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Impervious to Evidence, Liberals Ride Again
Townhall.com ^ | January 3, 2014 | Mona Charen

Posted on 01/03/2014 5:51:28 AM PST by Kaslin

"We will restore science to its rightful place ... " So intoned a "dismissive and derisive" President Barack Obama in his first inaugural. It's been oft quoted in the five years since (frequently by me, I'll confess) for its arrogance and condescension, which has continuing relevance, but before turning to the left's latest departure from scientific rigor, I cannot resist a fuller quotation. The second part of this sentence from Obama's first inaugural reads " ... and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost." Hmm.

In his second inaugural (compared to Abraham Lincoln's second by Chris Matthews), Obama proposed a vast new program ($150 billion in combined federal and state funds) for universal preschool serving 4-year-olds. "Every dollar we invest in high-quality early childhood education can save more than $7 later on -- by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime ... We know this works."

Universal preschool is universally popular with Democrats. Nancy Pelosi has hailed Head Start as "one of our most effective investments," while the newly minted progressive heartthrob New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, proclaims, "We will ask the very wealthy to pay a little more in taxes so that we can offer full-day universal pre-K and after-school programs for every middle school student."

Before getting to science, let's talk politics. The federal government already runs a preschool program called Head Start. Democrats love it because they can claim to be doing something beneficial for poor children. Republicans decline to oppose it because they fear ads saying "Rep. X wants to deny education to poor children ... "

Now, let's talk science. Head Start, a product of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, has been carefully evaluated by the Administration for Children and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services. The study examined 4,667 3- and 4-year-olds across 23 states. It compared children who had applied for but not been accepted into Head Start to those who had participated in it. The children were evaluated by their teachers, parents and outside examiners both before and after. As David Armor and Sonia Sousa relate in the winter issue of National Affairs, the Head Start Impact Study found almost no positive effects of the program.

While children in the program showed some positive results on measures of cognitive skills and social/behavioral ratings while in the program, those results lasted only so long as the children were enrolled and did not carry through to kindergarten or early elementary school. The principle positive effect noted in the HSIS was in social skills for 3-year-olds, but these results were reported only by parents and not replicated by outside examiners. Teachers, by contrast, noted a negative effect on social/emotional skills for the 4-year-old cohort.

The point of Head Start is the promise that it offers poor children a leg up and prepares them for school. It would be nice if it worked, but it doesn't. It does provide jobs for teachers and federally subsidized day care. But taxpayers have spent $180 billion since 1965 for a program that fails to achieve its objectives.

Other studies have examined the effect of preschool more generally on school performance and have found effects ranging from very small to none.

What then was Obama referring to when he insisted that "high-quality" preschool "boosts graduation rates," "reduces teen pregnancy" and so forth? In a post titled "Obama's Preschool Proposal Is Not Based on Sound Research" on the center/left Brookings Institution website, Russ Whitehurst explains that the studies the president and other advocates of universal pre-K rely on are flawed. They do not involve randomized controls (as the HSIS did) but instead employ something called "age-cutoff regression discontinuity."

Due to state-mandated birthdates for enrollment in preschool, the studies wind up comparing kids who are actually enrolled in play-based programs for 3-year-olds with those enrolled in academically oriented preschool for 4-year-olds. These regression discontinuity studies also fail to account for dropouts from the program. The Brookings post, to which Armor also contributed, concludes: "Because 'gold standard' randomized studies fail to show major impacts of present day pre-K programs, there are reasons to doubt that we yet know how to design ... a government funded pre-K program that produces sufficiently large benefits ... "

Armor and Souza suggest in National Affairs that those truly respectful of science would propose: "A national demonstration project for pre-K in a selected number of cities and states, accompanied by a rigorous randomized evaluation that would follow participants at least into the third grade. This demonstration project should also examine whether 'preschool for all' closes achievement gaps between rich and poor, since it is possible that middle-class children will benefit more than disadvantaged children."

This would put science in its "rightful place," but don't hold your breath. Many liberal nostrums are impervious to evidence.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: educationandschools; headstart; liberals
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1 posted on 01/03/2014 5:51:28 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
“We will restore science to its rightful place ... “

That statement doesn't make a bit of sense.
He believes in man-made global warming.

