The National Institute for Early Educational Research (NIEER) at Rutgers has released a pre kindergarten study which offers some decisively promising conclusions for New Jersey’s prekindergarten program in Abbott schools. It’s clear conclusions are the reason why we’ve been hearing a lot about this study. A sample of students enrolled for one year in prekindergarten in New Jersey’s Abbott districts, according to NIEER researchers, have shown significant increases (.20) in mathematics and literacy. Strikingly, for two years, the results are nearly double (.40). The “Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study” (APPLES) marks a longitudinal trend in education research as well as a good comprehensive approach to education policy. It is also very costly.
Along with the conclusions about the literacy and mathematics outcomes, another interesting finding is that prekindergarten decreases the instances of students repeating grades. The average percentage for New Jersey is 10.7 percent. Researchers estimate this decrease to be -3.5 percent for students with one year of prekindergarten and an astonishing +5.4 for students with two years of prekindergarten. The cost of prekindergarten for taxpayers, according to researchers, is offset by this decrease in repetition.
In the Star Ledger, NIEER co-director W. Steven Barnett was reported to have said that because the number of students repeating grades would decrease, the state would save “roughly $15,000 per child on education alone.” The roughness of that estimate is possibly too rough for taxpayers. For instance, Paterson City school #25 spends $15,491 per student. The Star Ledger reports that the “state spends roughly $12,000 per child for preschool in Abbott districts.” If one student who has participated in prekindergarten does not need to repeat the 4rth grade, the savings is really more like $3,000. Costs can grow if the program expands and prekindergarten becomes common place. Though the cost for each repeating student is lessened by $3,000, extending the program to the other 89.3 percent of students, students who are not bound to repeat grades, comes at a significant cost to taxpayers. Repetition rates aside, expanding such a program also creates an interesting situation in which the educational outcomes of all children are doubled at double the cost.
An ancillary benefit of New Jersey’s preschool program is that some of the burden is relieved for single parents of preschool aged children who pay as much as $764 per month for childcare, according to estimates from the New Jersey Poverty research Institute’s (NJPRI) 2009 Real Cost of Living Index. Further, if childcare for single parents costs $9168 per year, per preschooler, we are led to question the $12,000 price tag of our current prekindergarten program.
Whether or not it can be done cheaper the $12,000 price tag is worth the results it buys us. Such spending is necessary unless something else can be done to mitigate the effects of poverty on these students. With this in mind, we might stop celebrating NIEER’s exciting results and begin to acknowledge the effect that early development has on later student outcomes. There must be some recognition of the whole student.
New Jersey might seek similar education results from other kinds of spending dedicated to improving the quality of life in places like Paterson. Lowering the cost per pupil to tax payers may ultimately mean installing more libraries and civil infrastructure and reducing crime where, compared to national rates and according to , robbery is 2.03 times as likely, murder is 1.72 times as likely, and all violent crime is 1.37 times as likely to occur. Paterson sounds like a pretty noisy place, right? Though 3.9 percent of New Jerseyans live in what is considered severe poverty according to the NJPRI 2009 estimates, 11.4 percent live in severe poverty in Paterson. If you prefer the federal poverty line (FPL), the percentage of Paterson’s residents (23.7 percent) below that line is a whole +15.1 percent higher than the New Jersey average (8.6 percent). Perhaps the state can reallocate Abbott money and issue vouchers for school supplies, including desks and desk lamps. Parent education and grants for community projects would be a good thing, too. There are lots of ways to spend money, though the current economic turmoil requires policy officials to spend wisely. For now, a select number of prekindergarten going students have the opportunity to spend some of their formative years outside of poverty, in a classroom/state funded daycare.
Hopefully, the search for the causes of good educational outcomes will focus more often on the lives of students outside of school. Studying the whole student will produce more big picture kinds of solutions like that undertaken by the State Board, like prekindergarten. Lastly, we should be wondering about the effect of prekindergarten on non-abbott New Jersey students in poverty.
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