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.
_____
Seriously?
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.
I am anti teachers union and their often organized crime approach, but I disagree. Full day Kindergarten is a solid necessity to the children.
Much like Head Start, any of the perceived advantages gained will be negated within a very short time. This is a giveaway of free child care and additional jobs (and dues) for the NJEA.
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.
Howzabout we have this little chat AFTER your union is drawn and quartered?