Conservative Opinion: Universal Pre-K proposal overrated

Conservative Opinion by: Star Parker.

President Biden’s plan for universal pre-k schooling is, quite frankly, a bad idea. It comes with little to no proof that it will have a positive impact on our children and will cost way more than it’s proponents think.

The government-funded universal pre-k plan originally appeared in the Democrats’ multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better Act. Since that legislation died, the president is trying to advance pieces of it separately, including this pre-k proposal. The idea is that federal funds would cover six years of school with the federal government paying 100% for the first three years and states picking up 40% by year six. The bill’s sponsors say it will cost about $200 billion, but analysts at the American Enterprise Institute say a more realistic price tag is $500 billion.

We’re talking here about adding hundreds of billions of dollars of new pre-k education infrastructure, requiring, by some estimations, more than 50,000 new teachers, plus classrooms, and all other components of setting up a whole nationwide education structure.

And what exactly are the merits of this idea of universal pre-k? Yes, there is some research out there that shows a few benefits from a well-structured pre-k program. But absent are solid conclusions of lasting benefits. And most of the supposed benefits are among low income, disadvantaged children because the programs are giving them structure and discipline that they are not getting at home. But providing pre-k investment and then sending these same children off to the broken k-12 public schools in these same neighborhoods is ridiculous.

Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, a University of Chicago economist, is a highly regarded expert on the importance of early child development. He is not giving universal pre-k his endorsement.

“I have never supported universal pre-school…. public preschool programs can potentially compensate for the home environments of disadvantaged children,” he said in a recent interview, adding, “No public preschool program can provide the environments and parental love and care of a functioning family and the lifetime benefits that ensue.”

One option for early childhood education is church school. Already, 25% of parents send their 3- and 4-year-old children to church-related childcare facilities, but the Biden plan would not cover it.

Democrats are just interested in options that are basically extensions of public schools… all of the indoctrination included.

The bottom line is that, once again, what Democrats really want, this time in the name of childcare, is government-funded progressive takeover of our entire lives.

So, in my opinion, the multi-billion-dollar Democrat universal pre-k proposal should meet the same fate as the Build Back Better Act of which it was a part. It should be stopped.

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