An Apple for the Governors

I enjoy your blog and learn from it. I would liek to see more written to provide ammunition to combat opinions from those that oppose pre-k.
In south Dakota, I'm convinced we have a large uphill battle to overcome ideology. The past two years I lobbied our state legislaure both as a private citizen and as a school board member to pass legislation that would simply allow the DOE to write pre-k rules. To give you a flavor of the opposition, below are some of the email I recievd from legislators and others in oppositon of pre-k. Information that helps to refute these bellifs would be most helpful!

Fred Deutsch
Watertown, SD

www.school-of-thought.net

I will continue to oppose this bill. First off, choice is not considered, second off I refuse to legislate to the lowest common denominator. I realize that some children can really benefit from pre-K, and I realize that some kids have wonderful parents that are doing a good job and should be allowed to continue doing the right thing. Those are my biggest objections, not to mention dollars.

Thank you for your interest. I will not support giving the Dept of Ed. rule making authority on this subject even with some compromise. Furthermore, that I am not in favor of expanding more years in the school system, as we still have many that believe that we are not funding K-12 correctly. One last thing I want to bring up studies suggest that after 5th grade we don't see any benefit to those kids.

As someone who has some knowledge of the judicial system re: juveniles those kids need to be targeted in 6th grade. Thats when puberty, peer pressures, etc really start kicking in. Yes,,I realize this is the start of getting things started up, first you set standards, then you start forcing and then you start taking choice out. I will not support it.

The Pre-K issue is terribly interesting. Some of my closest friends who lobby on the issue during Session are huge opponents of Pre-K programs because of empiracle evidence from other states that shows that they have a significant negative impact on private daycares & pre-schools. They have followed the issue closely and have some stong misgivings about going down the road of establishing statewide standards for Pre-K. What they do not want to see is private programs placed in jeopardy because of the long arm of "Big Brother" reaching out and grabbing kids who would otherwise be well-served by private programs. Further, their concern is that once the government takes it on as their responsibility, government-run programs will be subsidized, thus placing private programs at a tremendous competitive disadvantage. Further, they acknowledge that a number of Pre-K programs already exist within local public schools. "Then why," they ask, "is it necessary to go through the formal process of establishing Pre-K standards for non-mandatory programs?"

Dr. Fred, one of my concerns is that the sooner the government takes control of their young lives, the easier it is to control their minds as to what they should believe. And believing in God is not one of those things, of course evolution is, as is homosexuality is ok, etc. Am I just a wacco for my concern? Something else that concerns me is the pressure that we may be putting on the kids. Do we push them too hard to learn, learn, learn? I needed 16 credits to graduate. Then it was raised to 18, 20, 22 and so on. Are we causing too much pressure for some? I wonder if the suicide rate has been increasing more as we push them more. When I was growing up, and years beyond, never heard of a young person taking their life. Now it is unfortunately a common occurance. Is it connected to pressure from school, maybe not, maybe its drugs, or no God in their life, or parents who only think of "me"? But it does concern me that we have so much of it.

Dr Fred – you have managed to kick another hornet’s nest with your comments on government funded pre-k, and so I thought I would share that and a coupe other notes with you – the cc is to a friend of mine, who is philosophically and religiously nearly your twin – but with whom you disagree on this issue. I have been vouching for your reputation, if not your position on this issue, to her and so I thought I would expand the discussion. Besides a healthy skepticism about well-intentioned expansion of government and about whether pre-school is truly a permanent and substantive debilitating (to the others) head start that requires a government mandate, I have been puzzled by schools who look at a pie of scarce resources that they want expanded for the existing mouths they feed – at the same time inconsistently (when political reality, math, and available money are taken into account) want to put two more years of mouths at the table! With NO DOUBT, this waters down our ability to meet our k-12 mission. I do think there should be a healthy dose of questions about this cradle to adulthood government based mandated program. Historically, all these “new” ideas have generally proven to be expensive to the working families and failures in practice. Educating kids has never been hard to figure out. It is about providing enough funds to get the best educators the market provides, and maintaining a disciplined and healthy environment for them to teach our children.

Fred,

here is another one.

Please vote NO on SB 26. There are many important reasons why you should vote no on SB 26. It would be irresponsible to give authority to a group of people (State School Board) to set standards for a program that government should not be a part of in the first place.

Reasons not to support this bill:

* 70% of pre-schoolers already attend pre-school - parents' choice
* Pre-school is not necessarily a good thing for every child- it can have negative effects
* Pre-school aged children should not be government's responsibility
* Pre-school should not be funded by taxpayers: We personally paid for our own pre-school
* Academic benefits are very short term (I've had 18 years experience as a classroom teacher)
* The study Gov. Rounds used as a model was for inner-city kids, & one parent was required to be home at all times:
Perry Pre-school Project is nothing like SD circumstances and the home parent likely was the most positive influence
* Standards are already provided by Special Ed. :
http://doe.sd.gov/contentstandards/docs/EarlyLearningGuidelinesBook.pdf
* For needy children there are already programs in place: Head Start, Special Ed, Title Programs, etc.
* K-12 Funding would be greatly stressed - some teachers who are aware of this bill do not support it
* To set higher standards, a large number of teachers with bachelors degrees would be needed (unrealistic)
* Giving authority to this board could mean they could make it mandatory if they so choose: Initiative 2010 ?
* Standards may include teachings that we would not choose for our 3 -4 year olds, but the SSB would have that authority.
* Would they require 5 days a week as childcare instead of 2 -3 days a week as it is now? All day instead of 2-3 hrs?