The Preschool Fade
Georgia’s Preschool System Gets High Marks, proclaims the LA Times. Georgia provides full-day preschool to all four-year-olds, regardless of financial need. The program, which started in 1995, is very popular. But the academic gains fade away in a few years.
Forgive my returning to this so long after it was posted but….
“Georgia teaches us that preschool won’t close the achievement gap, unless we target our quality dollars on poor kids who are attending preschool,” said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor and an opponent of Proposition 82. “If we rush toward a universal system and kids from better-off families benefit, we shouldn’t expect any narrowing of the achievement gap.”
Does anyone else see the twisted logic of this statement? As though we have to raise the achievement of the poor kids, but hold down the achievement levels of the middle to upper class kids so they don’t keep going up too? Does that sound familiar?
I thought the whole point was to raise the achievement levels of all students, regardless of income and background. The hope is that the lower end scores will go up more, because they have so much more potential to grow (you can’t go past 100% on most tests). But does that mean that any policy that is also helping middle-class and “better off” kids is “not fair”? This kind of logic makes me burn when it doesn’t make me want to cry.