New Preschool Changes Are Hurting Children and Crippling Achievement

A recent article by Erika Christakis in The Atlantic titled “The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids” again highlights the problems with making kindergarten and preschool overly academic and how the huge expansion in preschool is actually harming academic achievement and doing little if anything to close the achievement gap. The accountability movement of strict standards and testing moving down to the earlier grades that includes Common Core has exacerbated these problems. The author, who is a preschool teacher, notes the seismic shift in preschool and kindergarten goals: Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea

2020 Democrats Outline Big-Government Education Plans at NEA Forum

On July 5th, ten of the current twenty major Democratic presidential candidates gathered in Houston for the 2019 annual convention of the National Education Association (NEA) to discuss their education platforms before members of the nation’s largest teachers’ union. Present at this forum were: former Vice President Joe Biden, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, California Senator Kamala Harris, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The answers to the questions and

New Study Shows Why Kids Need Parents, Not State-Run Preschool

As the evidence — even from respected pro-preschool researchers — continues to mount that government preschool programs are not particularly helpful and may actually be academically and emotionally harmful, the pro-nanny state side comes up with another “study” to say that preschool has some magical long-term benefits that previous research somehow failed to reveal. The latest example is the revival of the Perry Preschool Project. The original study of about 60 poor black children in a very intensive preschool and home visiting program and 60 controls found participants’ IQ scores initially improved but then returned to the same level as

Invasive International Survey Targeting Pre-K Students Is Coming to U.S.

Not apparently content with the extent of invasive personality profiling discussed last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is expanding it psychological profiling to 5,000 young children each in the U.S., England, and Estonia. The assessment is titled the International Early Learning Survey (IELS). Dubbed by some as “Baby PISA” (after the Program for International Student Assessment, an international assessment for fifteen-year-olds also conducted by OECD), this assessment is disturbingly comprehensive in the data it seeks to mine from young children and their families. Here is a description of the assessment in 2016 and early 2017 in

Progressives Continue to Push Government Preschool Despite Poor Results

Despite evidence that preschool is at best ineffective and at worst harmful, two more signs have appeared showing that progressives from both parties are not giving up on expanding these worthless, dangerous, and expensive programs. One is an announcement by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that he is going to fund “a network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities.” Bezos wants his Day 1 Academies Fund to support Montessori-style preschool programs where “the child will be the customer,” and according to Chalkbeat, these schools “will be free for students and inspired by the Montessori approach, in which children direct their

Congress Deepens the Education Swamp with New Spending Bill

The education swamp-expanding budget process discussed a few weeks ago is now near completion. The table below shows the final levels of difference between this fiscal year and last in the column in bold. Sadly, none of the unconstitutional, wasteful, ineffective programs were cut. The “best” outcome in some cases was that a couple of them were not increased. It is a sad state of affairs, but totally not surprising in an election year. The Senate voted 93-7 to pass the conference report, and the House will vote on it this week. The budget’s education spending is just one of

FBI Warns of Grave Cyber Security Threat to Students from School Tech

Finally! Although the horse may be long out of the barn, the FBI should nevertheless be commended for issuing this warning about the dangers of education technology and cyber security threats for students and their families: The FBI is encouraging public awareness of cyber threat concerns related to K-12 students. The US school systems’ rapid growth of education technologies (EdTech) and widespread collection of student data could have privacy and safety implications if compromised or exploited. The warning gives a list of many types of data that can maliciously exploited, rightly saying that this is not all-inclusive: personally identifiable information

Government Preschool Doesn’t Work — And Here’s the Proof

This article was originally posted at The American Spectator and co-authored by Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch. On the theory that more government programs can solve any public-education problem, bipartisan policymakers have embraced government-funded pre-K programs as the current fix. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act dangles multiple incentives, including new Preschool Development Grants, to coax states into taking more young children from their families and enrolling them in government preschool. Advocates claim the $7.6 billion spent on state pre-K programs will result in improved academic achievement and a multitude of societal benefits. But a new study from the center-left think tank Brookings douses these

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