Maybe it was the approach of the Thanksgiving holiday, but the Denver Post and The Rocky both seemed to be caught flatfooted in their coverage of the narrow passage of Measure 1A this week. The local NBC television station, Channel 9, was way out ahead in getting reaction and analyzing what lies ahead. The measure will raise about $12 million through a local sales tax increase and the money will go for vouchers for preschool tuition, the amount to be determined by family income and the quality of the preschool the children attend

My ranting yesterday about "unschooling" and the coverage of it (see below) led me to snoop around on the web a bit and I learned that the homeschool/unschool crowd is adamantly opposed to publicly funded pre-kindergarten. It shouldn't have been a surprise, I suppose, that the folks who oppose "government" schools would be opponents of public spending on education. (They still pay taxes for schools, even if they don't send their kids there.) But the rhetoric is still stunning. An article in the homeschoolers magazine on the California universal pre-kindergarten initiative that fell short last spring decries what it calls the "war on toddlers." The article claims the national campaign to expand pre-kindergarten is driven by callous parents who feel they're entitled to "free daycare," that its goal is to "manage" Latinos, or to fix the problem of paying for social security by producing workers. The author, a vocal opponent of the California measure, says the government wants to "intern" and "institutionalize" kids to serve the interests of the state.

Sometimes journalists can't see a story in the campaign to increase public spending on pre-kindergarten. "Everyone's for it," they say, and so there's none of the tension and conflict that can give a story juice. I highlight this point of view to show that, indeed, there are opponents and they don't mind playing hardball. But though this language may seem extreme, it's not that different from what you'll hear from the Heritage Foundation or even from some liberals who worry that public spending on preschool has to mean a "one-size-fits-all", "standardized" education. Journalists ought to familiarize themselves with this complex political landscape.

Veteran Hartford Courant education writer Bob Frahm reports on the recommendation of a state-level study group to spend $100 million to expand children's services, including preschool classes, to make the state "a national model for early childhood education." The goal is to more than double the number of low-income children in preschool classes, train more preschool teachers and aides, and bolster the quality of preschool programs statewide, according to Frahm. The story notes the proposal will, as always, compete with other needs. "It really becomes a question of whether the people of the state of Connecticut are ready to pony up for this issue and raise taxes," state Sen. Toni Harp of New Haven notes.

What I missed in this story, though, was the sense that: 1. this is an issue very much on the frontburner in numerous states. A paragraph or so is all that would have been needed. and 2. any reference to the research on the effects of high-quality pre-k on poor kids. In other words, why is anyone suggesting spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

It did, however, include a legislator saying pre-kindergarten is important for preparing the workforce of tomorrow.

Washington Post uses the report of a committee on pre-kindergarten appointed by Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine to provide a good regional and national roundup of activity on the issue. When elected a year ago Kaine vowed to bring universal, voluntary pre-kindergarten to all four-year-olds in the state. But other issues, including highways, got in the way. The story notes that opposition is growing to what some legislators see as a subsidy for the middle class and one legislator even claimed that "frankly, there's no proof it works." Oddly enough, the legislator offering that confident, and misinformed, assertion was Majority Whip M. Kirkland Cox, a Republican who is a government teacher in Chesterfield County. If Mr. Cox didn't want to accept research widely available from places such as the National Institute on Early Education Research, he might consult this position statement from the American Federation of Teachers.

I don't think it would be advocacy for a story such as this to note that a number of studies have shown that high-quality pre-kindergarten does make a difference in kids' lives and that such programs provide a good return on investment, in terms of lowered social costs. Journalists shouldn't let legislators deny evidence, even if the implications of that evidence involve spending some dough.

Connecticut Post carries a story about unfilled vacancies in pre-kindergarten programs in Bridgeport, which also has more than 900 kids on waiting lists. The story serves a useful purpose, alerting folks to the situation. The story notes that most of the unfilled slots are only part-time. Journalists should be aware that when schools or agencies offer half-day pre-kindergarten, without what are known as "wrap around" services that allow kids to be at the center all day, it's very difficult for working parents to participate.

