacular absence of a return on Oklahoma’s preschool investment and no obvious alternative explanation. But possible nonetheless.
And that is why non-experimental analysis can only provide suggestive evidence, with a heavy dose of uncertainty. Among the available research methods, the only way to be fairly certain an educational treatment has had an effect on students is to conduct a controlled experiment akin to those used in medicine or drug testing. Researchers randomly assign each person to either get the treatment or to not get the treatment.
Unfortunately, the preschool pushers have no experimental evidence that the pre‑k programs they promote have a significant, long-term, positive effect.
That’s why they rely so heavily on the few pieces of experimental evidence from programs that look nothing like those in Oklahoma, Georgia, or any other state that has adopted or is considering a pre‑k program.
Preschool activists kneel before a holy trinity of early-intervention programs that supposedly prove preschool is our educational, nay … our societal savior: the Perry Preschool Project, Carolina Abecedarian Project, and Chicago Child-Parent Centers Program (Sara inexplicably forgot to mention the Abecedarian Project).
Unfortunately, they don’t come even close to proving what preschool activists pretend they do.
To find out why, stay tuned .… (and yes, I’m sticking with the excessive title alliteration.)
