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Preschool Makes for Happier Adults, Study Finds
Filed under: In The News, Weird But True
These girls must have gone to preschool! Credit: Getty Images
They are better educated and make more money than their peers who put off school until kindergarten. Preschool graduates are also less likely abuse drugs or become criminals. They work and play well with others, use their inside voices and almost never run with scissors.
What's more, they're more likely to have fancy luxury items like health insurance coverage.
All this is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Minnesota in a study that concludes preschool is aaawesome!
"These effects haven't been found before for public programs, so the findings are encouraging to provide access to high-quality programs through public funding for kids at risk," lead researcher Arthur J. Reynolds, a professor in the university's Institute of Child Development, tells U.S. News & World Report.
The magazine reports researchers found preschool especially beneficial for boys and children from high-risk or poor families.
Reynolds and his team tracked 1,386 children -- 989 of them enrolled in a Chicago preschool from 1983 to 1989.
All the children went to full-day kindergarten and received social services. Fifteen percent of the control group attended Head Start. The rest were cared for at home.
Reynolds tells U.S. News & World Report the particular preschool in the study succeeded because kids were enrolled when they were 3 so they get more participation in the program.
"We know that the amount of time in the program is associated with gains," he tells the magazine.
Because this particular preschool was run by local schools, the teachers were certified in early childhood education. That's not true in a lot of preschools, Reynolds cautioned.
"Because it's a school-based, there is continuing access to services, and kids stay in the same environment through elementary school," he adds. "It promotes positive transitions from one grade to the next."
Hooray for one Chicago preschool in the early '80s, says Andrew J. Coulson, the director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom. However, a snapshot of one preschool 25 years ago is not enough to support researchers' recommendation for more government-funded preschools, he tells the magazine.
"While a few specific pre-K programs seem to have had lasting impacts, they appear to be exceptions rather than the rule," he adds.
"More specifically, the federal government's efforts to scale-up the success of those particular programs, over four decades and at very great cost, have not proven effective. Yet another study pointing to the effect of one of the three pre-K programs that did have lasting effects does not alter that picture."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
6-15-2011 @ 2:13PM
Rob Bligh said...Consider this:
1. The research project involved two groups of families (parents with children) that were demographically equivalent based on a number of objectively measurable indicators.
2. The parents in Group A did not permit (or otherwise do what was necessary for) their children to attend a free public preschool program.
3. The parents in Group B required (and otherwise did what was necessary for) their children to attend a free public preschool program.
4. During the years between age 6 and age 26 the Group B children achieved significantly better than the Group A children in a dozen objectively measured categories of academic, social and economic success.
5. Education researchers decided that the superior achievement of the Group B children was caused by the fact that Group B children attended preschool and the Group A children did not attend preschool.
Query: Is it possible that the superior achievement of the Group B children was caused by the fact that they lived with parents who made decisions about their children based upon judgments about what was beneficial for children and that the Group A children did not live with such parents?
I suggest that, demographic equivalence aside, Group A parents are different from the Group B parents in the one respect that matters most to successful child development: the quality of their actions and decisions about their children.
What we know about the overwhelming family influence on K-12 academic achievement supports a conclusion that “better” parents (as indicated by a decision to require preschool) are more likely to influence their children to succeed and that “worse” parents (as indicated by a decision not to permit preschool) are likely to influence their children to fail.
Perhaps the judgment about the “enduring benefits” of preschool should be postponed until we can meaningfully evaluate the “enduring benefits” of being raised by parents for whom the development of their offspring is a significant priority. I do not suggest that such an evaluation will be easy to conduct, but valid scientific conclusions are not supposed to be easy. They are supposed to be rational.
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