Thursday, May 18, 2006

Meathead's Silver Bullet

I was quoted this morning in an Associated Press story by Juliet Williams that appeared in the Washington Post, Forbes.com, MSNBC and dozens of other places.

Unfortunately, the gist of the story was a positive spin on the California's proposed Universal Preschool Initiative (Prop 82).

The No on Proposition 82 campaign referred questions to Lisa Snell, director of education at the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation. She has been critical of the June ballot initiative but is not part of the campaign. Snell said the best use of limited preschool money would be in small-scale, intensive intervention programs for low-income and minority children. She said similar programs, such as those in Oklahoma and Georgia,have not produced significant academic gains.

I think that they (Prop 82 proponents) are counting on it being a silver bullet for fixing reading achievement in California. In the other two states that have universal programs it really hasn't panned out for them yet in reading achievement.

Whole thing here or here.

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