You Can't Buy Publicity Like This

The love affair between the mainstream media and the Messiah-elect continues unabated. Well, it's more a one-way affair - at least the Obama team seems to be holding its needy lover on a very short leash so far. Both coastal arms of the MSM sent little love letters to his holiness the last couple days.

On the east coast, the old grey lady melted over his education policies, particularly the devotion of $10b to early childhood education.

It was the morning after the presidential election, and Matthew Melmed, executive director of Zero to Three, a national organization devoted to early childhood education, could barely contain his exultation.Mr. Melmed fired off an e-mail message to his board and staff, reminding them of President-elect Barack Obama’s interest in the care and education of the very young and congratulating Mr. Obama for campaigning on a “comprehensive platform for early childhood.” Mr. Melmed was not alone in his excitement. After years of what they call backhanded treatment by the Bush administration, whose focus has been on the testing of older children, many advocates are atremble with anticipation over Mr. Obama’s espousal of early childhood education.

And the adulation just goes on from there, with nary a cynical voice to be heard. At one point, we are given a little teaser, that perhaps some negativity might be uttered. But no fear - it was a false alarm.

Debates cut many ways. Some advocates want the nation to start by expanding services to all 4-year-olds. Others say improving care for infants and toddlers cannot wait. Some insist that middle-class and wealthy children must have access to public preschool. Others say the priority should remain with the poor.

Our correspondent quickly jumps in to suggest what the anointed path will be.Mr.

Obama’s platform, which Mr. Duncan helped write, emphasizes extending care to infants and toddlers as well, and it makes helping poor children a priority. It would also provide new federal financing for states rolling out programs to serve young children of all incomes.

Towards the article's end it discusses the boundless dividends such "investments" will pay. It cited the Perry Pre-school study which claimed enormous dollar gains to society of lavish pre-school programs. The reporter did note that some doctrinaire sticklers have criticized the study's small size, but otherwise suggested near unanimity of support for this notion (here's a rather thorough debunking (PDF - see page 19) of these claims that obviously would have killed the reporter to spend two minutes locating). And it gave Obama the last word.

Mr. Obama’s platform accepts the broad logic of the Ypsilanti study. “For every one dollar invested in high-quality, comprehensive programs supporting children and families from birth,” the platform says, “there is a $7-$10 return to society in decreased need for special education services, higher graduation and employment rates, less crime, less use of the public welfare system and better health.”

A 7-10 fold return on your dollar? Such a claim could only be explained by some combination of dishonesty, stupidity, and insanity. Yet here we have a New York Times reporter, a president-elect and apparently the entire education establishment all trumpeting this absurdity. And we wonder how Madoff got away with it?

On the west coast, the LA Times had a nearly identical article, this one regarding Obama's environment team entitled "Environmental groups, scientists cheer Obama appointments." It is a breathless, start-to-finish tongue bathing of Obama and his flawless team. Not a single voice can be heard mentioning that we have here a team of individuals who have, outside of Steven Chu's work at Bell Labs over 20 years ago, never spent a day performing any real work in real market conditions. Aside from Chu, a nobelist, the rest of the team is the embodiment of mediocrity. The much vaunted Carol Browner is an undistinguished lawyer who has made a career of being an environmental scold, while the other two, EPA head-designate Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley, are clearly only their because of their color.

You would certainly never gather from the hagiographical reporting what a nightmare the Obama administration is turning out to be. His Treasury secretary is a Wall Street whore. His foreign policy team is a den of incompetents, and his domestic policy team a pathetic assortment of cronies, leeches, race-hustlers and kleptocrats. God help us, everyone.

More on Pre-School

Why would anyone think pre-school is so damn important, anyway? Alright, I confess I know little about the history of education, but as a concept that's been around since like forever, its formulation and structure must have more-or-less evolved through trial and error. Over time people presumably settled on a sweet spot for when it makes sense to start teaching kids reading and arithmetic. If teaching kids younger than 6 were a fruitful enterprise, why wouldn't that have been common. Sure, not teaching kids at all would be easier, but if you're going to bother to start teaching them at age 6, why not earlier?

And how often do you hear about parents pushing to get their children into classes early? Red-shirting, on the other had, is very common - why? Because an older child is able to learn more than a younger child. If learning at an earlier age were such a tremendous advantage, parents would be jockeying left-and-right to have their allegedly precocious child entered into kindergarten a year early. But this rarely happens.

