David Brooks of the N.Y. Times tackles the issue of universal preschool services in his latest column.
He’s specifically targeting California’s Prop 82. Brooks takes no issue with the argument that 4-year-olds benefit from a “quality preschool with books, stability and conversation.”
What he rejects is the idea that California taxpayers should be forced to fund pre-school services for every child — under the auspices of the existing government-run K-12 education system.
The problem with Prop 82 is that it seems to have been devised under the supposition that it takes a bureaucratic megalopolis to raise a child. Instead of focusing on those in need, the initiative would create a vast, universal program, displacing much of what now exists. Currently, 65 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds are in preschool. Under the plan, the state would assume the costs of those kids, and try to increase total preschool enrollment to just over 70 percent.
…
Furthermore, the initiative would hand control of this centralized program to the same bureaucracy that is alreading doing a mediocre job with the state’s K-12 programs. It would create the same stultifying certification process that keeps good people out of schools. It would create the same special-interest rigidities that make the current education system so difficult to reform.
