On With The Junkyard Dogs of Talk Radio

I'm scheduled for the four o'clock hour (PDT) with John & Ken on KFI AM 640 this afternoon along with Chris Cardiff, one of two authors of the new study noted below.

Click here to listen live.

Click on the picture above (or click here) for a podcast of a recent Prop 82 public appearance in Los Angeles.

It should stream in Windows Media Player but it seems to want to download in other applications.

Run time is about a half hour.

Thanks for your interest.

Reexamining RAND's Economic Case for Universal Preschool

New Study: California's Preschool Benefits Were Miscalculated & Overstated

A Rand Corporation study that claims universal preschool will deliver $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent by California taxpayers has been thoroughly discredited by two San Jose State University economics professors who show the Rand preschool study "cherry-picked" data, based its claims on "unbelievable assumptions that bias the results," and omitted numerous costs and other factors that significantly lower the alleged benefits of universal preschool. The review of the Rand report, published by the Reason Foundation, uses Rand's own data and methodology and finds that California would actually lose 25 to 30 cents for every dollar spent on universal preschool when just a few of the Rand report's most glaring mistakes are corrected. And the Reason study concludes those losses would be even greater if many of the proposed preschool program's costs, wrongly excluded from Rand's calculations, were included in the analysis.

As Project Director, I am quoted in the Press Release:

It turns out the emperor has no clothes. The oft-cited Rand study doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny and universal preschool can't deliver on the overly optimistic promises that Rand and others have made. Instead of spending billions each year and naively hoping universal preschool will deliver a miracle, we need to fix our state's broken educational system.

Full Study Online Here

Press Release Here

Little Johnny Does Islam

The same 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance to be an unconstitutional imposition of religion on the inmates of the public school system recently ruled that.....

Reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful . . "

Memorizing the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger."

Chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Professing as "true" the Muslim belief that "The Holy Quran is God's word."

Giving up candy and TV to demonstrate Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

......is not.

Imagine a teacher asking her class to give up candy in order to better understand Prayer and Fasting week at the local Baptist church. Uh-huh.

The lesson in this is a simple one. Public Education is an oligopoly that is largely controlled by a few well-connected individuals and organizations that are in ridgid philosophical lockstep with one another.

The debate will rage around what is taught and who gets to pick course material. But the real resolution won't come until there is something approaching choice in public education.

As my husband is fond of saying, lot's of people are pro-choice until it comes to public education.

Whole story here. More here.

Hat Tip to Nobody's Business.

On Air Now....

I'm talking about Universal Preschool on the Larry Mantle Show right now.

Listen in So Cal on KPCC 89.3 FM or go here and listen live.

Thanks

UPDATE: One of my husband's clients just called him and asked if that was really me (Lisa) that he just heard on the radio. Always nice to know that somebody is listening out there.

UPDATE: Listen to the archived show here. Scroll down to May 26, Proposition 82.

Requires Real Player which you can download free here.

I'm delighted that the following Op-Ed appeared in the Orange County Register this morning here (free registration may be required)

Preschool for all? Don't feed the beast

Claims that preschool boosts reading scores later are at odds with history

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lisa Snell is director of education at Reason Foundation

"Preschool for All" supporters keep moving the goalposts in the debate over universal preschool, desperately searching for an argument that can actually hold up to scrutiny.

First, it was important to get all kids into preschool. But it turns out two-thirds of California's kids are already in preschool, and taxpayers would be paying over $2.4 billion a year just to inch that total up to 70 percent.

Now supporters say universal preschool will improve California's dismal national reading performance. In a new report, "Building Blocks of Reading," advocates of Proposition 82, the "Preschool for All" initiative pushed by actor/director Rob Reiner, argue that universal preschool will help to prevent reading difficulties in young children. Half of all the state's fourth-graders are failing basic reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide test of reading achievement. And California fourth-graders perform significantly worse than students in 44 other states, so we certainly need to improve.

Unfortunately, we're going to need to find another way to fix our schools and reading scores because the data clearly shows preschool is not a silver bullet that improves reading achievement.

U.S. preschool enrollment has increased dramatically, jumping from 16 percent in 1965 to 66 percent today. But getting kids into school earlier has not translated into higher test scores. "Student achievement has stagnated or fallen in most subjects since 1970. … That is the verdict of the five most reliable sources of evidence," the report's author, education researcher Andrew Coulson, reports.

Georgia and Oklahoma in the 1990s became the first two states to implement universal preschool. We see disappointing results from both states, especially in reading.

Oklahoma and Georgia, both with universal preschool now in place for years, scored below the national average in fourth-grade reading on the standard National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in 2005. In fact, Georgia and Oklahoma ranked in the bottom 10 of states for increasing fourth-grade reading scores from 1992 to 2005.

Oklahoma is often hailed as the national model for universal preschool. Yet, it was the worst performer of all states in terms of making gains in fourth-grade reading during the years 1992 to 2005, actually losing 4 percentage points.

Thirty-three percent of Oklahoma's fourth-graders were reading at a level below "basic" in 1992. By 2005, that number was 40 percent. While the number of kids reading below the basic level was increasing, the number of fourth-graders reading at a basic level was falling. In 1992, 38 percent of Oklahoma fourth-graders scored basic in reading but by 2005 the number had slipped to 35 percent.

These reading scores fell despite the fact that all the children that took the 2005 reading tests were eligible for universal preschool. One would probably assume that Oklahoma's large, statewide investment in universal preschool, including highly paid, credentialed teachers and a high-quality curriculum, would have a positive effect on fourth-grade reading scores. Clearly, it did not.

Meanwhile, none of the states that made the biggest improvements in fourth-grade reading scores on the NAEP tests during 1992-2005 had implemented universal preschool.

One factor behind preschool's failure to boost reading scores is "fade out." A UC Santa Barbara study this year found preschoolers were more prepared for kindergarten than nonpreschoolers, but that those advantages faded away by the third grade, and thus preschool had "limited use as a long-term strategy for improving the achievement gap." This "fade out" phenomenon has been replicated in many large-scale preschool studies.

After years of so-called reform efforts aimed at improving subpar reading performance in California schools, universal preschool has become the latest panacea. Universal preschool is not a silver bullet. California test scores since 1970 and, more recently, Georgia and Oklahoma's universal preschool results, clearly show universal preschool is not a "Building Block for Reading."

Miserable reading scores are just one example of our broken educational system. Adding a new $2.4 billion-per-year preschool layer to the existing failing bureaucracy won't help. As Ronald Reagan would say: Don't feed the beast.

California Supreme Court Reinstates Exit Exam

High School seniors who failed California's proficiency exam will be disappointed to learn that they probably are not going to graduate.

That seems almost impossible because earning a passing grade on the proficiency exam only requires slightly more than half the right answers on a test that is geared to 8th grade math and 10th grade English.

Right now I'm just really scared, said Mansi Goshi, a Magnolia High School (Anaheim) senior who has a 3.4 GPA but hasn't passed the exit exam. Last week, she thought she might get a diploma.

I think the appropriate question is not whether or not a student should be given (yes, given) a high school diploma for keeping a seat warm. Instead we should ask our public high schools how any student can finish 12th grade with a 3.4 GPA and not have proficiency in English at the 10th grade level and math at the 8th grade level.

Full story here (registration may be required). More here.

Update on Full Focus

Apparently the show I'm taping this afternoon in San Diego will air at 6:30 PDT broadcast from SDSU (the Party School of the Great Southwest) on KBPS Channel 15 San Diego.

The show will be archived here for a week. You can access the archive using Windows Media Player.

Thanks for your interest.

No Offense High School

The latest incident in the public school culture wars comes from Liberty High School in Texas.

Liberty is a first-year school and commemorated that event by portraying the first-year brand new Jefferson nickel on the cover of the year book. Of course, that meant removing the phrase In God We Trust from the yearbook's cover image.

Janet Travis, principal of Liberty Elementary School in Colleyville, wanted to avoid offending students of different religions.

The ACLU is delighted, calling the removal appropriate, sensitive, and constitutional, but many parents are less than delighted and some are angry. One parent suggested......

.....that the school could have used a different symbol for liberty, such as the Liberty Bell or the Statue of Liberty, if it was concerned about giving offense.

But Liberty PTA honcho Tom Gardner said...Get This...

those symbols may not be acceptable to everyone, either.

