|
January 22, 2009It's Not That Kids Need Preschool -- but It Can HelpSue Shellenbarger: Weighing the decision last year, Peter Canale, father of three small children, got caught in the crossfire. Co-workers and family members warned him, "you'd be crazy not to send your kid to some kind of preschool," he says. But the Yonkers, N.Y., financial-services manager, who never attended preschool himself and whose wife stays home with their children, was skeptical; "I thought pre-K was a fad," he says. Actually, all kinds of kids reap some academic benefits from preschool, a growing body of research shows. Among 22 scholarly studies I reviewed, the five that encompass children from middle- and high-income families show preschool grads enter kindergarten with better pre-reading and math skills than those in other kinds of care or at home with their parents. To be sure, the benefits for mainstream kids are smaller than for children from poor or disadvantaged homes, but they're still significant. Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 22, 2009 1:01 AMSubscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas |