Let me be the first to praise you for linking to Blue Girl's post. (No, I am not on her payroll.) I've been hitting all my regular haunts in search of a pretext to link to it. Here, I won't have to.

Thanks Kevin! Seeing that link was quite a pleasant surprise when I made my rounds before shutting down for the night.

And thank you for the kind words thersites. :)

I have worked in a public school special needs preschool for years, and I can see the benefits of early intervention. Over the years I have noticed the difference between kids we get at age 3, and kids that we get at age 4. Three is better.

The biggest differences are in the area of vocabulary and also the ability to understand(and use) relatively complex sentences. The kids who are in our preschool for 2 years test better in these areas. And the difference is striking.

As it happens, several of our preschools are housed in Head Start facilities. I can only speak to the Head Start classes that I have seen-but there are problems. Many of our kids have behavior issues, and the Head Start classes tend to be fairly large. When you put enough behavior problems in the same classroom, there can-and are-problems. And there is a big difference in the Head Start teachers who have 4 year degrees; they tend to be much better at stimulating language development, and handling behavior issues.

Our classes are smaller, and each class has a teacher and an assistant. The smaller classes make a big difference. Many of these kids are emotionally needy, and it is not unusual to get a child who uses 1-2 word sentences when they come to us. We can give each child a lot of attention, and the results are striking. As a speech pathologist, I see the results when I test.

Anyhow, that's my testimonial about the benefits of preschool. But I have to say that city kids need earlier intervention. And I agree that middle class kids do not generally need free preschool; they usually have parents who make sure that they develop the skills that they need for school and life. But city kids-the earlier the intervention-the better.

Two quick comments:

- On John McCain's "policy platform" - I sure hope Democrats hammer McCain on the fact he has no platform. Being against everything doesn't necessarily mean being for anything.
- On Blue Girl's food article - Outstanding work, Blue Girl. Excellent coverage and great links on a topic most Americans are hopelessly ignorant about - where their food comes from. I was discussing a great book by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, just last weekend with my vegetarian and ultra-liberal brother-in-law. So, this post is very timely and interesting to me.

The short version of their preschool ideas:
Hillary wants universal preschool for 4-year-olds; Obama wants to expand Head Start and start it at birth. McCain agrees that early childhood education is important but hasn't suggested any changes.

Obama's position is right, but Hillary's position is more likely to be adopted. The evidence shows that good preschool (and the preschools in the most-cited studies were very good) can help kids from, shall we say, unenriched home lives. It has a much smaller effect as home lives get richer. Mediocre preschool doesn't have much of an effect on anybody, and bad preschool is harmful.

None of this is a surprise, and it leads to Obama's position. Spend the money where it will have an effect.

But it's more politically palatable if it doesn't seem like a welfare program.

This seems to me to summarize their politics, and it's why Obama should be president, and Hillary should be majority leader.

I recommend Bruce Fuller's Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education.

Thanks for the BG post, Kevin! It has been my experience that very, very few people know anything of the horrors of modern agribusiness. Chickens are treated especially horribly, with millions upon millions dying even before reaching the slaughterhouse. Like the Republicans, agribusiness thrives only on lies -- by knowing, we can make informed, ethical choices.

Chazz Michael McCain: "Looks like someone knows how to work the Google on the Internet machine."

Interesting take(down) of this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner...politics-as-show-business-for-ugly-people and all that...

It seems to me Clinton wants to help all children and Obama just wants to help African American children.

Not black, poor, who are the ones preschool helps. Middle class and rich kids don't need preschool to advance intellectually as fast as their little genes will take them. If you're spending $5000 to $10,000 per year per kid, it makes sense to spend it as much as possible only on kids who will be helped.

Obama proposes utopia.
Clinton proposes the possible.
Perfect is often the enemy of good. Cliche yes, but still valid.

Middle class and rich kids don't need preschool to advance intellectually as fast as their little genes will take them. If you're spending $5000 to $10,000 per year per kid, it makes sense to spend it as much as possible only on kids who will be helped.

This is a nice sentiment, but it rarely works out like this in real life. It has been my observation that aggressive middle-class parents have no qualms about grabbing all the benefits out of a program meant to help the poor, because they know how to work the system.

One study found out that some children in Head Start programs make little progress. Come to find out that their middle-class parents already provided enriched environments at home. The kids started at such a high level that they had little need for the services provided. Their parents were just using Head Start as a free baby sitting service.

Well, I’ll give more examples of how the middle-class get benefits meant for the poor. In our mostly white town, parents try to get their kids transferred to the best schools. So, if you live in a part of town, where the local public school is not meeting standards, you, supposedly, have the right to transfer to a better school. But, for some reason, poor children who live in the poorer parts of town rarely get to transfer. Somehow, there was a computer glitch in handling transfer requests two years in a row. The school district is so terrified of the power of middle-class voters that they, obviously, accommodate their requests first.

I was a volunteer in a reading program meant to help young children who were never read to before starting school. The first few years it was a small program and I enjoyed it immensely. I loved seeing the children change. When I first started reading to them (one on one) at the beginning of the year, they were “bored� and wanted to go back to their classrooms. But, I persisted. In about 6 or 8 weeks something would happen. The power of the stories somehow turned on their imaginations and they were hooked for the rest of the year.

But, when I returned to volunteer about 8 years later, the whole program had changed. Instead of concentrating on the neediest children, the room was packed with many children who didn’t need the program at all. (The kids got free books and the program coordinator got to brag about high reading scores on state tests.) The room was so crowded and noisy that the neediest children were not getting the attention they needed. They were, of course, easily distracted, while the best readers could tune out any distractions. I finally gave up when I was assigned a sweet boy who told me that both of his parents read to him every night.

This is supposedly a liberal town. But, when it comes to their children, parents are like vacuum cleaners when it comes to grabbing every available advantage for their kids.

middle-class parents have no qualms about grabbing all the benefits out of a program meant to help the poor, because they know how to work the system.

I HATE those middle-class parents!!! Working the system! There's got to be a special ring of hell devoted to people that work the system!

(I don't think education for children ought to be pareto optimized.)

I'm sure that some middle class kids could benefit; however, there is (in general) a dramatic difference between middle class preschoolers and inner city preschoolers. There is a difference in vocabulary, in conversational skills, in syntactic skills, and social skills, to name a few.

Of course, there are exceptions. I would suggest that any programs be based on the actual needs of the child, not the means of the parents. This would weed out many middle class kids, anyhow.