PRESCHOOL | EARLY EDUCATION
How important are preschool and other early education programs? How can we best help children "learn to learn" at an early age? How can we prepare them to succeed in school? Following are organizations and publications that deal with these issues. We will continue to add new content, so come back again soon.

PUBLICATIONS

The Preschool Picture
Article | Chester E. Finn, Jr | Education Next | September 10, 2009
Sustaining whatever pre-K gains can be produced, especially for poor kids, is principally a challenge for K—12 policy and practice. But that does not mean entrusting pre-K education to public-school systems. Today, those systems cannot even sustain their own gains, which is why American 4th graders tend to have stronger results than 8th graders, and high school students do less well than middle schoolers. Adding more years to the present public-education mandate would simply give ineffectual school systems additional time to fumble around while entangling pre-K education more tightly in the web of school politics, federalism disputes, bureaucratic rigidities, and adult interest groups.

The Poverty of Preschool Promises: Saving Children and Money with the Early Education Tax Credit
Policy Analysis | Adam B. Schaeffer | Cato Institute | August 2009
The Early Education Tax Credit aims to sustain any potential preschool benefits and establish a solid academic foundation for later success. The program would improve the quality and efficiency of preschool options by harnessing market forces and would pay for itself by using savings generated from the migration of students from public to private schools in grades K–4.

Reforming and Improving Federal Preschool and Child Care Programs Without Increasing the Deficit
Report | Dan Lips | Heritage Foundation | July 2009
This report presents an overview of the federal government's role in early childhood education and child care and offers recommendations on how Congress and the Obama Administration could reform existing programs to provide better benefits to American children and families.

Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut
Book | Chester E. Finn, Jr. | Thomas B. Fordham Institute | June 2009
The author looks at recent social and educational changes that have brought unprecedented attention to school readiness, the hazy boundary between preschool and child care, and the extent to which American youngsters already have access to various pre-K services. He then examines the shaky state of standards and quality in this field and the largely inconclusive nature of research and evidence as to "what works" with young children. After reviewing of two of America's most prominent examples of universal pre-K education in Florida and Oklahoma and looking at the four-decade-old Head Start Program, Finn tackles the matter of costs and benefits and the fractious issue of alternative delivery systems before offering some conclusions and ideas for the path ahead.

Universal Preschool Isn't the Silver Bullet
Video | Reason.tv | Reason Foundation | October 2008
"Universal preschool isn't the silver bullet for our failing schools," said Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.tv. "The one-size-fits-all, government-run education system clearly isn't working. We need more choices and competition, not less."

Assessing Proposals for Preschool and Kindergarten
Study | Darcy Olson, Lisa Snell | Reason Foundation | May 2006
To the degree that the state remains involved in financing early education, we recommend measures for transparency, program assessment, and improved flexibility through individual student funding.

Is Universal Preschool Beneficial? An Assessment of RAND Corporation's Analysis and the Proposals for California
Study | Staff | Reason Foundation | May 2006
This report assesses RAND Corporation’s cost benefit analysis and finds that it significantly overestimates the upsides and drastically underestimates the downsides of universal preschool and the California proposal.