This fall, New Mexico voters will vote on proposed use of New Mexico's Land Grant Permanent Fund to fund universal pre-K. Paul Gessing sits down with Katharine Stevens, CEO of the newly-launched Center on Child and Family Policy, to discuss New Mexico's growing pre-K push.

The recently stalled Build Back Better legislation contains $110 billion for universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds. But is a big investment in early childhood education necessary or beneficial for the academic and social development of American children?

A profoundly faulty generalization, plucked from the brilliant work of Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman, is sabotaging early childhood policy and jeopardizing the well-being of America’s young children today.

A state-funded New Mexico study reports “statistically significant” improvements in children’s outcomes, which in real life are essentially meaningless.

Research on the effects of preschool are actually showing the effects of parenting. Preschool doesn’t cause better long-term outcomes — it predicts them.

Katharine Stevens joins Paul Gessing to discuss the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee’s recently-released study of the state’s pre-K program, its implications for state pre-K policy, and better ways to improve outcomes for the state’s children.

Nobel laureate James Heckman recently made waves among early childhood advocates when he said he is not a promoter of universal pre-K. In this episode, Katharine Stevens joins Ian and Naomi for a riveting discussion on James Heckman’s research and the case for providing targeted, high-quality care to disadvantaged children rather than universal pre-K.

Does pre-K work? We don’t know — and it’s the wrong question to be asking. The critical question is: what are the most effective early interventions for improving disadvantaged children’s lives?

Widely cited early childhood programs vary greatly in both design and results. The research on these programs shows neither that “pre-K works” not that it doesn’t; rather, it shows that some early childhood programs yield particular outcomes, sometimes, for some children.

A couple of weeks ago, RAND released a report on public pre-K, announcing that high-quality pre-K "works." But the research showing pre-K's impacts is weaker than commonly understood, and the impacts shown are much less important than reported.

We know that pre-K can work, but not enough about what makes it work and how.

Is the current research base sufficient to guide new and expanding early childhood initiatives? Katharine Stevens hosts a panel of four prominent scholars to discuss the state of early childhood research. While some argue that current knowledge provides adequate support for growing pre-K programs, others suggest that stronger evidence is needed.

An important new study reanalyzed data from the Head Start Impact Study, showing that some Head Start centers are effective while others are not.