Federal Early Childhood Education, Care Don’t Benefit Kids. Here Are the Facts

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., unveiled Tuesday a proposal to subsidize universal early education and child care through federal subsidies.

According to The Huffington Post, “no family would have to spend more than 7 percent of its household income on child care, no matter the number of kids.” Providers would have to meet safety and curriculum standards, and the proposal would be financed through a “tax on wealth.”

But the fact is that a new large-scale federal subsidy day care is unlikely to improve educational outcomes for children. It will cost billions—according to one estimate, $700 billion over 10 years for the Warren plan—and furthermore, it may not reflect the preferences of families when it comes to their children’s care in their formative years.

Although the Warren plan talks about day care subsidies rather than “preschool” subsidies, the reference to “curriculum standards” suggests the effort will be about more than child care for parents.

Warren’s plan reportedly calls for “requiring child care providers that receive federal funds [to] meet standards similar to those that now apply to Head Start.”

Well, Head Start is far from a success story when it comes to participant outcomes.

The Department of Health and Human Services released the scientifically rigorous Head Start Impact Study in 2012, which tracked 5,000 3- and 4-year-old children through the end of third grade. The results? Head Start had little to no impact on the parenting practices or the cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes of participants. Notably, on a few measures, access to Head Start had harmful effects on participating children.

Taxpayers have spent nearly $200 billion on Head Start since its inception in 1965. Yet, as the federal evaluation found, by the time the children finished third grade, there was no difference between those who attended Head Start and the control group of their peers who did not.

At the state level, proponents of government-funded early education and care programs have long held up Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K program as a model state-based preschool program. They note the fact that the child-adult ratio is limited to 10-to-1, teachers must be licensed, and a structured “age appropriate” curriculum must be used in classrooms.

But a randomized control trial evaluation conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University reported no significant differences between the control group and the preschool group on any achievement measures by the end of kindergarten.

Government-funded preschool advocates also tend to draw on one of two studies that found benefits of preschool attendance. One is the Perry Preschool Project (conducted in 1962) and the other is the Abecedarian Preschool Study (conducted in 1972).

But there are significant issues with these two examples.

First, no study has replicated the findings of these two.

Second, these programs had small sample sizes (just 58 children were in the experiment group in the Perry project), and the programs were comprehensive, boutique programs that included social and nutritional programs and parent counseling.

These two half-century-old programs look quite different from current programs and proposals. Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution sums up looking to the Perry Preschool Project as instructive today this way, noting that the findings:

demonstrate the likely return on investment of widely deployed state pre-K programs for 4-year-olds in the 21st century to about the same degree that the svelte TV spokesperson providing a testimonial for Weight Watchers demonstrates the expected impact of joining a diet plan.

In addition to the lack of educational impacts and the cost to taxpayers, it’s also unclear whether parents want this federal “solution.”

For instance, a 2012 Pew Research Center study found that two-thirds of moms want to work part time or stay at home, not work full time. Among moms who currently work full time, over half would rather work part time or not at all.

Already, low-income families have access to the federal Head Start program for childcare—a program that should be reformed, at the very least, to allow participants to attend a private provider of choice.

Creating another benefit for universal child care merely establishes a new federal subsidy for middle-class and upper-income families.

At the same time, an expansion of federal early education and care is more likely to create new problems of its own, rather than address these deeper social issues, such as the crisis of unwed parenting.

Finally, as my former Heritage Foundation colleague Salim Furth and I explained in a 2016 paper, additional federal subsidies for early childhood education introduce a large distortion into the market and must be funded by higher tax rates.

Ultimately, a universal early education and care program is unlikely to boost educational outcomes, may not reflect the preferences of families, and will cost taxpayers billions over time. This is the wrong way to help America’s kids.

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Stop Upper Arlington’s Discrimination Against Christian Schools

Citizens for Community Values filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to consider the Tree of Life Christian Schools v City of Upper Arlington case.

The “amicus brief” was written by W. Stuart Dornette and Phillip Williamson of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP and asks the court to consider the case because since Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) nearly 20 years ago, courts have continued to undermine the purpose of the law, leading to many Christian ministries and schools to face unlawful discrimination:

“Suspicious that the actual text of the statute is too generous to religious land uses, the courts have added new language to the statute,” writes Dornette and Williamson. “The majority of courts have intentionally narrowed RLUIPA’s protections, despite Congress’s express mandate to construe RLUIPA ‘in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the Constitution.’”

