Richard Colvin's been doing a great job covering the through-the-looking-glass-ish debate on preschool in Idaho. Not only is Idaho one of the handful of states that doesn't have a state-funded preschool program;* state laws actually prohibit schools from serving kids under the age of 5. So the state legislature is now debating whether or not to allow school districts to serve 4-year-olds, provided that no state funds are used to do so. I find it particularly wacky that the primary opponents of this measure seem to be conservatives, who are opposing it on grounds that educating kids under 5 in the public schoolsis some kind of assualt on the family (how 5 got to be the magic age when publicly funded schooling no longer infringes on the family is not clearly explained). I thought conservatives believed in local control and flexibility in education? Wouldn't both those ideas imply you should allow school district leaders who believe they could serve kids (and, uh, families) better by offering preschool to do so? Particularly considering that a school district that's gonna bother finding its own source of non-state funding for such services isn't exactly acting on a whim and probably thinks this is really important?
*The federal Head Start program has grantees in Idaho, and presumably the state's public education system is meeting its obligations to serve infants, toddlers and preschoolers with disabilities under IDEA without enrolling them in public schools.
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