2 posted on 01/03/2014 5:55:17 AM PST by PATRIOT1876
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To: Kaslin

Bump


3 posted on 01/03/2014 5:55:27 AM PST by lowbridge
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To: PATRIOT1876

Ah, but in the Democrat Socialist mind a “rightful place” is one which supports the Left’s socialist agenda. That’s what they truly believe is the purpose of science and the primary responsibility of scientists.


4 posted on 01/03/2014 6:00:06 AM PST by glennaro
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To: PATRIOT1876

I’m in southern Pennsylvania. I don’t know how much of htis global warming I can take.


5 posted on 01/03/2014 6:03:01 AM PST by Daveinyork (IER)
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To: Kaslin


6 posted on 01/03/2014 6:06:00 AM PST by Iron Munro (Orwell: There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.)
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To: PATRIOT1876

...and the male and female sex doesn’t exist. My favorite leftwing anti-science claim.


7 posted on 01/03/2014 6:07:40 AM PST by miss marmelstein (Richard Lives Yet!)
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To: PATRIOT1876

It’s the left’s attempt to have some basis for their belief system.
They have none. A belief system that matches reality can only be based on an unchanging objective standard.


8 posted on 01/03/2014 6:10:54 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Kaslin

The Obamadork couldn’t pass a high school science course.

The man defines stupid.

May a thousand t*rds descend upon his open mouth.


9 posted on 01/03/2014 6:14:08 AM PST by Da Coyote
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To: PATRIOT1876

When he says “restore it to its rightful place,” he means as a tool of left-wing propaganda.


10 posted on 01/03/2014 6:14:20 AM PST by Mr Ramsbotham (If you liked the website, you'll LOVE the healthcare!)
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To: PATRIOT1876
“That statement doesn't make a bit of sense.
He believes in man-made global warming.”...

Much like those dummies who have been trapped in the Antarctica ice fields. They too believe in Global Warming and set out to prove it exists. How long before their ship goes to the bottom of the sea once global warming crushes it?

11 posted on 01/03/2014 6:15:08 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: miss marmelstein
Ahhh...but the recent discovery of the “metro-sexual” allows one to be whatever sex it wants to be on any given day...
12 posted on 01/03/2014 6:16:08 AM PST by M-cubed
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To: Kaslin

can it what it is:

government paid babysitting.

and stop pretending it’s about education.

Liberals are NEVER honest about anything.


13 posted on 01/03/2014 6:16:24 AM PST by TexasFreeper2009 (Obama lied .. the economy died.)
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To: M-cubed

That would be a great, new left-wing anti-science trope! If it isn’t happening already. Today I’m a girl; this weekend I’m gonna party like a guy.


14 posted on 01/03/2014 6:17:51 AM PST by miss marmelstein (Richard Lives Yet!)
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To: glennaro
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. Vladimir Lenin
15 posted on 01/03/2014 7:19:00 AM PST by kitchen (Even the walls have ears.)
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To: glennaro

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

— Mark Twain


16 posted on 01/03/2014 8:17:19 AM PST by PATRIOT1876
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To: Kaslin
Other studies have examined the effect of preschool more generally on school performance and have found effects ranging from very small to none.

OTOH, I had all of my kids reading before three. They were studying college-level material by eight. Hence, early childhood education can be beneficial depending upon how it is conducted.

17 posted on 01/03/2014 8:26:47 AM PST by Carry_Okie (0-Care IS Medicaid; they'll pull a sheet over your head and take everything you own to pay for it.)
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To: Carry_Okie

My grandson started to read by the age of 3 or 4 according to my daughter. She told me that she read by the age of 4. I told her that I did not know that and she replied that she read quietly to herself and not aloud like my grandson does.


18 posted on 01/03/2014 8:37:11 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: PATRIOT1876

What liberal does not believe in Global warming?


19 posted on 01/03/2014 8:38:44 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin
The empirical research on Head Start goes back 40 years and the results have been unanimously negative. The study quoted here is only the latest in a long series of hopes dashed by reality. Obama and Pelosi know all this. They are simply happy to lie about it.
20 posted on 01/03/2014 1:23:20 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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