Perhaps our high schools should learn from our nursery schools
By Robert Maynard

The October 12^th Free Press article by Molly Walsh entitled "Second grade reading scores continue to climb; high school scores mixed bag", raises some interesting questions regarding the push in Vermont to take over pre-K and fold it into the public school system. 

The standard argument is that early schooling improves academic achievement.  Given the educational results, it would seem that our children are already well prepared academically at an early age. The problems seem to begin as children progress through the public school system, and the longer they are in it, the worse things get.

In my last article, I discussed similar claims were made about the benefits of adopting Universal Pre-K schooling by state sponsored preschool advocates when that state was considering adopting such a plan.  The Goldwater Institute examined these claims and reported their findings in their February 2005 Policy Report.  After examining the results of several programs considered to be early education models, including Head Start, they found that the widespread adoption of preschool and full-day Kindergarten would not likely improve student achievement.  Some early intervention has been shown to produce meaningful short term effects on disadvantaged students’ grade level retention and special education placement.  Here again that interesting: that such effects usually disappear when the children leave the program. 

This phenomenon, known as fade-out, is important because it suggest that either early education is not relevant to future academic performance, or that the current public school system as structured is incapable of sustaining those early gains. 

For mainstream students there is little evidence that either formal preschool or kindergarten is necessary for later school achievement.  On the contrary, there is evidence that daycare and preschool can be detrimental.  According to David Elkind, Professor of Child Development at Tuffs University, proposals from the 1960’s aimed at helping disadvantaged children were uncritically appropriated by parents and educators for middle-class children, resulting in the miseducation of those children.  Dr. Elkind explains that children who receive academic instruction too early, usually before the age of six or seven, are put at risk for no apparent gain.  By attempting to teach the wrong things at the wrong time, early instruction can permanently damage a child’s self esteem, reduce a child’s willingness to learn and block a child’s natural gifts and abilities.

The scores cited in the October 12th Free Press article were released by the Vermont Education Department and match up nicely with findings reported by the Goldwater Institute Report, which cites comparisons of American school students in their early years with their European counterparts, who attend government preschools cited by preschool advocates as a model for early education in America. 

The results of this comparison are seen as suggesting that America’s flexible approach to early education gives children a strong foundation when compared to their European counterparts.  At age 10, the report notes, American children have higher reading math and science scores than their European peers.  The well know deficiencies in these subjects when compared to international students, occurs as our children get older and have spent more time in the current school system.  U.S. forth graders are "A" students on the international curve.  By the time they reach eighth grade they are "C" students on an international curve while U.S. forth graders score better than 70% of their peers, our eighth graders barely score above the international average.  By twelfth grade, U.S. students score a "D" on the international scale, performing well below students from all but a few countries. 

What these test scores reveal is that U.S. students excel in reading and science and perform above average in math during their early years.  Over time, U.S. student performance declines and international students take the lead.  It is highly illogical to conclude from such facts that the weak spot in our education system is a lack of preparation in the early years.  In fact, what we should learn from this that our informal, decentralized early education system is outperforming the more centralized and inflexible European model and is excelling at preparing our children for superior achievement in the elementary years. 

Such results point to the conclusion that the way to improve academic achievement is to fix the current system, rather than add to the period in which we subject our children to institutionalization.   Instead of undermining this one educational advantage U.S. children have in the area of global academic competition, by adopting the less successful European model, it would be a wise course of action to address our current K-12 system where the longer our children are in it, the worse they do in comparison to international students.

In an increasingly competitive global environment, our children’s future is at risk if they continue to fall behind their peers at the international level.  It is time to reverse course and build on the strength’s of our early education system instead of undermining it with further institutionalization.  If a decentralized and flexible approach puts our children at an advantage in early education, why not apply that approach to our current K-12 system?  Perhaps we should put parents back in control of their own children’s education and put an end to the government monopoly over education. 

 – Robert Maynard lives in Williston