View 417 June 5 - 11, 2006 (original) (raw)
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Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Head Start, Reading, and Pre-School
Well, let's see. The Meathead tax increase lost, and Rob Reiner is still talking about pre-school and how he'll try it again. No one seems to realize that it would be better simply to pay first grade teachers more, and fire any first grade teacher who doesn't teach ALL the kids in her class to read. Actually, of course, that's a bit severe, and there need to be some adjustments for non-English speakers; and a small adjustment for those of very low intelligence (say IQ 75 or below). My mother taught first grade in rural Florida in the 1920's, and when I asked her if any of her kids left first grade unable to read, she said "Well, there were one or two, but they didn't learn anything else, either." Her point being that it never occurred to her that kids of normal intelligence could leave first grade unable to read.
Very many years ago, Newt Gingrich assigned my son Richard to look into Head Start. Under the Head Start authorization there is no law forbidding them to teach Head Start children to read, but in fact no Head Start program does it, and the teachers are forbidden to try. The authorization says that Head Start instruction should be "developmentally appropriate." The education bureaucracy has determined that Head Start (pre-school) kids are not ready to learn to read, thus reading instruction is not developmentally appropriate, and thus not given; and of course if you believe the kids CAN'T learn to read, then they won't.
Now true: at age 4 and 5, not all kids can learn to read. Most can. That is, after all, the age at which Nannies traditionally taught English families who could afford a nanny to read, and they all did learn. You may make of that what you will, but beware the racist fallacy: and surely the education establishment does not believe that English upper and middle class children are better protoplasm than the Head Start children?
No evaluation program has ever found that Head Start makes a bit of difference: that is, two years and more after Head Start there are no statistical differences between those who went through the Head Start program and those who didn't. This is counterintuitive, and a tragedy: I don't know anyone who is opposed to Head Start as a concept. Before I am inundated by mail from Libertarians, let me add that what I mean here is "I don't know anyone who is opposed to the Head Start program who isn't opposed to all government, or Federal, programs on principle." I'm opposed to Head Start on Federalist grounds, but if we have to have such programs, that one certainly sounds like one we ought to have -- except, alas, it doesn't work.
But: I guarantee you that if Head Start made a vigorous attempt to teach kids to read through systematic phonics training, you would see a BIG difference between Head Start kids and others after two, five, ten, and twenty years. Of course the instruction would have to be by teachers who believed that a substantial number of the kids would learn to read in her classroom, and nearly all of them would benefit by the reading instruction; and finding such teachers would be difficult given the idiotic theories in college departments of education.
As to universal pre-school, the statistical differences in crime rates between kids who have been in pre-school and those who have not does not control for social class. Ah, well.
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The bellwether (not "bellweather") election in San Diego (for Cunningham's seat) now turns out not to have been important. It was only an important election when there was a chance that Minuteman supporter Bilbray might lose.
Of course.
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For something completely different, try
http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimdandy/specials/life/life.htm
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