Last week Dave Grissmer and I published an op-ed on universal pre-k. We didn’t take it as controversial that government support for pre-K access is a good idea. As Gail Collins noted, when President Obama mentioned early education in his State of the Union address, it was one of the few times John Boehner clapped. Even better, there are good data indicating that, on average, state programs help kids get ready to learn math and to read in Kindergarten (e.g., Gormley et al, 2005; Magnuson et al, 2007).
Dave and I pointed out that the means do show gains, but state programs vary in their effectiveness. It’s not the case that any old preschool is worth doing, and that’s why everyone always says that preschool must be “high quality.” But exactly how to ensure high quality is not so obvious.
One suggestion we made was made was to capitalize on what is already known. The Department of Education has funded preK research for decades. Dave and I merely claimed that it had yielded useful information. Let me give an example here of the sort of thing we had in mind.