Free Republic

During his State of the Union Address, President Biden rebranded the failed Build Back Better bill as his bill that would cut inflation, grow the economy, lower costs, and lower deficits. Then he added that his plan would include universal -- free -- “Pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old.” This is appealing to families struggling with high daycare costs so they can work. Others wrongly believe that children need to be in formal school as early as possible. Few Americans realize that government control over the rearing and education of young children is a key communist goal for turning our...

Biden's American Family Plan would dole out free college, free child care, free meals, and more. But does the math add up? Nope.President Biden released the provisions of his American Family Plan last week, and just like with his American Jobs Plan, the details are scant and the price tag is high.Even given the limited details, the plans ought to give everyone pause — and by “everyone” I don’t just mean conservatives who oppose massive welfare state expansions, but also those who agree with the objective of an increase in the social insurance system in America. There are some serious...

Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., unveiled a new plan for universal child care if he is elected in November, saying in an interview airing Sunday that a wealth tax would pay for it. The proposal would offer free child care from infancy to pre-kindergarten up to the age of four, Sanders told Anderson Cooper on CBS News' "60 Minutes." The idea was yet another in a slew of progressive plans laid out by the self-proclaimed democratic-socialist, plans that he said would be funded by increased taxation on America's wealthy. Sanders expressed his disdain for opponents -- even some within...

Currently, pre-K programs are spread out on individual campuses, and the district believes bringing them all to the same place will help eliminate any disparities that exist between schools and provide all kids the same opportunity. "Manor is growing every single day," said Nichole Aguirre, MISD's director of early childhood... The campus would be able to support 700 students at the outset, enough for the current demand, with room to expand the campus "to ensure that we have space for everybody"... Ideally, the district would like to be able to offer full-day pre-K to all 3- and 4-year-olds... funding for...

In 2015, a high-quality pre-k program was created and funded $118 million by the legislature, with the support of Governor Greg Abbott. In 2017, lawmakers voted not the fund it again, although schools still had to meet the program requirements, even without the money. On the eve of the 2019 legislature, the SBOE recommendation would not only restore the funding, but expand pre-k from half-days to full days.

Nurseries are encouraging children to question their gender by reading them stories that challenge male and female stereotypes. Books including characters who believe the are the wrong gender will be read to children as young as three after LGBT inclusion group Educate and Celebrate put them on nursery and primary school reading lists. One features a teddy bear named Thomas, who says 'in my heart, I've always known that I am a girl teddy', according to The Sunday Times. Educate and Celebrate, which was funded by the the Department for Education, has backed dozens of schools in adopting gender-neutral toilets...

George Halvorson, former CEO of Kaiser Permanente, and John Pepper, formerly of Procter & Gamble, claim that pre-K education gains are essential to developing America's future workforce. Halvorson avers that the "number one predictor for who is going to be in prison at age 18 is the number of words in their vocabulary in kindergarten." He lamented that there are "far too many people in prisons in this country" and of the incarcerated population, "60% of the people in our prisons can't read." He noted, "85% of the kids in the juvenile justice system even read poorly or can’t read...

...After “Sesame Street” was introduced, children living in places where its broadcast could be more readily received saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school. Levine and Kearney note in their paper that a wide body of previous research has found that Head Start, the pre-kindergarten program for low-income Americans, delivers a similar benefit.The researchers also say those effects probably come from “Sesame Street’s” focus on presenting viewers with an academic curriculum, heavy on reading and math, that would appear to have helped prepare children for school.While it might seem implausible that a TV show...

If you love your child, and I know you do, it’s time to say “bye bye” to the social pacifier that is free universal preschool. I understand. It’s tempting. Whether you’re a destitute single mother or an affluent married father, you’re a parent. And parents often feel wiped out. Especially in this economy. Sure, Michelle Obama has christened this the era of a “huge recovery,” but she’s not in the trenches like you—juggling the stress of being a provider and a caregiver for a 4-year-old. No matter how vulnerable you feel when you hear a certain Disney sing-a-long on repeat,...

On a panel promoting pre-Kindergarten programs at a conference recently in Austin, Texas, a pair of government officials–one local, one federal–made their case. Representing the City of New York, Richard Buery suggested that employing universal preschool is the number-one issue for Mayor Bill de Blasio. To critics of increasingly centralized learning schemes, Buery had something to say. “There are people who do not want us to succeed for a variety of reasons,” he acknowledged. “People speak ill of government so often.” But apparently there is nothing about which to worry because “[g]overnment is doing big things for people.” Far-left Democrats...