Now comes a Wisconsin task force to say that the state is not doing enough to assess the outcomes of its state pre-school program for four-year olds. "There's no study or determination of whether we are getting for our dollars' worth and...whether or not four-year-old kindergarten is a cost-effective means by which we can educate our children," said the incoming Speaker of the Wisconsin House, Republican Representative Mike Huebsch. According to a report on WKBT television La Crosse, the task force wants monitoring of whether children are learning English, test scores, and whether state spending on special education is dropping. The broadcast quoted a pre-k center director who says, "I think the standards are important as guidelines but, it is very difficult in early childhood to say, 'You have to have a "C" or above average in whether you can tie your shoe or not."

Good way to show the limits of "assessing" four-year-olds. It would also be good for the story to have noted that Wisconsin spends about $4,200 a year on a half-day program, according to the National Institute of Early Education Research. (state profiles available here). That's not even half the amount the state spends per pupil on K-12 education and, though it seems paradoxical, high quality pre-k costs more, not less.

The new report from the New Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force is nothing if not bold. It paints a grim scenario of a drastically reduced standard of living for many Americans if the nation doesn't get better at building a skilled workforce. Essentially, the report says the U.S. needs to move in the direction of successful education systems around the world: more investment in pre-kindergarten, and getting most young people well-prepared for college or trade schools by the 10th grade. Lots of recommendations and well worth journalists' attention. The commission report says the recommended changes in the system would save about $67 billion a year it says about a third of that money should be spent on a system of high quality pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds. Time magazine, Tom Friedman in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune
all covered it. (Update: NYTs coverage is here and Christian Science Monitor is here.)

Remember the three-part series on kindergarten the San Antonio Express-News did a few weeks back? I can envision a similar, and similarly provocative, series that could be done on pre-kindergarten. Given that expanding Pre-K seems to be very much at the top of the agenda for many policy makers, and given the expansion that's already occurred, it'd be useful and timely for journalists to see what's really going on out there in these programs as they expand.

Latest federal data on participation of three-to-five-year-olds in child-care or pre-school or Head Start is available here. Data shows that the percentage of that age group enrolled in centers increased from 53 percent in 1991 to 60 percent in 1999, before decreasing to 57 percent in 2005. Despite the increase in state spending on pre-kindergarten, it's not keeping up with the population.

Who knew? I thought those flatearther, conspiracy theorists went out of the scaremongering business in the 1970s. But no. The report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce got the JBS all riled up because it didn't call for enough privatization and also asserted a societal interest in education. Here's what the JBS had to say about the recommendation to spend $20 billion or so a year on high quality, universal pre-kindergarten for all three- and four-year-olds.

...the plan calls for kids not yet old enough for kindergarten to be gobbled up by universal pre-kindergarten programs. Because the state would hold the purse strings, the state would have full control. And with the enrollment of children who are only three and four years old, the state would gain more control over more children.

"Gobbled" up by free, voluntary, high-quality pre-school....interesting concept

From the Beijing News comes word that inequality starts early, even in a Communist country. Here's an excerpt of a story from Xinhua news service. At an education "expo" in Guangzhou...

Zhu Jiaxiong, vice-chairman of the China National Society of Early Childhood Education, showed two photographs when talking about fairness in preschool education. One of the photos shows a well-decorated kindergarten [kindergarten is preschool in China--rlc] that cost 200 million yuan (US$25.3 million), while the other features a rural child playing in a muddy field. Professor Zhu said there are insufficient fair-priced kindergartens in the country. The vast rural areas are especially facing shortages of preschool educational institutions. The key factors that decide educational quality are good teachers and a fine teaching mode, rather than big buildings. Thus the extravagant construction of many kindergartens are used to justify high fees. Some kindergartens now charge even more than universities.