In Tree of Life Christian Schools v City of Upper Arlington, the city is blocking Tree of Life from moving into the property the school has owned on Henderson Road in Upper Arlington since 2010 because the city claims that, as a nonprofit school, Tree of Life won’t generate the income tax revenue the city had planned to receive from that property.

“Upper Arlington’s actions are nothing less than discrimination,” said Aaron Baer, President of Citizens for Community Values. “The idea that a city could block a private organization from using their property in a lawful manner, merely because the city wants to milk more money out of the land, is terrifying and un-American. The Supreme Court must take up this case to end this injustice.”

CCV filed the brief with the U.S. Supreme Court after launching the Ohio Christian Education Network in 2018. Now 26 schools strong, the Ohio Christian Education Network advocates for the religious freedom rights of Christian schools throughout the Buckeye state.

If Upper Arlington is allowed to prevail in this case, there is little to stop other municipalities from using the same rationale to punish or eliminate these Christian schools, or other religious ministries.

Tree of Life is being represented by the premier First Amendment defense organization in the nation, Alliance Defending Freedom.

As Ohio’s Family Policy Council, Citizens for Community Values seeks the good of our neighbors throughout Ohio by advocating for public policy that reflects the truth of the Gospel. We endeavor to create an Ohio where God’s blessings of life, family, and religious freedom are treasured, respected, and protected.

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Australian schools get pass mark from public...but plenty of suggestions for improvement
         
Most Australians don’t see their schools as being ‘in crisis’ or ‘failing’, which is often reported, but more attention should be given to developing students’ life skills in the classroom, according to findings in a new national survey by Monash University.

Despite ongoing media and political discussions of failing schools, crises in teacher quality and classroom behaviour, as well as controversy over initiatives such as the ‘Safe Schools’ Program, Australians are largely positive about the level of education provided to their children.

But many adults believe students should be taught ‘life skills’ as part of the curriculum. This includes knowledge in money management, job preparation, first-aid training and critical thinking, such as recognising fraudulent content online.

These were just some of the findings captured by Dr Deana Leahy and Professor Neil Selwyn from Monash University’s Faculty of Education in a nation-wide survey of 2052 Australian adults to gauge public opinion on the quality of schooling.

Published 21 February 2019, the report titled: ‘Public opinions on Australian schools & schooling’ is one of the first national accounts into public opinions of the state of classroom education.

The key findings of the report include:

·       56% of Australians rate the performance of Australian public schools as OK; 23% rate them as very good / excellent.

·       52% of Australians think the standard of education will remain the same in 10 years’ time.

·       An overwhelming number of Australians believe Mathematics (76%) and English (75%) should be given more priority in schools. Languages (7%) and The Arts (4%) were least valued.

·       The most important aspects of schools to a child’s education included: basic literacy and numeracy (69.8%), students being respectful to teachers and peers (54.6%) and teachers being of high quality (54.5%).

Dr Leahy said surprisingly few differences were found between voters of the main political parties, suggesting that politicians, policymakers and governments should collaborate to deliver the best possible student outcomes.

“While debates on education are understandably contentious and personal, our findings suggest that we can all be a little more positive in the overall quality of schooling Australia provides,” Dr Leahy said.

In a ringing endorsement of schools by younger Australians, 86% of people between the ages of 18-29 believed learning outcomes would stay either ‘roughly the same’ or be ‘better than they are now’ in the next 10 years.

But community views differed when it came to identifying the most important issues of children’s education, with the fundamentals of respect and honesty being at the top of the list for older Australians.

“Levels of concern for students being respectful to teachers and peers is almost double amongst respondents in the 60+ years’ age group (72.4%) in comparison to those aged 18-29 years (38.9%). Discrepancies were also found between the two age cohorts when it came to the importance of literacy and numeracy, as well as teacher quality,” Dr Leahy said.

The traditional subjects of mathematics and English were still regarded as priority learning areas across the board, but science (46.2%) and health and physical education (19.2%) were seen as less important.

Adults widely supported the introduction of ‘life skills’ as part of the school curriculum with a particular focus on money and money management, job preparation and domestic tasks, as well as dedicated courses to equip students with skills in technology, coding and artificial intelligence for future jobs.

Media release via email: media@monash.edu