In the education world, it goes like this: "Studies show..." and whatever follows is taken as gospel truth. And no one asks questions! Nuts!
It happened at the May Board Briefing. Studies show that full day Pre-K programs better prepare children for success in school than half day Pre-K programs do. So, the Administration wants to convert all the half-day Pre-K programs into as many full day programs as it can afford and as it has facilities for.
The upside - the participating kids would get a better education. The downside - to fund this, 500 or more fewer students would be able to attend Pre-K, and 330 Teacher Assistants would have to be laid off in order to hire enough new Pre-K teachers.
Discussion from there went around topics such as
- whether or not to put 4 year olds in portables
- which is more important - not laying off adults or providing better education for the children
- working parents who can't participate in half-day Pre-K could put their kids in full day (yeah, I know - the math of serving 500+ fewer students doesn't really work for that argument, but don't get sidetracked by that)
- whether a 1:18 teacher/student ratio for Pre-K was acceptable, etc.
All the time, I am sitting in the overflow room fighting the urge to yell at the monitor - Study? What study? Go back to the study! Ask about the study!!!
Sadly, no one asked about the study. Luckily, the Administration is very good about posting their PowerPoint presentations with the Agenda (thank you) and so I looked it up later.
From the footnotes, here is the primary study that I think they are referencing, "Is More Better? The Effects of Full Day vs. Half- Day Preschool on Early Achievement (2006) (PDF, 220 KB, 22pp) NIEER working paper". You can read it yourself here.
Sociology 101: no study is a one-size-fits-all cure-all. You have to look at the parameters of a study to see how much of it can be applied to the problem-solving of your own situation. To do otherwise is to set yourself up for disappointment and confusion.
The study (conducted in New Jersey):
Number of children participating - less than 100 in the test group, less than 200 in the control group.
Class size - 16 students to one teacher and one teacher's assistant in the "Wave 1" study group and 13 students to one teacher and one teacher's assistant in the "Wave 2" study group.
Test Group Sample Source - although entrance into the test group (the full day program) was by lottery, it was part of a magnet program and the parents had to register for the lottery. It created a good cross-section of the local demographics (arguably similar to DISD's), but it was not a true random sample because of the parent-initiated registration process.
The Control Group - the half-day Pre-K program with very similar adult/student ratios.
My personal opinion of the study: It shows that with all other factors being equal between a half day vs. a full day Pre-K program, the extra hours of instruction do indeed result in children having more academic skill and knowledge without any observable difference in student fatigue or stamina levels.
How much of the same results can Dallas expect? That would depend on how much our deviations from their program would affect the final result. Our biggest deviations are class size and adult/student ratios.
DISD Pre-K Class size - current full day (226 classes) and half-day (106 classes) programs have a maximun adult/student ratio of 2:22 (Teacher & a Teacher's Assistant). The proposed change would make all Pre-K full day with a 1:18 ratio. Both where-we-are-starting-from and where-we-are-going-to are significantly different from the study, and from each other. (When class size was under discussion, it was brought up that other Texas cities have big Pre-K ratios, specifically Austin (1:18) and Houston (1:22). Nobody asked if these cities were in the study. They weren't.)
Whoa - wait a minute! Did you catch that we already have our own comparable full day and half day programs? Have we done our own study? Can we compare the academic performance our own kids in our own program? Has Austin or Houston done any tracking or comparisons of their programs? Before we fire 330 people and stop serving 500+ kids, let's have a little more Dallas data, or at least Texas data. If we want to be like New Jersey, we would have to hire more T.A.'s, not fire them.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE...
The Administration's report referenced two other sources.
A Texas House of Representatives study that is an interesting primer on the Pre-K program in Texas. It starts with the history of how the federally mandated (and state funded) Pre-K program came to be, and goes through the current debate on whether state and federal agencies should require full day Pre-K. Views from both sides of the debate ore presented in this report.
Before anyone thinks I'm trying to make anyone look bad for not reading the study more closely, check out this out. An NEA report on Pre-K policy. It references the landmark HighScope Perry Preschool Longevity Study, which you can read about at HighScope's website. POSSIBLE ERROR ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE NEA REPORT - Well, if not an error, it's at least misleading. It claims the Perry project found that individuals who were enrolled in a quality preschool program ultimately earned up to $2,000 more per month than those who were not. What the study's site says is that at age 40 the group who received high-quality early education had median annual earnings more than $5,000 higher than the non-program group ($20,800 vs. $15,300).
See? Even the Experts need to make it a habit to actually look at the studies.
Check out the Perry report. It's very interesting. The program those kids went through is the gold standard, and changed the destiny of some of those kids. Hopefully, the day will come when Dallas can give all of our kids - one way or another - the same level of education. From the site: "Our teachers were well-qualified, they served no more than eight children from low-income families at a time, they visited these families as part of the program to discuss their child's development, and the classes operated daily for children three and four years old." Click here to read it in context on the site.
That brings it back to our community. If we want that kind of nurture for our young children, we in the community have to help the District and the Board to provide it. When parents are banned from the campus, though, it makes it hard to participate... but that's a discussion for another time.