The transcript of last week's online Education Week chat with Sara Watson of the Pew Trusts (full disclosure: underwriter of this blog) and two economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is a good resource for anyone wanting an overview of pre-kindergarten issues. Chat covered financing, access, quality, accountability, and much more. Lots of helpful links to organizations doing good work.

The Fed has come up with a specific proposal regarding how to invest in expanding pre-kindergarten.Here's how economist Art Rolnick of the Fed summed it up: "We propose to provide every at-risk child with a parent mentor and scholarships to attend a high quality early childhood development program. The scholarships will be funded at a level to encourage quality programs, including high quality teachers." Rolnick says such a program would cost about $90 million in Minnesota annually. The idea of "parent mentors" starting prenatally was explored in a brilliant piece last year by the New Yorker's Katherine Boo.

Edweek's ace pre-k reporter Linda Jacobsen has a roundup of current action to expand state spending on preschool. (I'm having trouble logging in but the story is at www.edweek.org, under pre-k). New Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick favors a $100 million downpayment on what advocates say they hope will eventually be a $500 million statewide program. Arkansas, Connecticut, and New York look like they'll be boosting pre-k spending this year too. Jacobsen says the national debate over whether such programs should be universal or targeted to poor kids continues. Margaret Blood of Strategies for Children in Boston "agrees that the research is still mixed on the benefits of public preschools for middle-class children." Steffanie Clothier of the National Conference of State Legislatures says sliding scale fees might be the way to go, financially as well as politically.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in D.C. at the National Press Club this week to talk about a package of anti-poverty measures. The package includes the creation of education savings accounts, in which the government would match private investments. Another piece of the package involves a big federal investment in pre-school. Governors have heretofore taken the lead on the pre-k issue. Mayor Bloomberg's on board. Maybe mayors will be taking the lead. Also interesting that pre-k is being framed as part of an anti-poverty program.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe wants to spend $40 million more on state pre-school programs and he's looking to a study from the National Institute for Early Education Research to bolster his case. NIEER, which judges the Arkansas Better Chance pre-school program to be a good one, concluded that the program had helped the poor children it serves to make significant gains in vocabulary, math, and what's called "print awareness." In the past, the Arkansas program was funded largely with a 3 cent tax on beer. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee had said that tax had to continue to keep the program going or expand it. Beebe hasn't yet said whether he'll continue to tap the wallets of beer drinkers to give more kids a good start on their educations. By the way, the Committee for Economic Development has a helpful overview of how programs are financed here.

Gov. Brad Henry of Oklahoma announced a plan to increase education spending in the state by about 10%, or $360 million. He's also said to be on the verge of announcing an increase in spending on the state's pre-kindergarten program, which is highly regarded for quality. That program reaches 70% of the four-year-olds in the state, tops in the nation.

New NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer's first budget proposal includes phasing in full funding of the state's universal pre-k program, with a price tag of $645 million, by 2010-2011. OK, so it's three years away, and out of a budget of $120 million, maybe it's not a big deal, dollarwise. But, still, wouldn't it at least merit a mention? It is new, after all. I read most of the 63 stories about the budget announcement that a Google search turned up and I could find only one that devoted even a line to it. Lots of speculation about the politics, about the cut in property taxes, about the increase in education spending. But nary a word about a proposed major increase to a program that would benefit many poor, middle, and working class families. Now, if we were talking about $20,000 per year preschools for rich kids...then we'd see some ink on it. [OK, my bad, an editorial in the Buffalo News had these words as part of a list of Spitzer's proposals: "universal pre-kindergarten." So, it WAS mentioned after all.]

