Debating Universal vs. Targeted Preschool: Part I

This week on the Education Sector website, researchers W. Steven Barnett and Bruce Fuller have been debating the merits of universal versus targeted approaches to publicly funded preschool. The question, essentially, is: "Does it make more sense for governments to spend money on publicly-funded preschool for all children, or just for those who are most needy?"

As someone who works on early-childhood policy issues, I find this question a particularly difficult one, so I'm excited that Education Sector is able to host this debate. Each of these gentlemen presents the case for his respective position more clearly and compellingly than anyone I've yet heard from. And, with voters in our nation's largest state poised to vote on a statewide universal preschool proposal less than a week from now, it's an important and timely question--one we're likely to see raised more places around the country in the near future. All good reasons you should check out the debate itself now.

Today, I'm going to offer a few quick reactions to Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool. Tomorrow, I'll talk about my response to Bruce Fuller's arguments.

I find Steven Barnett's case for universal preschool pretty compelling. The argument that "programs for the poor are too often poor programs," isn't easily dismissed--we see this play out in a lot of policy areas, and it is part of the reason some much-hyped early-childhood programs have delivered disappointing results. Richard Kahlenberg's work arguing for socioeconomic integration of K-12 schools can be helpful to understanding why this is the case in education, and it also offers another argument against targeting preschool programs so narrowly that they segregate low-income children from their more affluent peers. In addition, Barnett makes an important point that the kids with families at the median income level--those whose families aren't poor enough to qualify for public programs but aren't affluent enough to afford private preschool--are the least likely to be enrolled in preschool, even though many of these children, whose families are hardly rich, could probably benefit from it.

Still, there's a big hole for me in Barnett's arguments, and that's the issue of trade-offs. If we lived in a climate of infinite resources, it would certainly make a lot more sense to invest in universal rather than targeted preschool programs. But we don't. Policymakers have to decide between competing priorities and make trade-offs. So, where are the trade-offs worth making? For example, is it better to invest in universal preschool for all four-year-olds, or targeted preschool for poor four-year-olds, combined with greater funding for childcare for poor infants and toddlers? Would we be better off providing one year of preschool to all children or two years only to the most disadvantaged?

I also worry that the emphasis on universal preschool may create an incentive for policymakers and politicians to cut corners on quality in order to stretch limited resources so they can say they accomplished universal preschool. We saw this in Florida after voters there passed a referendum for universal preschool--Governor Bush and the state legislature implemented a program with quality standards much lower than Barnett or other experts say are necessary to have the kinds of positive impacts we want preschool to have on children's development and achievement down the road. If this happens, we eventually wind up in the same place--a poor program serving poor kids--that Barnett fears we'll wind up with a targeted approach.