The Negative Impact Of Universal Preschool

As the tax burden on the American Family has increased and the value of our currency has decreased, many families now have two parents who work outside the home. One result of this is a growing daycare industry that takes care of children from the time they are three or four months old. What impact does this have on the children and what impact does this have on our society?

The Heritage Foundation posted the results of research on the impact of universal preschool on its website today. We might want to rethink what we are doing.

Some highlights from the article:

Evidence continues to mount that government-funded preschool fails to fulfill the promises of its proponents. New studies of large-scale preschool programs in Quebec and Tennessee show that vastly expanding access to free or subsidized preschool may worsen behavioral and emotional outcomes. Even proponents of universal preschool admit that it does nothing to improve future academic performance.

As proponents of government preschool programs continue to appeal to findings from 50 years ago that have never been replicated, current, large-scale, rigorous evaluations of major programs at the federal level, in the states, and internationally make a strong case against such initiatives and deserve serious consideration from policymakers wont to further expand government intervention in the care of the youngest Americans.

…The Head Start Impact Study. In late 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services released the Head Start Impact Study, a scientifically rigorous evaluation that tracked 5,000 three-year-old and four-year-old children through the end of third grade. The study found little to no impact on the parenting practices or the cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes of participants. Notably, on a few measures, access to Head Start had harmful effects on participating children.[7] For both the three-year-old and four-year-old cohorts, access to Head Start had no statistically measurable effects on any measure of cognitive ability, including reading, language, and math.[8] In other words, by the time they finished third grade, there was no difference between those children who attended Head Start and the control group of their peers who did not.

Vanderbilt Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Study. In 2015, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University released an evaluation of Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K (VPK) Program, a state-subsidized preschool program open to low-income children in the state. Some 18,000 children participate in the program, which was introduced in 1996. Proponents have long claimed Tennessee’s VPK program is a model state-based preschool program, with standards aligned to the Obama Administration’s Preschool for All initiative.[9] Teachers must be licensed, the child-adult ratio is limited to 10:1, and a structured “age-appropriate” curriculum must be used in classrooms. The program is available first to children from low-income Tennessee families, and then, space permitting, to children with special needs and children with limited English proficiency, among other children deemed “at-risk.” An earlier evaluation found that gains made by participating four-year-olds had faded by kindergarten. In a follow-up evaluation released in September 2015, Mark Lipsey, Dale Farrar, and Kerry Hofer reported that there were no sustained benefits for the same children through the end of third grade.[10]

These studies showed no benefit. Some studies show that preschool can be harmful. The article reports:

The province of Quebec introduced universal low-cost day care for children through age four beginning in 1997. The program has had a large impact: privately funded child care arrangements have almost disappeared, and Quebec has the highest rate of subsidized child care in Canada, at 58 percent in 2011.[13] The program caused a 14.5 percent increase in the share of mothers of young children working outside the home.[14] The Quebec experience offers more guidance for the potential introduction of universal child care than small, targeted programs, because it implicitly includes indirect effects on non-participants and any general equilibrium effects due to the drastic shift in the way child care was funded and conducted.

Regrettably, new research has found that children who became eligible for the program in Quebec were more anxious as children and have committed more crimes as teenagers. The availability of day care clearly worsened children’s non-cognitive “soft” skills.

Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan found that children exposed to the program were 4.6 percent more likely to be convicted of a crime and 17 percent more likely to commit a drug crime. Their health and life satisfaction were worse.

I realize that staying at home is not an option for every mother. However, the decision to have someone else with your young child for most of their waking hours does have consequences. Mothers are one of America’s most important assets.

Deja Vu All Over Again

On Monday The Weekly Standard posted an article about religious freedom at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

The article reports:

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts has banned a Christian group from campus because the group requires student leaders to adhere to “basic biblical truths of Christianity.” The decision to ban the group, called the Tufts Christian Fellowship, was made by officials from the university’s student government, specifically the Tufts Community Union Judiciary.

The ban means the group “will lose the right to use the Tufts name in its title or at any activities, schedule events or reserve university space through the Office for Campus Life,” according to the Tufts Daily. Additionally, Tufts Christian Fellowship will be unable to receive money from a pool that students are required to pay into and that is specifically set aside for student groups.