I keep coming back to my conversation this week with Yale emeritus professor extraordinaire Edward Zigler, one of the father's of Head Start. One of the things Ed said really bothered him was the idea that a good preschool program only had to serve four-year-olds. He said preschool, in his mind, should mean from birth to kindergarten. But, at the very least, he said, preschool should serve 3 and 4 year olds. Now comes Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry who this week proposed to spend a modest $15 million to run a pilot pre-k program for 3 year olds in the public schools and another $15 million to add programs for 3 year olds in private settings. Oklahoma high quality program reaches nearly 70% of its 4 year olds, mostly in public school settings. This would expand it. The Norman, Oklahoma paper has the story here.

Here's an excerpt:

"It's an investment that will pay huge dividends not tomorrow, not by the next election cycle, but in five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line -- a generation down the line," Henry said at a news conference Monday. "It will make a tremendous difference for the state of Oklahoma."

South Dakota is one of only 10 states without any statewide pre-kindergarten program. Sioux Falls business man Ron Moquist, who describes himself as politically conservative, wants to change that. Moquist headed up a three-year Chamber of Commerce research effort that looked at the potential of pre-kindergarten programs to offset the often-debilitating effects of child poverty. He tells Minnesota Public Radio in this story that:

"If you start from a poverty background you will have a difficult time in school. So what we said is that we've got to get to these kids sooner because so many of them are starting kindergarten 18 months behind their peers and most of them never catch up."

Kudos to MPR for picking up on this story. Business leaders and Republicans nationally are among those who support investing in education early, because the pay off is greater. Story also reaches out to a pre-k expert, who talks about what makes for a quality preschool.

Up in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed increasing spending on preschool by $29 million. But members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party say that's "just a down payment.". They want to give families a voucher, based on their income, to use to pay for programs that get kids ready for kindergarten.

And in Massachusetts, legislators and advocates with the Early Education for All Campaign are hopeful that the universal preschool bill passed last year and vetoed by former Gov. Mitt Romney will pass again. New governor Deval L. Patrick supports it. His wife Dianne Patrick, a former preschool teacher, told the Worcester Telegram that her husband:

is determined to make sure every child in this commonwealth is able to have the same opportunity that he had.

Editorial in the Akron Beacon-Journal called on new Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland to invest more money in the state's Early Learning Initiative. The editorial said "Preschool is a 20-year workforce development plan."

Report by Leslie Postal in the Orlando Sentinel says entering Florida kindergartners are more ready than they were in the past to begin to learn to read. That's according to results on the school readiness test used by the state. Florida uses those results to judge the performance of preschools from the state's program for 4 year olds.

Advocates of high quality pre-kindergarten often say Florida's program falls far short of the mark. The Sentinel story also illustrates that when such evaluation data is available, it will be reported. The data does allow a conversation to take place about quality. But it's important for journalists and policy makers to keep in mind that the outcome measures are, to a large extent, determined by the characteristics of the children who attend

Missed this in February but it's worth linking to now. Fed Reserve Board Chief Ben Bernanke spoke to the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and extolled the economic returns of high quality pre-kindergarten.

Although education and the acquisition of skills is a lifelong process, starting early in life is crucial. Recent research... has documented the high returns that early childhood programs can pay in terms of subsequent educational attainment and in lower rates of social problems, such as teenage pregnancy and welfare dependency. The most successful early childhood programs appear to be those that cultivate both cognitive and non-cognitive skills and that engage families in stimulating learning at home.

Missed this coverage of a report identifying a space shortage in California that would leave one in five 4 year olds without a space on the rug if all tried to enroll in pre-kindergarten.

Remember the item a little while back about the debate over whether 4 year olds should even be allowed in Idaho public schools, for the purpose of pre-kindergarten? Well this week, the Idaho Legislature was debating a "non binding resolution to encourage" the creation of state quality standards for pre-kindergarten as a means of deciding where to spend scarce federal funds to preschools. My colleague Gene I. Maeroff notes that the Legislature voted that measure down 43 to 27. One inspiring quote in the debate over the bill came from State Rep. Lenore Barrett, Republican of Challis, who said: "In the old Russia the state owned the children for all intents and purposes and directed their education. This is not the proper role of government." Gene's comment was: "I guess they still have commies hiding under the beds in Idaho." Barrett's remark reminds me of the position of the John Birch Society on the issue.