Of course it makes sense that whatever additional education can be provided at age 3 or 4 or 5 will help the child read and add faster when he does get to first grade. But then the improvement should be immediately obvious. But how is that supposed to lead to significant, measurable improvements at age 30? Common sense tells you that whatever the advantage pre-school provides would be most magnified in first grade and then dissipate over time. But if the advantage is supposed to be evident at age 30, then it must be absolutely overwhelming in the early grades - and surely jump out at you as early as 4th grade.

But, as I pointed out in yesterday's posting, no such obvious advantage is observable among 4th graders. And if we can't see any clear advantage among 4th graders, how in God's name can we expect there to be any lasting mpact into adulthood? Yet David Brooks and President Obama are both certain that early-childhood education is the golden road to future prosperity. We are being led by insane people.

Is Early Childhood Education a Good Investment?

Lots of folks are debating the merits of President Obama's proposal to build "high quality" universal pre-school programs nationwide. The suggested price is $10b per year, which doesn't really sound all that bad. We already dump well over $20b a year on Pell Grants, which go to people well past their educational prime and is surely a big waste of money, so half that on 4 year olds doesn't sound so terrible.

But Obama and other proponents are touting it as some miracle investment that pays off its investment 7 fold. The claim seems preposterous on its face. Is there any good evidence of such a payoff?

Obama praised Georgia and Oklahoma, the latter in particular, for establishing such high-quality, universal pre-school. Oklahoma's went into effect in the 2000-2001 school year. So how'd they do? The NAEP tracks state performance every couple years or so. Those bragging about the program go on-and-on about how these pre-school students do far better than their peers in word recognition in first grade. Critics contend that whatever advantages might exist in first grade dissipate in later grades.

Since this is mostly intended to help "disadvantaged" students, lets look at the performance of black 4th grade students on reading. We'll look at Oklahoma, its neighbor Arkansas that does not have universal pre-school, the nation as a whole, and a large-city composite.

 Oklahoma had a large increase in scores in 2007, but it's not clear that this would have included the first class of universal pre-schoolers (presumably that first class would have still been in 3rd grade in 2007). and this cohort would have been the in the second class of universal pre-schoolers. But that year appears to have been a fluke, as the scores for 2009 and 2011 do not show any clear advantage for Oklahoma students.

How about Math - Obama's always going on about how we need to better our STEM performance in order to compete internationally. Surely we must expect this awesome investment to demonstrate improved math performance among 4th graders. Here are the math results:

Again, there clearly improvements in Oklahoma scores, but not clearly any more than the comparison groups. Oklahoma students do indeed do better than their pre-school-less Arkansas neighbors, but that was the case 10 years ago, and over that period Arkansas scores have improved even more dramatically than Oklahoma's.

If universal pre-school is going to have such a powerful effect that it results in measurable performance improvements in adulthood, then surely this power should be clearly evident just 5 years later in 4th grade. Yet no such obvious improvement is visible for the much praised Oklahoma system.

Universal pre-school might be desirable for other reasons - like for working mothers - although for welfare mothers we hardly need any more incentives for them to have more kids. But it seems highly unlikely it will amount to much of an "investment." Perhaps in a few years we'll see some dramatic improvements - but until then there's no evidence it is any such thing. It would make sense to wait at least a few years to see if anything substantive develops.

Update (2/15 8:10am EST):
Looking at 8th grade reading, again there is a bit of a spike, but no clear positive trend that differs from either neighboring state Arkansas or national trends. In fact, the 2009 spike we see would pre-date the first univesal-pre-school class, which would have been in 7th grade at the time. Of course that means only one such class is visible among 8th grade NAEP assessments - the 2011 assessment. But no increase is notable.

Ain't Easy Being a Gangsta

Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics

The NY Times article paints a pretty depressing scene, where

65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent

By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison

Among black dropouts in their late 20's, more are in prison on a given day — 34 percent — than are working — 30 percent

The article hits on probably the biggest factor in all this:

With the shift from factory jobs, unskilled workers of all races have lost ground, but none more so than blacks

The only hint that displacement by Latino immigrants might be an issue is this off-hand comment:

Dropout rates for Hispanic youths are as bad or worse but are not associated with nearly as much unemployment or crime, the data show.

Alas, the proposed solutions represent the usual litany of ineffective programs: job training, early childhood education, skills training for prisoners, and the grand-prize winner:

In a society where higher education is vital to economic success, Mr. Mincy of Columbia said, programs to help more men enter and succeed in college may hold promise.

Hello, Mr. Mincy - have you got a frickin' clue?