It is not hard to see how the policies cited above would benefit teachers and the NEA, but does it necessarily follow that these policies are in the best interests of our children?

Many parents must think so. Today more than half of four-year-olds and more than a third of three-year-olds are in preschool programs. In families with greater incomes, the numbers are even higher. According to statistics supplied by the National Center for Education in 1996, families making more than $50,000 a year had more than 75% of four-year-olds and 55% of three-year-olds enrolled in preschool.⁷ 

“There is a big push for universal preschool. I think we will have it eventually,” explained Denise Kanter. Denise is a homeschool mom who hosts a website that promotes the benefits of preschooling at home (www.preschoolingathome.org), and she conducts research related to this issue. “The [prevailing] philosophy is that if you want your kids to be smarter, get them in school as early as you can. However, the evidence does not support this.”

Many people have bought into this philosophy and the preschool myths promoted by the NEA and their ilk. However, when you examine the issues closely, you find that the very statistics they quote are suspect and their motives may be less than pure.

Myth #1: Universal preschool programs for children aged three and four are necessary for success in school and in life and will save taxpayers money down the line.

The basis for this myth comes from an often cited and little understood forty-year-old study called The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project.⁸  In this project, conducted from 1962 to 1967, 123 low-income African American children were studied. Half were put in preschool programs at the ages of three and four and were given other extra educational help; the others were not. Throughout the next forty years (1962–2002), their lives were compared, and the preschooled students in the study were generally found to more often perform at grade level, earned more as adults (60% were earning more than $20,000 in their forties compared with 40% in the control group), had longer marriages, higher graduation rates, and lower amounts of time spent in prison. Throw in some "creative" mathematics (the NEA alleges that these students ultimately earned $2,000 more per month than the others,⁹ even though the study does not say that at all),¹⁰ and the result is a plan that looks as if it were actually saving the taxpayers money when they invest in preschool programs. Many politicians are completely snowed by this study. Even BusinessWeek quoted it to show what a great bargain preschool education is.

However, the problem with this study (other than the ridiculous conclusions drawn from so small a study) is that it is filled with flaws. First, the students had teachers who worked with them intensely at school and even came to their homes once a week to work with them (show me the preschool teacher who does that!). Of course, the intense attention and weekly home visits probably also impacted the parents’ view of the importance of the child and his education, which was a likely factor. Also, according to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project, at age five, 67% of the preschooled students had IQs of 90 or higher, compared to only 28% of the non-program group, causing one to wonder which group had the most intellectual potential to begin with. Next, the program cost $10,600 per child in 2005 dollars (according to BusinessWeek).¹¹ It is hard to see how taxpayers can ever get that money back. Third, no one has ever been able to replicate these results, according to an article published by the Cato Institute.¹²