Pre-K

I'll dip my toe gingerly into the preschool debate that has been raging in Vermont.   The Wall Street Journal has a page one story on the subject (here, but I believe it is behind the WSJ $ wall).   The article focuses on state efforts to enact preschool programs as an anti-poverty program and notes that

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to spend $15 billion over five years on universal preschool funding. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls preschool one cure for inequality.

Bernanke was a closet Republican, a surprise to many of his colleagues (see here).  So the idea that early intervention and preschool is a good idea has support from many economists

The article cites Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman's paper on the subject and the Minneapolis Fed's research and support for early intervention.  The argument is that early intervention saves money as the kids get older and the education pays off in the form of less crime, fewer high school dropouts, better employment opportunities, and a better family life.   Heckman is a brilliant econometrician, able to carefully tease results out of data in a statistically valid way and the results of his research are solid.   

But those who support early preschool and use Heckman's paper and prestige to back it should be aware of how far he takes the result of that sophisticated research in this quote from the Wall Street Journal's Economics Blog:

But while Mr. Heckman is a proponent of early education, he believes it should be targeted solely at disadvantaged kids and not all kids, as some advocates propose.

“You go where the marginal returns are the highest and they’re highest with disadvantaged children,” he says. He fears that all the economic data – including his own — has produced a “rush to judgment” that has convinced some camps to [sic] pre-school for everyone will produce the greatest return.

“It worries me a lot,” he says. “Science doesn’t support universality … we have to approach it more cautiously.”