I take a back seat to no man or woman in my admiration for the Oak Park Police Department. My dealings with them, while blessedly minimal, have left a deep impression of professionalism, competence, and courtesy. Oak Park Police Chief Rick Tanksley deserves the gratitude and congratulations of the entire village for his leadership of this fine department.
That is why it is so disappointing that the Chief has chosen to lobby for tax-supported preschool as a crime prevention measure [Believe it: Fighting crime starts in Oak Park’s pre-schools, Viewpoints, Oct. 24]. The chief should stick to what he does best and refrain from advising parents to place their youngest children in settings whose results have been mixed to say the least.
Astonishingly, Chief Tanksley presents research data from the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program in Ypsilanti, Mich., to support the need for preschool for poor children. He rightly reports that 3- and 4-year-old children were assigned randomly to either attend a high quality pre-school, High/Scope Perry, or to a control group who did not attend any pre-school. As has been widely reported for decades, the preschool children were found to be five times less likely to become chronic lawbreakers. I might also add that Perry Preschool graduates were considerably less likely to get pregnant as teens, go on welfare, or become juvenile delinquents. Impressive results indeed!
Here’s the problem. Only 123 children were studied, and of them, only 58 were actually enrolled in the program; the others were in the control group. Moreover, these impressive results were published in the mid-1980s after years of follow-up study. The children actually participated in the Perry Preschool program in the late 1960s. Why, one might ask, is it necessary to quote statistics from a decades-old study of such a small group of children?
The answer is that in the over 40 years since the Perry Preschool experiment, its notable results have proven to be frustratingly elusive to replicate. At more or less the same time that the Perry research was published, the taxpayer-funded Project Head Start was celebrating 20 years of providing pre-school to poor children. By the mid-1980s, 460,000 children had been served by Project Head Start and received health, nutrition and education services. Results released at that time revealed although children showed significant immediate gains when they entered elementary school, by the end of the second year of elementary school, there were no educationally meaningful differences. Additionally, there were only short-lived gains in self-esteem, motivation to achieve, and social behavior. To sum up, 20 years of taxpayer-funded pre-school given to a statistically significant group of children from families below the poverty line, produced no major mid-term or long-term benefits.
Chief Tanksley also touts the so-called benefits of early socialization with one’s peers, although that claim flies in the face of what we do know about crime prevention. A growing body of research clearly indicates that peer pressure is the root of many of the ills besetting our children, and in many cases leads them to commit crimes. The majority of teens who abuse drugs or alcohol, engage in early sexual activity, shoplift, become involved in gang activity, or physically assault others, do so in the company of, or even at the encouragement of their peers. It would seem to me to be a better strategy to inoculate children against peer dependence, not foster it.
None of this is to imply that pre-school is necessarily bad for children, just that it has not proven itself to be very effective in providing long-term benefits to children or aid in crime prevention. Through the centuries, the one thing that does have an unbeatable record for producing high-quality students, who grow up to be high-achieving citizens of character and integrity, is a supportive home life. Nothing is a better indicator of future academic success than involved and encouraging parents and extended family. While it is true that some parents, as a result of various circumstances, are less able to provide this environment, it would seem to me that it is a better use of taxpayers’ money to provide support and encouragement directly to them.
If we can identify children as candidates for pre-school, we can also identify their families. Helping families to overcome their challenges is far more likely to benefit children over time, and prevent them from ending up in the back seat of a squad car.