This is nothing new.  On March 30, I posted an article about a similar problem at Vanderbilt University (rightwinggranny.com). I reported what had happened at Vanderbilt:

Vandy Catholic — a student group with some 500 members — has decided it cannot agree to the policy and will be leaving campus in the fall. PJ Jedlovec, the president of Vandy Catholic, says it was a difficult decision, one made after much prayer and discussion. 

“We are first and foremost a Catholic organization,” says Jedlovec. “We do, in fact, have qualifications – faith-based qualifications for leadership. We require that our leaders be practicing Catholics. And the university’s nondiscrimination policy — they have made it clear that there is no room in it for an organization that has these faith-based qualifications.”

The whole purpose of a group on campus is to allow students with similar interests and ideas to get together to discuss and explore those interests and ideas. It seems to me that every group meeting on campus probably has leadership that represents the interests and ideas of the group. This is clearly a violation of the First Amendment rights of these students.

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Choosing Leaders For A Club

Does an organization have the right to set standards for its leadership? For example, if a school starts a ‘scholarship club’ to encourage students to get better grades, should it require its leaders to be honor roll students? Would it be ok for a “D” student to lead a scholarship club? Would that be the example or the image the club would want to put forward? Does every organization have the right to have standards for its leadership?

That is the question now under discussion at Vanderbilt University. Fox News reported yesterday that the University has a policy that states groups cannot have faith or belief-based requirements for leadership. The logical outcome of this policy is that an atheist could run for president of a Christian group, a Jew for president of a Muslim group, or a non-Catholic for president of a Catholic group. Obviously, this would create more problems than it would solve.

The article reports:

All student groups must register next month. As part of the registration, they must sign a statement of affirmation that they will abide by the nondiscrimination policy.

Vandy Catholic — a student group with some 500 members — has decided it cannot agree to the policy and will be leaving campus in the fall. PJ Jedlovec, the president of Vandy Catholic, says it was a difficult decision, one made after much prayer and discussion. 

“We are first and foremost a Catholic organization,” says Jedlovec. “We do, in fact, have qualifications – faith-based qualifications for leadership. We require that our leaders be practicing Catholics. And the university’s nondiscrimination policy — they have made it clear that there is no room in it for an organization that has these faith-based qualifications.”

The article also mentions that these requirements do not apply to fraternities and sororities on campus.

The article concludes:

As a private university, Vanderbilt is allowed to make rules that might not pass muster at a public institution. In fact, Tennessee lawmakers are working on legislation that would specifically prohibit state universities from extending nondiscrimination policies to student religious groups. 

In another attempt to change the school administration’s mind, other religious groups on campus plan to sign the statement of affirmation, then submit charters that clearly outline a faith-based criteria for leadership.

That will likely provoke another confrontation with Vanderbilt leadership — one that may see more religious student groups leave.

Religious freedom is one of the cornerstones of our country. If it is not taught and modeled in our colleges, we will lose it within a generation.

 

 

 

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Do College Clubs Have The Right To Set Their Own Rules ?

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On Wednesday, CBN News reported that Vanderbilt University has put four groups on provisional status because their bylaws include requirements like Bible study and worship. The school is conducting a review of student groups to make sure all groups are in compliance with their non-discrimination policy. The review is the result of the fact that an openly gay student was kicked out of the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi last year.

The article reports:

Justin Gunter, president of the CLS (Christian Legal Society) chapter, said he was shocked when the school brought up the issue since there seems to be so much religious diversity and acceptance on campus.

“Up until now, the campus had been very welcoming of religious individuals,” he explained.

“These rules essentially will reduce the religious diversity on campus overall,” Gunter said. “Religious groups now can’t even say that we want a Christian group to be led by a Christian, a Muslim group to be led by a Muslim.”

Vanderbilt University was founded by the Methodist Church. It has definitely wandered from its roots–last year the university made the decision to recognize Wiccan holidays.

This university has Christian roots. There is no reason why they have to limit the freedom of Christians in order to be ‘diverse.’ Simply allowing the Christian groups to follow their beliefs in setting up their organizations is not discrimination–it is respect for the beliefs of the organization.

 

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