Experts are sounding the alarm about the Obama Administration’s agenda to create a “cradle to career” government education system, beginning with what they see as a very problematic venture into universal child care.
According to Collette Caprara, writing for The Heritage Foundation, the public needs to be wary of what President Barack Obama proposed in his State of the Union address when he promised to “work with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”
As Caprara points out, “increased spending of Americans’ tax dollars for universal child care means more government involvement in determining which facilities should receive funds.”
Aside from the fact that this kind of government – which is the most anti-family administration in U.S. history – can then control the content of education which may or may not be according to parents’ values – it also doesn’t work.
“As an indicator of what kind of results might be expected from universal day care, a trial case in Oklahoma—one of the two states that the President applauded for providing taxpayer-funded preschool for all four-year-olds—is illustrative,” Caprara writes. “Oklahoma has not shown substantial progress in students’ academic achievement as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In fact, fourth-grade reading test scores in the Sooner State have declined since 1998, when the state first implemented universal preschool.”
The same holds true for the federal government’s Head Start preschool program. A rigorous scientific evaluation of the program published in December 2012, found that, overall, the program largely failed to improve the cognitive, socio-emotional, health and parenting outcomes of participating children.
Caprara says parents should also be concerned about the findings from numerous academic studies that found an increase in negative behavioral outcomes based on the amount of time a child spends in daycare.
“As one comprehensive study that tracked 1,300 children from infancy through age 15 found, the quality of day care was significantly less important regarding social and emotional outcomes than the number of hours spent in day care. The negative effects of day care were more persistent for children who spent long hours in center-care settings.”
This is especially troubling for working mothers. A Pew Research Center survey recently found that 80 percent of working mothers wish they could stay home with their young children.
She concludes with a wise suggestion: “Rather than increasing government involvement in preschool care—at the expense of taxpayers like these working moms—public policy should focus on initiatives to promote marriage, strengthen families, and optimize opportunities for parents to care for their own children.”
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