This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 23rd, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Why the Push for Universal Pre-Kindergarten, given that evidence is weak that it improves the long-term

prospects of public school kids. According to Cato Institute Education Policy

analyst Adam Schaefer, it's all about money, monopoly, and misdirection.

The goals of Pre-K, as supporters describe it, simply to improve educational achievement and life outcomes for children.

Pretty basic social welfare program and they use as support for their claim that this improves the life outcomes of children.

Just a few very old and very peculiar studies where families had a massive intervention much more than

preschool for an extended period in early childhood.

And they conflate those kind of intensive programs

with simple preschool, which is for three and four year olds

where they go and play with blocks.

They claim that they can get huge returns.

For every dollar invested, you get a return of $7 or $10,

sometimes a year, $17, sometimes a year $2.

It's all over the map because basically this is highly speculative

based on a few problematic research programs

that looked into the effect of intervening

in early childhood environments.

Scaling up programs that were successful at pre-K,

what is the likely result from a public policy perspective?

We know that scaling up programs from a small academic

academically run program that involves maybe 150 children, which is the scale we're talking

...