State pre-k program has adverse effects on academic achievement | Hacker News Reader

State pre-k program has adverse effects on academic achievement

straighttalkonevidence.org

18 pointsyasp13 comments

> One possibility is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, some children may be better off academically if—instead of attending public pre-k—they stay at home at age four (which is where two-thirds of the sample children who did not enroll in VPK ended up).

I wonder if time at home equates to time with parents, and perhaps more direct social engagement with them?

> Another possible explanation is suggested by the fact that the VPK group had a higher rate of special education placements than the control group from kindergarten through third grade. This higher rate appears, in part, to be a result of children in the VPK group receiving special education designations during their pre-k year that carried over into elementary school. It is thus possible that VPK results in the identification of some pre-K children for special education who are just developing more slowly but who would otherwise catch up by kindergarten. Such identification may then lead to lower educational expectations and levels of instruction for these children. In addition to the above explanations, there may be others that could plausibly account for the study’s findings.

Amazing how these special designations tend to backfire on our best intentions... How do we effectively target resources at the people who need them most, without affecting either the way others think of those recipients or the way they think about themselves?

My 2 cents:

While intriguing, I remain doubtful. My issue is that they give us the stats in averages.

The control that stays home has significantly higher scores on average. That part, I'm not disputing. What I'm asking is if the score distribution was normal or skewed.

Out of the kids who stayed home, how many of them were spending quality time interacting with other kids, their parents, their siblings? AFAIK it's understood that quality social time can significantly help in other facets of life, vs say spending all day watching cartoons or on a phone, especially in these young impressionable years.

If half of the kids who were at home had that experience, and _that_ boosted their scores, and pulled the average up for the entire group, then this study would be misleading.

The question isnt "is pre k better than staying home"; it should be "is pre k better than the alternative to what the child would have received". pre-K programs are good when they are better than the alternative. From the I formation given (and granted I could be misunderstanding something), this study doesn't address that.

Thank you.

I will add that they should be looking at underlying causes for the negative impacts by third grade. It might not be the pre-k that caused it, but the reasons the kids were put in pre-k, such as single mom with too little time for the child and too little money.

This study was specifically of low income kids. Families with stay-at-home moms tend to have lower incomes than two career families, but this is a very different situation from a single parent situation. There are lots of different things that can contribute to a lower income. Not all are equally negative. A stay at home parent costs the family in terms of earned income, but it can enhance quality of life for all members of the family.

This was interesting because all other evidence from large scale longitudinal studies points to the opposite conclusion. But there is the bold tag "Accurately Reported" on straighttalkonevidence.org after all

Reading through it appears authors have, maybe deliberately, misrepreented causality. The pre-k program was discontinued and kids were sent to poorly performing public school, they noticed a decline in academic achievement and blamed this on the pre-k program. Is it me or is this a good case of using statistics to tell whatever story fits your agenda?

Digging into further, looks like the website if funded by Laura and John Arnold Foundation [1]. Another billionaire (hedge fund manager) has found a way exploit the economy to siphon obscene amounts of money and as a result is the only one qualified to fix all of society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_and_John_Arnold_Foundati...

Not true - I've seen this effect before in other studies, and already suspected it was true.

It's surprising that the effects of pre-k turn negative after some years, but I think it's legit science. If there's any bias, it's for researchers to publish the opposite conclusion.

You make my point for me when you say that you already suspect the result and this proves it. Let’s not bring truth into this when it clearly using statistics to advocate your point of view.

I wonder how much of the effect is a selection effect on which parents prefer to (or are able to) keep their toddlers at home, vs. which parents prefer to (or must) put their toddlers into daycare, or such education programs (which I would call mostly equivalent to daycare.)

Since everyone in the control group and the test group applied to the VPK program and was randomly placed into either the test or control group, we have good reason to think they have a similar background and needs... But maybe the kids who didn't get into the program then had a parent at home, engaging with them more meaningfully than at a state toddler farm?

My suspicion is that it comes down to the quality of the individual programs, and likely the educators too, and what the kids are (or aren't) doing.

Keep in mind that Bing School in Palo Alto has a giant wait list, and it's not because parents are just looking for a daycare. Maybe Bing could be a decent model to try and replicate elsewhere, university research and all.

I think it is criminal to put 4-year-old kids in school for 27.5 hours a week. It has to cut into useful skill-development time of playing.

tl;dr 3133 (control + treatment) tennessee lower-income children were checked after their pre-k year and third grade year. (Treatment children were able to attend the TN pre-k program.) After third grade, the treatment children scored .012 standard deviations lower than the control group for math, .009 worse in science, but similarly for reading and misbehavior. The treatment group also had a higher rate of special education enrollment than control: 13% vs 10.6%.

I'm suspicious of any pre-kindergarten program that isn't upfront about what it's real purpose is - and that is almost always to provide a place to warehouse children during the day so that their parents can both work. I would agree with the study's comment that many children are not suited for a full-day school environment at four. When I was a child, half-day kindergarten was still the rule, and the height of our scholastic achievements was learning the letters and numbers and not to bite people, a tall order for many five-year-olds.

Hopefully when I have children, I'll be able to live close enough to one or both sets of doting grandparents...

These programs tend to vary wildly in quality, which is why you run into situations where you have to wait list your child for over a year to get into a program. While it is true that school enables both parents to work, I don't think it is fair to classify them as warehouses.

As a parent of two children under three, with a grand mother who loves to be involved, it is definitely wonderful. However, the boundaries can start to blur when you rely too much on family. The daycare relationship is more of a business relationship and much easier to deal with. You can also be assured that your children won't be eating ice cream every day.

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