{"id":594300,"date":"2018-06-22T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=594300"},"modified":"2018-06-21T14:44:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T20:44:46","slug":"wheres-the-proof-that-funding-early-childhood-programs-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/wheres-the-proof-that-funding-early-childhood-programs-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Where’s the proof that funding early childhood programs works?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>This summer and fall, expect New Mexico\u2019s gubernatorial and legislative candidates to speak about \u201cearly childhood education\u201d a lot.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0lot.<\/p>\n

Preschool-related government programs are treasured by Democrats and the left in the Land of Enchantment, and enjoy a substantial amount of support from New Mexico\u2019s Republicans.<\/p>\n

The problem is, solid evidence supporting preschool\u2019s value is quite weak.<\/p>\n

\"D.

Courtesy photo<\/p>

D. Dowd Muska<\/p><\/div>\n

The\u00a0Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs<\/a>, the Rio Grande Foundation\u2019s sister think tank in the Sooner State,\u00a0recently released an analysis<\/a>\u00a0that should be required reading for candidates pledging their fealty to New Mexico\u2019s \u201cEarly Childhood Care and Education System.\u201d Author\u00a0Greg Forster, a Friedman Fellow<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0EdChoice<\/a>, found that when it comes to research on preschool, \u201cthe better the studies are in scientific quality, the less likely they are to find benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

He quotes the\u00a0Brookings Institution\u2019s Russ Whitehurst<\/a>, who in 2014 noted that \u201cnot one of the studies that has suggested long-term positive impacts of center-based early childhood programs has been based on a well-implemented and appropriately analyzed randomized trial, and nearly all have serious limitations in external validity.\u201d In addition, \u201cthe only two studies in the list with both high internal and external validity \u2026 find null or negative impacts, and all of the studies that point to very small, null, or negative effects have high external validity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forster adds, “Since Whitehurst conducted that research review \u2026 one additional study has received special attention in Oklahoma. In a 2017 study, William Gormley, Jr., Deborah Phillips, and Sara Anderson found positive results from pre-K in Tulsa visible as late as seventh grade. However, to use the researchers\u2019 own words, the size of the positive effects they found was \u201crather modest.\u201d Also, because of data limitations, they had to abandon the high-quality scientific model used in earlier Tulsa pre-K research (regression discontinuity, a method comparable in reliability to random assignment) in favor of a propensity score weighting method that uses student characteristics to predict whether or not each seventh-grade student attended pre-K. This is a much less reliable method \u2014 its value is not zero, but it must be considered less informative than the studies we have that are of top quality. Hence this study continues the pattern identified by Whitehurst.”<\/p>\n

A dozen years after\u00a0Governor Bill Richardson declared 2006 \u201cthe year of the child,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and the money began to flow, New Mexico has not seen gold-standard investigations of the state\u2019s \u201cinvestment\u201d in preschool. But at the broadest level, there\u2019s no doubt that progress is not being made. Below is a chart of the average scores of fourth-graders on the\u00a0National Assessment of Educational Progress<\/a>.\"\"<\/p>\n

Even worse, New Mexico\u2019s performance, relative to the nation,\u00a0declined\u00a0during the period. Average scores in the state were eight points behind the U.S. average in 2007, but\u00a013 points under the 2017 mark.<\/p>\n

No matter, of course. Expenditures continue to increase. Even Searchlight New Mexico \u2014 a liberal-advocacy website\u00a0disguised as a \u201cnon-partisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative reporting and innovative data journalism\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 found that in fiscal 2018, early-childhood spending will total\u00a0$269.3 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Legislative Finance Committee<\/a>, in the budget approved for the 2019 fiscal year, funding “grew significantly across several state agencies. In addition to \u2026 an additional $1.5 million in general fund revenue for home visits to new families, the Human Services Department \u2026 also received $2.9 million to pilot Medicaid-funded home visiting and serve an estimated 431 families. CYFD was also appropriated $2.5 million to expand prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, while the Public Education Department \u2026 received an additional $8 million to expand prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, bringing the state total to $64 million for prekindergarten.”<\/p>\n

Soaring spending \u2014 and no proof that taxpayers\u2019 dollars are making much of a lasting difference. It\u2019s something that should be on the mind of every New Mexican planning to vote in November.<\/p>\n

D. Dowd Muska is research director for\u00a0New Mexico\u2019s\u00a0Rio Grande Foundation<\/a>, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.\u00a0Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s something that should be on the mind of every New Mexican planning to vote in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[234,125,107],"class_list":["post-594300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-children","tag-education","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}