Bees really dislike having their hive disturbed and that's obviously true of universal-pre-school advocates, too. The Pew-backed advocacy squad has picked Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) as their designated hit-man to go after me and my new book. At a Fordham-hosted event last week, he didn't actually hit me (or even bare his teeth) but he made clear that he and his team don't like the book one bit, and now he has posted an amplified version of his grievances on the NIEER website [PDF]. I especially love his accusing me of joining "the radical left" because I urge a targeted (means-tested) rather than universal approach to pre-schooling. This is no place to respond to his Wilsonian fourteen points--the book itself deals in one way or another with nearly all of them--but??let me make three observations:
- Barnett apparently??can't make up his mind whether universal means everybody or not. At one point, he faults me for making cost estimates based on ALL four year olds, implying that participation would be far smaller; at another point he says that a decent program will in fact enroll more than 90 percent!
- Nowhere does he deal with one of the book's central points, which is the archaic, inadequate, input-centric??gauges of "quality" that the early-childhood-education crowd routinely deploys.
- He plays fast and loose with the??available research (on kindergarten readiness, on program effectiveness,??on program costs, on the "fade-out"??effect, etc.), distorting findings and twisting facts to suit his stubborn insistence that he has found the path to educational salvation and everyone had best follow it.
That said, this is an important debate for America--particularly as the Obama administration struggles with what it actually means by a "zero to five" program--and I'm glad we're having it. I don't mind a few bee stings. I just wish the honey in that hive were more palatable.
Editor's Note: The entire event was filmed and posted here on Flypaper.