New Mexico Lieutenant Gov. Diane Denish, one of the strongest forces behind the start-up of the pre-k program in her state in 2005, now wants the number of children served to be doubled.. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagovich wants to increase the state's spending on preschool by $70 million, opening up 12,000 slots. Some legislators in Missouri will be proposing expansion of state-funded preschool to all disadvantaged children. Finally, a consortium of colleges, the city of Tuscaloosa, the Mayor's office, and the Tuscaloosa school system are working on a citywide pre-k program. Editorial in the Tuscaloosa News says that, "In the long term, Tuscaloosa will be a better community thanks to this program."

According to the National Institute of Early Education Research, Alabama in 2005 ranked 37th in the percentage of its 4 year olds served. The state also cut its per-pupil spending on pre-k every year from 2000 tto 2005 and the elimination of federal child care funds available to poor working women were cut. Whenever journalists report on a new program or purported expansion of state spending on pre-k, it's important to say what the state is already doing. A doubling of 2% of the 4 year olds served may look better than it is, especially if the funds aren't doubled as well.

Edward F. Zigler has been a leading national authority on child development and early learning for more than four decades. He was part of a small group of advisers who created Head Start and then became its first director. Today, as growing numbers of policymakers embrace pre-kindergarten as an important source of education opportunity, Zigler, an active scholar and prolific author at 77, continues to play a central role in shaping the nation's thinking on early learning. When I spoke to him recently for a Q&A that is posted on the Web site of Education Sector he decried the poor quality of much of the child care in this country, gave a strong endorsement for Head Start, argued that pre-kindergarten ought to be universal, offered in regular public schools, and start at age 3.

Showing that he's stilling willing to court controversy, he said that, "The catastrophe for kids, the catastrophe for families, is the big split between child care and education. Education is looked as the state's responsibility. Child care is thought of as a family's responsibility. But we wind up with the kids in our schools. We don't know how to change. The Right Wing will fight anything that makes the lives of mothers and children better."

You can read the entire interview here Download file

My earlier post on coverage of the new National Institute on Early Education Research report noted that journalists hadn't picked up the "mo' money, even mo' kids'"angle. Should have checked USA Today's coverage before I said that. Greg Toppo was all over it. See how he handled it here.

Toppo also noted the existence of a new website called savvysource.com, which offers parents a way to judge the quality of preschools in their communities. Toppo quotes the site's founder as saying it is "kind of a combination of Zagat's and Craigslist" for parents of young kids.

Follow-up: Look for letters in newspapers around the country from pre-k supporters. The advocacy group Pre-K Now which, like this blog, gets support from The Pew Charitable Trusts sees the AP story on the NIEER report as a hook for supporters to write to newspapers and demand more money to be spent to raise program quality.

The Education Writers Assn. Web site has a new "issue brief" by Linda Jacobson that looks at the pros and cons of locating publicly funded pre-k in public schools or centers. The "brief" has some good experts and background information and notes that teacher unions have pushed for locating public pre-k in the schools, anticipating that teachers will be better paid and will be union members. But the brief notes that school-based programs often are limited to just the school hours, making them inconvenient for paretns. It also notes that one critic, Bruce Fuller of the University of California, Berkeley, doesn't want pre-k in schools because he fears they'll be too academic and focused on getting kids ready for kindergarten. Head Start "grandfather" Ed Zigler, in my recent interview with him, strongly favors having all pre-k in public schools.He also wants schools to offer pre-k all day and also after school, to serve working parents' needs.