Aside from the tremendous waste of time and effort that could have been spent on productive pursuits, they could have avoided all of this by naming the school something like No Offense High School and skipped the concept of Liberty altogether.

Public schools already do that on a daily basis anyway.

Whole thing here.

Hat Tip to Jeff Taylor at Reason Express

On Air This Afternoon

I'll be in Pasadena today as a guest on Patt Morrison's show on KPCC (NPR) . It is scheduled live for 2:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time (5:00 EDT). I'm probably debating former venture capitalist Phil Halperin (again), president of Silver Giving and huge supporter of Universal Preschool. I'm tentatively scheduled for the early part of the program.

There's a listen live radio button on KPCC's main page or if you're local tune in 89.3 FM.

Upcoming Appearances

On Wednesday I'm taping a half hour segment in LA for Adlephia Cable's local programming. Later in the day I'll be in San Diego taping for the KPBS Full Focus show. I'm not sure when that will air so check back for updates.

Thanks for your interest and support in reforming public education.

Banned In The Desert

I was barred from the Pro-82 press conference in Indio so I hung around outside with my lowly stack of photocopied LA Times editorials from this morning (see previous post).

On their way out, camera crews from the NBC & CBS affilliates in Palm Springs interviewed me. Send me an email and let me know if I made the Six O'Clock news. Thanks.

CBS is Channel 2 and NBC is KMIR Channel 6 in the desert communities of Palm Springs, La Quinta, Indio, Palm Desert...........

LA Times Says NO on Prop 82

This may or may not be a coup but it is certainly a huge boost to those of us struggling to keep Meathead's mitts off the fridge.

.......Proposition 82, the initiative on the June 6 ballot that would provide preschool free of charge to every 4-year-old in California, has a defect common to most initiatives: It's so poorly designed that it could do more harm than good. Californians should vote no on Proposition 82.

The initiative would set up a cumbersome bureaucracy and place it under the state Department of Education, which has done a disappointing job with K-12 schools. It would make taxpayer-funded preschool available to middle-class and rich families, which can easily afford it. It could worsen the teacher shortage by draining public schools of qualified teachers. And though the initiative allows private preschools to become part of the system, it's written in such a way to favor programs at public schools.

In order to pay for 25,000 to 50,000 additional children in preschool, taxpayers would foot the bill for the 325,000 other 4-year-olds already in preschool. That's partly why the measure is so expensive.

Whole story here (registration may be required)

Now, I've got to run off to Indio and crash a press conference.

Me & Goliath

There are a few other voices in the darkness besides mine and we all feel a little like Biblical David. It is a long uphill struggle to drive a stake into the heart of Universal Preschool in California.

The measure (Prop 82) drew $2.4 million in contributions in 2005, much of it from Reiner's earnings as producer of Castle Rock Entertainment and from his father, actor and comedian Carl Reiner. Other prominent donors included Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, Warner Brothers President Alan Horn, author Robert Mailer Anderson, Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, DreamWorks Studios CEO David Geffen, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and San Francisco financier Warren Hellman, a Republican.

Californians to Stop Higher Taxes, reorganized in November to fight Prop. 82, raised roughly $185,000 last year. Contributors included San Francisco Republican John Fisher of the family that owns the Gap children's and adult apparel chain.

From the San Francisco Chronicle story, here.

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.

Not For The Convenience of Any Parent

Lisa had to turn down an appearance on network TV on Friday. Why? Well, the House Blond, Katie, has the lead in the second grade production of Little Red Riding Hood. Obviously the right choice.

Then it occurs to me. Why is the play happening at 2:00 in the afternoon when most parents are at work? In fact, almost every public school event is scheduled during regular school hours. That seems like a big change from my day when most school events were scheduled for the evening so that the parents could attend after work hours.

What is up with that? Is there some kind of union work rules that dictate teachers only have to put in an evening appearance on Back To School Night and for Open House?

As Ever,

The Designated Spouse

Visit the Designated Spouse at The Winecommonsewer

The Latest In The War On The Meathead Initiative

On Tuesday morning, May 16, I will debate Prop 82 live from the Embarcadero in San Francisco on AM 960, The Quake (the Will & Willie Show) scheduled for 8:05 through 8:30 AM.

Listen live here.

I appreciate your interest.