Full-Day Kindergarten Pitch is Another NJEA Kickback. Period.

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

We’ve been down this road before. Back in in 1998, Save Jerseyans, the U.S. experimented with full-day kindergarten via the lauded Head Start program.

The experiment failed. Miserably.

Read the government’s own Head Start Impact Study Final Report which reported “no significant impacts were found for math skills, prewriting, children’s promotion, or teacher report of children’s school accomplishments or abilities.” They spent $7 billion per year on nothing.

More like False Start.

But despite the mountain of evidence proving it’s an expensive, valueless exercise, Trenton Democrats are resurrecting the cause right here in New Jersey. Shocker.

Senator Teresa Ruiz’s bill is a $78 million plan to force the 20% of New Jersey’s public school districts not currently offering full-day kindergarten into doing so. Her estimate is low. You’ll feel it in your property tax bills soon enough if it becomes law. The superintendent of Wayne’s schools reports that the proposal will cost $2.1 million for his district alone and likely bust the 2% cap unless major cuts are made in other areas.

Why?

You know the answer by now! One reason: to offer a taxpayer-subsidized jobs program for teacher unions who support full-day kindergarten for that very reason AND, lest we forget, bankroll Democrat campaigns. It’s the same reason why so many trades unions are running adds to achieve a gas tax hike. More jobs = more dues paid = more political power.

#ItsForTheKids? Rarely. Follow the money… always. Full-day kindergarten only makes sense if you want to give more political power to the folks who are already in charge of stoking the Trenton dumpster fire.

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Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8405 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.

6 Comments

  1. As a teacher I disagree. Especially because in so many areas children come to kindergarten without ever having gone to preschool or a learning daycare environment. They lack basic skills that students used to know entering kindergarten and are severely behind. Full day kindergarten is beneficial and we’ve seen the results first hand.

  2. I was one of those who (as stated in an above comment) came from one of those areas without ever having gone to preschool or a learning daycare environment. We were not expected to come to kindergarten with “skills.” We were taught, in half-day kindergarten how to tie our shoes, cooperate with others, take turns. Was the fact that I did well in school, graduated from high school and a major university with honors an anomaly? Because that’s the argument you would have to put forth, and that would make it difficult to explain why the majority of those with whom I attended school, those from more trying circumstances than mine, could claim similar success stories, and those who couldn’t would not attribute it to an inadequate pre-school or kindergarten experience.

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