Rena Havner's story in the Mobile (AL) Press-Register has been getting lots of traction on blogs and websites. The story, which was a follow-up to the NIEER report on the quality of state preschool programs, noted that while Alabama was one of two states to get a perfect score according to the NIEER scale, the state's program doesn't serve very many kids: only 1,080 statewide.
"We've got this great quality program, but we were dead last," said Criss Hopson with the Montgomery-based Alabama School Readiness Alliance, which is lobbying the state to expand its preschool program. "For the children that are receiving the instruction, that's great, but it's not going to be enough to make a huge societal impact."

Over the past few years University of California Prof. Bruce Fuller has become the "bete noir" of the national movement pushing universally available, voluntary, publicly funded preschool. (Full disclosure: One of the major forces behind the movement is the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is an underwriter of this blog, although my ideas are my own. Full-full disclosure: Bruce is a friend from my California days.) Fuller was the go-to guy for reporters in California looking for someone to criticize the California Preschool for All initiative, which voters defeated last June. His op-eds were near-ubiquitous as well and many in the UPK movement heap a good part of the blame for the measure's defeat on Fuller, as well as on the press, which spilled a lot more words covering an alleged scandal with initiative-backer and actor Rob Reiner than they did on the substance of the measure.

Fuller is just coming out with a book from Stanford University Press called "Standardized Childhood" in which he develops more fully his arguments against universal pre-kindergarten. He says public money is better spent on services for the poor, preschool teachers don't need to have college degrees, universal pre-school advocates are in bed with the teachers unions and that state-funded preschools "corral" toddlers into "standardized preschools" and subject them to "stultifying drill-and-kill" lessons that destroy their childhoods. On the one hand, he says that preschool won't close race-and-class-based achievement gaps. On the other, he says preschools don't benefit the middle-class. I'm confused.

What's so curious to me is that the rhetoric of Fuller, who is himself politically progressive, is almost indistinguishable from that of such far-right voices as the John Birch Society, which says here that pre-k will "gobble" up children; the "free-market" oriented Heartland Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, the Goldwater Institute, the Cato Institute and others. Fuller is worried about what he calls the "brave new world" of child-rearing, conjuring up an image of government bureaucrats marching kids into school not long after they're out of diapers to drill them on the ABCs. That's not much different from the Connecticut blog called "Red Notes from a Blue State" that referred to pre-schools as "pedagogical holding pens." Or the anti-preschool crowd in Idaho that fears some government “nanny state.” Oddly, Fuller also sounds a lot like the "unschooling" crowd, that says children should be allowed to develop at their own pace and time, freed from annoying school work.

The other part of Fuller's argument that mystifies me is his apparent antipathy toward placing pre-kindergartens in the public schools. Fuller's always been a skeptic about school choice and charter schools, saying that the marketplace doesn't always serve the needs of poor families who do not have sufficient information to make good choices. Here, though, he argues that families make good informed judgments when they put their children in the preschool in the local community center or the church down the street or even to leave the children with an aunt or grandmother.

I confess I haven't read the book. But I've heard Fuller speak about these issues a number of times. And, from the publicity materials, it seems that he's repeating his views here.

Bruce Fuller, the author of "Standardized Childhood" just out from Stanford University Press offers this measured and thoughtful response to my entry a few days ago about his book:

I’m miffed by friend Richard Colvin’s instantaneous commentary on my new book, Standardized Childhood, just out from Stanford University Press, coauthored with Margaret Bridges and Seeta Pai. Richard ends his blog-spray by admitting, “I confess I haven’t read the book.” [Disclosure: the rules of evidence or substantiation in the blog world remain a mystery to me.]

The book offers readers a concise historical tour, illuminating the age-old debate around how elites and institutions eagerly push to define the inner nature and proper upbringing of other people’s children. Sure, it takes a village. But the pivotal question moving forward is, who gets to call the shots across America’s diverse villages, and what are the ethics and evidence on the proposition that what’s best is a more homogenous way of raising and instructing young children are best?

