Rebuttals to WSJ Opinion

ExchangeEveryDay for Wednesday (August 27, 2008), "An Opposing View on Preschool," cited a Wall Street Journal article, "Protect our Kids from Preschool" to which many of you responded. Below we have two more rebuttals to this article.

The first is a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, from Lawrence J. Schweinhart from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation and James J. Heckman from the University of Chicago:

"Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell of the Reason Foundation expressed their opinion in the August 22 edition of this newspaper that preschool education is not a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately, in making their case, they distorted the research that supports this investment, particularly the study of the High/Scope Perry Preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

"They claim that many of the parents of the children in this study were 'drug addicts and neglectful.' There is no evidence for this claim.

"They claim that one of us (Heckman) found 'that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent — not even remotely close to the $10 return.' Heckman's actual statement was that the program produced a 16-cent return on the dollar every year of the lives of the participants. Further analysis suggests a 10% return per year, which is still very large and comparable to a total $10 return per dollar invested.

"High-quality, interactive preschool programs can help prevent intractable national problems, such as crime and unemployment. Rather than denying this fact, we need to take advantage of it."


The second is from W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D. from the National Institute for Early Education Research:

"The most comprehensive statistical summary of research in this field (123 studies are included) is forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal, Teachers College Record. It finds that although long-term cognitive and academic effects are not as large as the immediate effects, they are statistically significant and educationally meaningful. The research summary also finds that more rigorous studies reported larger long-term effects than other studies.

"Dalmia and Snell misrepresent the facts about NAEP scores to argue that state pre-K programs are ineffective. In fact, NAEP scores in reading, math, and science have significantly increased since the 1970s across the board for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Contrary to their assertion, NAEP scores are up in Georgia from 1996/1998 to 2007 in math and reading. Oklahoma has hardly offered pre-K to all families long enough to reliably look at the question of its effects on NAEP at fourth grade, but from 2000/2002 Oklahoma's scores are up in both math and reading. Of course, what is really needed to sort this out is a study that controls for other differences among states. A rigorous national study by RAND researchers that controls for other state characteristics and policies including pre-K, and this study finds that state support for preschool education increases NAEP scores.

"They cite one misleading anecdote about Finland. In fact, every child in Finland has an unconditional right to government funded child care from age one (though many take family allowances instead). Finns choose from a variety of high-quality government supported child care options that provide up to 50 hours per week. More to the point, statistical comparisons of international test scores that find that earlier pre-K provision increases national test scores through age 15 and widespread provision of pre-K within a country decreases within country inequality in test scores.

"The claim that Head Start's effects don't last is based on a selective portrayal of the evidence. While some studies fail to find long-term impacts, others, including some of the newest and most rigorous, find substantial positive long-term effects, more than enough to suggest that its economic benefits exceed its costs.

"The evidence of negative effects on child development primarily comes from research on child care, much of it of poor quality, that many parents are forced to use when government fails to ensure that they can afford good educational programs for their children. Moreover, there is evidence that the findings of negative effects are an artifact of inadequate research design. No randomized trial finds negative effects of preschool education or Head Start (or early Head Start), but these non-experimental studies do find negative effects of Head Start on behavior. As this is exactly the opposite result of the National randomized trial of Head Start, this strongly indicates that the negative result is a false finding from faulty research — not a program effect.

"The claim that preschool education has not been found to benefit any children but the most disadvantaged ignores strong evidence to the contrary. In fact, rigorous studies (including gold standard randomized trials) going back to the 1980s have found positive effects for children who are not economically disadvantaged. Recent studies of state pre-K programs that are open to all children find strong effects for children from all backgrounds, including one on Oklahoma's program published in the prestigious journal Science. In addition, Science just published a new study from the UK finding positive effects of preschool education through age 10.

"The SRG study of Tennessee's pilot preschool program cited by Dalmia and Snell does not meet even the most basic requirements for a scientifically valid evaluation of program effects. In fact, it uses the same kind of faulty research design behind many of the older, and now discredited, studies that Dalmia and Snell rely upon to claim that Head Start's effects disappear later.

"Dalmia/Snell say that Nobel laureate James Heckman claims that the Perry preschool program produced only a 16-cent return for every dollar invested. In fact, in a recent article in the journal Science Prof. Heckman says that the annual rate of return is about 16 percent, not 16 cents. Dalmia and Snell apparently confuse an annual rate of return with a benefit cost-ratio, a shocking error in the nation's premier financial newspaper that suggests no fact checking was done.

"I have noted elsewhere that their article rehashes arguments and distortions of the evidence that were debunked years ago."

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