Sara Mead's thoughtful blog post responding to my Washington Post op ed is several hundred words longer than my original piece.??Mead is smart and perceptive, however, in addition to wordy. Once she actually gets her hands on??the book (Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut) on which my op ed was based--due back from the printer in a few days and meanwhile available in pdf form--she will, I think, find that I actually do heed the "factual" points she makes. Perhaps the only fundamental on which we disagree (and it's indeed fundamental) is whether "universal" pre-K is the right goal for American public policy. But the more interesting area of semi-disagreement concerns the markers and criteria of "quality" in the early-childhood field. Mead acknowledges that the field relies overmuch on input measures and should pay greater heed to learning outcomes. She's got that right; indeed, that's one of the book's major thrusts. But then she more-or-less exonerates the field for this oversight with the lame excuse that preschool programs are so egregiously underfunded that they must worry about inputs before they can afford to worry about results. That's mostly wrong. Some programs are doubtless underfunded but in the NCLB era they're going to have trouble making the case for additional resources unless they demonstrate their seriousness about school readiness and other outcomes. And some of the worst offenders--Head Start, for example--aren't underfunded at all, yet are profoundly resistant to being judged on their school-readiness results.??This is a conversation worth continuing, however. I'm looking forward to a face-to-face version of it at our upcoming panel discussion of my book and delighted?? that Sara will be on that panel.