Earlier feminist and child care movements stressed options for parents and children. But now influential born-again preschool advocates [disclosure: who are financially supported by the same national foundation that pays for Colvin’s blog site] have converged on a singular remedy: free preschool, preferably attached to public school bureaucracies, for all families, no matter how rich or poor.

Journalists, local activists, and state policy makers – as this movement unfolds – must wrestle with key issues. First, in the context of No Child Left Behind many kindergarten teachers are under enormous pressure to drill-and-kill information into children’s heads, to pump-up their test scores. The book takes readers into several preschool classrooms where teachers now feel the same pressure. So, let’s get clear on the risks and potential benefits of attaching three and four year-olds to public schools in the present environment of top-down accountability.

Looks like Iowa will be investing millions over the next four years to ensure that every Iowa four year old has a chance to attend preschool. The AP reports that a Senate measure looks like it will pass, the House is on board and so is the governor. The story reports that the $15 million plan will make "quality" preschool available for 28,000 children. Do the math and that's $535 per child. I know there's something I'm missing here. But so are readers and listeners in Iowa.

Pre-K Now's annual legislative roundup reports that 29 governors made it a priority this year to increase their state's spending on pre-kindergarten education. The report also said, however, that 12 states either kept the funding the same as last year or cut spending below the cost of living. The National Institute on Early Education Research reported a few weeks back that while
total state spending for prekindergarten had increased to nearly $3.3 billion, spending was not keeping up with enrollment growth and inflation. Funding per child fell to its lowest level since NIEER began collecting data five years ago.

The respected liberal Economic Policy Institute is holding an online press conference for journalists on May 2nd to release a new book that makes the case that investments in high-quality pre-kindergarten would improve educational outcomes and reap billions of dollars in savings in state and federal budgets over the next few decades. According to the announcement of the event, the book, "Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation" by Robert G. Lynch, will argue that either targeted programs aimed at the poor or universal programs available without regard to family income will produce big gains. That's interesting because most of the economists and activisits in the field of early childhood education argue either "universal" or "targeted," not both. Journalists need to sign up for the news conference and they'll get access to embargoed state-by-state material.

Maureen Downey in the Atlanta Journal Constitution uses a study by the Economic Policy Institute to argue that the state should abandon two tax cuts--for homeowners and the elderly with incomes of $150,000 or more--to pay to double spending on the state's pre-k program. The money would increase enrollment and increase quality, by raising per pupil spending from $4,000 to $6,300.

The Economic Policy Institute's report "Enriching Children, Enriching the Nation" got lots of ink in papers around the country. Every story I read expressed no skepticism about the state-by-state number crunching, which reported enormous returns from public spending on preschool. Andrew Leonard in a piece on Salon acknowledged up front that he supports public spending to provide high quality preschool to disadvantaged three-to-five year olds. But he bristles a bit at analysis by University of Chicago Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman that spending on pre-kindergarten will create a stronger, more talented, more effective work force. Leonard says public spending on preschool is a good thing, whether it produces economic gains or not." Investing in young kids would be good for them, even if it didn't make society more productive. And that should be reason enough to do it."

Heckman's 98-page report is here. Unlike the EPI analysis, Heckman argues that providing preschool to the disadvantaged produces the greatest returns and poses no tradeoff. But investing public money on programs for higher income kids makes less sense.

Andy Rotherham, the policy analyst and provocateur who is co-founder of Education Sector, gave us ink-stained wretch types a good assignment the other day. Here's the nub of it:

What I'd really like to see is a big picture and long article about where the nation is and where it is going on pre-kindergarten education. It seems to me that through various venues, for instance state initiatives, the Tough Choices report, advocacy groups, and the attention of presidential candidates we're having a national conversation about what amounts to adding a grade to school. To be sure, it won't work like that because the pre-K system is more choice driven and pluralistic than elementary school and different in other ways, too. Yet that would be the effect, a big shift toward another year of school.

Any takers?