Universal preschool trend has critics

TROUTDALE, Ore. — All across the country, governors and legislators from both parties are pouring money into universal preschool programs.

In California, film director and Democratic activist Rob Reiner is backing a June ballot initiative to fund preschool for every child in the state who wants to go, rich and poor alike, by increasing income-tax rates on top earners.

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson is preparing to press for universal preschool in the 2006 legislative session, a move that could cost about $59 million a year, and Illinois has set aside $90 million over the next three years for early-childhood education.

In all, spending on pre-K programs is just over $2.5 billion nationwide, according to Pre-K Now, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

But not everyone is on the universal preschool bandwagon.

In Oregon, and other places where state dollars remain in tight, coveted supply, early-childhood-education advocates argue that universal preschool misses the point. Instead, they say it's more important to provide full-service programs for all of the state's most disadvantaged kids — like Head Start, the federally funded program open to children living in poverty.

Every year, Annette Dieker, who works at the Head Start center at Mount Hood Community College in Troutdale, a Portland suburb, says she sees hundreds of low-income families left languishing on the center's waiting list.

"We've got to get to 100 percent for low-income kids first," she said. "Those kids are most at risk — they don't have computers at home, they don't go on trips to the zoo or on vacation. By being in Head Start, they get those experiences."

Voluntary universal preschool would be open to low-income kids, Dieker said. But she worries that a broader program might lack the extra support offered by programs like Head Start, which in Oregon relies on state and federal funding to operate.

Home visits to parents

Teachers at the Troutdale Head Start, for example, make twice-monthly home visits to parents, make sure children have their shots and make sure even play periods are about learning.

In Jean Harren's class at the center, putting on coats and lining up to go outside becomes an exercise in good manners, art projects are lessons in acquiring motor skills, and when it's time for an end-of-the-day snack of fruit and yogurt, kids have to recognize their own names on the tags that are placed in front of every bowl before they can sit down to eat.

"Is this mine?" 3-year-old Christian asked himself, studying his nametag atop a plastic bowl. Deciding it was, he called out to Harren, "Teacher, I found it!" while holding out his hand for a high-five.

Preschool backers cite studies showing that for every dollar spent on preschool education, between $7 and $12 won't have to be spent by states later on for corrections and social services.

And they say children who go to preschool enter kindergarten better prepared to learn, giving schools a shot at closing the persistent achievement gap between poorer children and their middle-class counterparts.

That achievement gap, and its impact on schools' ability to comply with No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that evaluates schools based on student test scores, is part of what's driving state legislatures to consider putting more money into preschool programs, said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) based at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

"What also drives all of this is increased prosperity and the information age," Barnett said. "Smaller families research and see that the way to help your child succeed is to invest more in your child's education. And the active margin for investing more is in the early years."

Building on such arguments, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire recently proposed a new state Department of Early Learning, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is launching a $90 million initiative aimed at bolstering the quality of child care in the state.

South Carolina's state education superintendent wants to triple her state's investment in preschool programs, and West Virginia is on track to have preschool for all kids by 2012.

Expanding Head Start

Providing universal preschool is expensive upfront, though. The NIEER has pegged the cost at about $8,703 per child.

The expense is part of what's driven Oregon's early-childhood advocates to scale back their campaign, to focus not on universal preschool, but on setting aside enough money to expand Head Start to at least 80 percent of eligible children who want to participate, up from current levels of just 60 percent.

Universal preschool opponents often cite a 2005 study by the University of California system and Stanford University that found that preschool hurt some children's social skills, though it did raise their performance in language acquisition, reading and math.

For Annette Dieker, though, the debate is more about making sure that more low-income children attend programs like the Head Start in Troutdale, a goal she considers unlikely, given Oregon's uncertain financial future and competition for state dollars.

"Here they can learn to squeeze a glue bottle so you don't get an entire glue lake, to follow directions, to be safe, to help your neighbor," she said. "The simple act of coming to school is so important for them. People say, Why should we be spending money on children playing? But this has given them an opportunity for social development. It's different than just dropping kids at preschool for three hours."

Seattle Times staff contributed to this report.