Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst writes,
I am concerned that preschool education has become like organic food — a creed in which adherents place faith based on selective consideration of evidence and without weighing costs against benefits. The result may be the overselling of generic preschool education as a societal good and a concomitant lack of attention to the differential impact of different types of preschool experience on different categories of children. So just as some but not all foods grown under some but not all organic conditions may be worth their price because of their extra nutritional benefits and lower environmental impacts, some but not all children exposed to some but not all preschool programs may experience lasting benefits. And because preschool education like organic food is expensive, it pays to know what works best, for whom, under what circumstances.
He proceeds to cite Head Start as an example of a program with high costs and negligible long-term benefits. See also Timothy Taylor.
In a follow-up post that discusses research into other programs, Whitehurst writes,
This thin empirical gruel will not satisfy policymakers who want to practice evidence-based education. Their only recourse if they have to act is to do so cautiously and with the awareness that they are going to make some mistakes and need to be in a position to learn from them. They and the general public need to be wary of the prevailing wisdom that almost any investment in enhancing access to preschool is worthwhile. Some programs work for some children under some conditions. But, ah me, which programs, children, and conditions?
Nicholas Kristof also talks about research into cost-effectiveness of anti-poverty programs. He wants to see taxpayers spend more money on the pre-school programs that have been shown to have success. But he does not want to spend any less on worthless programs. He even insists on hanging on to Head Start.
He proceeds to cite Head Start as an example of a program with high costs and negligible long-term benefits
It depends on what you think the real purpose of the program is. As education, Head Start is a failure. As an employment program for employing the otherwise unemployable, it continues to be a success.
Any “intervention” such as a preschool education program that you fund at a large scale will become an entrenched budget-sucker whether or not it works.* We should stop funding any. We already know that most interventions fail at small scale. We also know that scaling up the odd small-scale success is generally either impossible because the superior staff and facilities of the pilot cannot be replicated at scale or pointless because the small scale success was just a matter of luck– statistical noise. Worst of all, the failure of sixty years’ efforts to find any intervention which will close “the gap” suggests that no such intervention exists. Most of the small-scale counterexamples in the literature likely emerge from delusion (self-, by researchers), good-news publication bias amplifying the salience of random noise, or intentional fraud by researchers trying to justify grant extensions.
Look at the trend line for suggested– younger and younger– ages of intervention. Gap not closed in college? Intervene in high school. Not closed? Intervene in grammar school. Not closed? Intervene in kindergarten. Not closed? We need a pre-school intervention. Not closed? Infant-care intervention. Not closed? Perinatal intervention. Still not closed? What’s next, eugenic intervention?!?
I suggest we reconsider our methods before we get to the final logical response.
*So many sincere, intelligent people seem to think that “policy makers” are interested chiefly in making programs “effective” at accomplishing their stated, high-flown goals. That seems a bit naive to me– elected policy makers (such as the ones who keep funding Head Start) are as much or more interested in seeming altruistic to voters (using other people’s money) and share with unelected policy makers susceptibility to public-choice problems. Head Start is entrenched because any politician who tries to cut it will be denounced (by his opponent and the Head Start bureaucracy) as a veritable Moloch and, as jseliger pointed out (I think), Head Start dispenses a lot of patronage/pork.
Pre-school programs need not benefit children in the future, if they benefit parents today. Which, if we take popularity to be revealed preference, they must.
some but not all foods grown under some but not all organic conditions may be worth their price because of their extra nutritional benefits and lower environmental impacts
There is no evidence of extra nutritional benefits from “organicly” grown food.
Jimmy Carter’s secretary of education used to say that 6 years old was too young for school there is not much more evidence for preschool than there was for starting boys later. School is the most recent cure all that is bound to fail.
@ghost of Christmas past:
Weren’t a number of the early progressives eugenics advocates? Not much of a stretch really.
And in fairness, if eugenics was used to boost IQ and future time orientation, then it might do a load of good. I’d be all for touchy feely social programs to boost those if any such thing actually worked.