The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round, just like the endless cycles of big, bad government programs to federalize preschool and daycare. On Wednesday, the White House Summit on Early Education will unveil nearly $1 billion in new "investments" to "expand access to high-quality early childhood education to every child in America" from "birth and continuing to age 5." It's a retread of President Obama's 2013 State of the Union school-spending plan, which was a repackaging of his 2011 Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge program. Those Obama initiatives are knockoffs of moldy-old Democratic policy chestnuts, such...

After President Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address called for a new federal entitlement for taxpayer-funded free preschool or pre-K for all 4-year-olds, we thought his idea would be quickly discredited, not only by its enormous cost, but even more importantly by the overwhelming weight of research proving the lack of any long-term benefit from such programs. Now we are dismayed to learn from Politico that a dozen Republican-governed states are expanding state-based pre-K programs or are planning to do so next year. And in Washington, some Republicans are offering bipartisan support to a pre-K bill drafted...

When some people hear that the president has proposed a new federally funded pre-school program, they might think, “Great idea. It’s about time!” But they’d say this, surely, because they’re unaware that Washington is already running pre-school programs. Not just one or two, in fact, but 45 early learning and child-care initiatives. And no fewer than 12 of them are explicitly designed to provide early childhood education. The rest, however, also allow funds to be used for that purpose. So if the federal government is already bankrolling -- excuse me, if you and I and other taxpayers are already bankrolling...

“For millions of families in the United States, childcare is their single largest household expense at nearly $15,000 a year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor. “And in an economy where most families have two working parents, childcare isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.” The Senate on Thursday is scheduled to vote on a bill that would amend and reauthorize through fiscal year 2020 the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990. The program provides funding to the states for child-care subsidies for low-income families, as well as money to improve...

Are Americans really longing for “Head Start-like programs” for their children? So argues Eleanor Clift in a recent article for the Daily Beast. Clift praises El Centro Rosemount, a preschool center in Washington, D.C., that serves children from affluent families and students in the federal Head Start program.As the day care center notes, it’s one of the few such centers in the country that cares for students in Head Start along with students from tuition-paying households. Visiting the center and observing the students led Clift to the conclusion that Rosemount “epitomizes the value of early schooling.”Rosemount, however, might be the...

**SNIP** “The people who are pushing this are from the Working Families Party. De Blasio is married to them.” The Cuomo ally noted the WFP is basically run by the most leftist leaders in the labor movement — the Transport Workers Union, the Communication Workers of America and United Federation of Teachers, among others. **SNIP De Blasio and his allies show no sign of backing down. A labor-backed “UPK coalition” met Friday and vowed to continue a campaign to push the mayor’s tax-the-rich initiative in open defiance of the governor, who opposes it.

Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo were on a collision course Monday over taxes — with de Blasio declaring that he won’t abandon his plan to tax the rich even if the state funds the universal pre-kindergarten classes that he’s been pushing. “We are not going to water down our goal,” de Blasio proclaimed, reiterating his intention to ask Albany to hike city income taxes on those earning $500,000 or more no matter what happens on the pre-K front.

Last week legislation was introduced in the Senate and House to create federally funded universal pre-k for 4-year-olds. The details of the legislation are largely consistent with the White House proposal, called Preschool for All, that was announced in the president's state of the union address in February. .... Senator Harkin, the lead author of the Senate version of the legislation, declared that "Decades of research tell us that … early learning is the best investment we can make to prepare our children for a lifetime of success." (snip) Unfortunately, supporters of Preschool for All, including some academics who are...

President Barack Obama has found a way to cater to his obsession with pre-K programs while the rest of his education agenda stalls: Skip Congress and spend the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for early learning are funneling into states although Congress hasn’t seriously considered paying for President Barack Obama’s universal preschool proposal. Race to the Top early learning awards and Affordable Care Act money are helping states carry out their pre-K and early childcare plans. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling the country to deliver what amounts to an early childhood stump speech, and...

President Barack Obama has found a way to cater to his obsession with pre-K programs while the rest of his education agenda stalls: Skip Congress and spend the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for early learning are funneling into states although Congress hasn’t seriously considered paying for President Barack Obama’s universal preschool proposal. Race to the Top early learning awards and Affordable Care Act money are helping states carry out their pre-K and early childcare plans. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling the country to deliver what amounts to an early childhood stump speech, and...