April 22, 2005

Pre-K Update

This report in today's Tennessean reveals that Gov. Phil Bredesen wants to increase funding for his pet Pre-K program to $150 million per year by 2010. The story quotes Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville policy think tank, in opposition to the program but the paper fails to mention or quote from the TCPR's excellent study released Monday showing how government-run pre-k programs are failing to improve academic peformance despite their costly price tags.

As is too often typical of the news media's political coverage these days, it rides the surface of the story and avoids diving into the substance. Readers of today's story in The Tennessean will continue to be unaware of the TCPR's study and how to find it online.

On the other hand, the story has many more quotes from pre-k supporters than it does from opponents (Johnson is the only opponent quoted). And at the end of the story, the paper helpfully offers a short list of web links:

To find out more about Gov. Phil Bredesen's "Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten for All" program, check out www.tn.gov/governor/prek.

Information about the Pre-K Now report, which details how much governors in Tennessee and other states want to spend next year on pre-K programs, can be found at www.preknow.org.

Too bad, because that would have made the coverage of this important policy issue much more fair, balanced - and useful to readers.

I've been told today's Nashville Business Journal has a story looking at an MIT study that claims such pre-k programs are improving academic performance, although I haven't seen the NBJ yet today and they don't put their new content online until Monday. NBJ should be praised for exploring the substance of the issue, and the rest of the media covering Tennessee's legislature should emulate them.

Until they do, you are likely to get better coverage of the pre-k story - better than the political horse-race or the surface-level he-said/they-said coverage of the mainstream media - from blogs.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Rob Huddleston writes that today's Tennessean article "leans substantially to Bredesen's side of the argument," and calls the pre-K plan "biggest threat to the Tennessee budget since TennCare." He's right on both counts. Huddleston also points to blogger Mark Rose's prediction for how the Tennessee Education Association will use the pre-k program in the future.

As I said, you get more depth from the blogosphere. To illustrate that further, here is an email I recevied from a reader in Knoxville...

I've been following your postings on the Pre-K program. Go to this Tennessee gov't propaganda site for Bredesen's pilot program. This site spouts the mantra of all the "scientific" studies that support pouring billions down another dark hole.

Currently there are 44 states that are beginning this worthless drain of our resources. Amazingly most every state estimates $300 million a year to fully fund. That's $13.2 billion every year for eternity for those states. Yet $50 billion and 40 years later, the Federal program has nothing to show to show for it. I read these studies and they are full of holes and anecdotal evidence.

Now go read to see how the "scientific" studies above are debunked. You think anyone on Bredesen's staff took the time to really read these studies or did they just post them up knowing the majority of interlopers would never read/analyze them and take the state's word?

The Rand research is based on SWAG "estimates".

According to this report, we should be living in nirvana with all the benefits of Pre-K. So why are illigitimate birth rates higher 40 years later, crime rates up along with child abuse and prisons overflowing with predominantly poor underpriveleged former students?

And this document about Georgia's Pre-K program has a lot of empirical evidence like "teachers feel" or "teachers believe." [We need] something we can measure objectively before we write another government check to the teacher's union and school administrators.

When I was in the military there was a term used to prepare us for
situations like this, BOHICA.