While we all want what is best for our children, the public school system is already the most expensive means to education because of its government involvement, why would we want to expand its inefficient and ineffective methods?
Institutionalized early education is the idea of extending the public school system to include preschool. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) wrote an article yesterday addressing the issue and here is what they said:
“Federally funded early education programs come with a hefty price tag—at the expense of the American taxpayer. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Education Begins at Home Act (H.R. 2343), a bill to expand Head Start and several other government programs, such as early childhood home visitation, would cost taxpayers over $190 million dollars. Another proposed “nanny state” bill that would increase government control over early education, the Pre-K Act (H.R. 3289), would cost taxpayers a whopping $500 million for each fiscal year through 2013—a grand total of $2.5 billion over the next five years.”
“While proponents of institutionalized early education support their claim that pre-K is necessary and effective by pointing to childhood education research, the results of such studies are, at best, mixed. Many pre-K advocates cite the massive studies on child care and youth development sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to bolster support for institutionalized early education programs. While many NICHD studies do, in fact, report some positive effects of pre-K, they simultaneously indicate several negative outcomes of early education programs. For example, in 2007 the NICHD reported in a single study that early childcare increased children's vocabulary, but that children who spent more time in institutionalized pre-K were more likely than their non pre-schooled counterparts to exhibit problematic behaviors, such as bullying, aggression, and acting out, through the sixth grade.1 Proponents of government-funded early education often tout the first part of this study, which reflects favorably on pre-K, while ironically neglecting to mention the latter portion of the report. Such cherry picking is academically dishonest and hardly sound methodology for designing and implementing public education policy.”
These programs will be funded by higher taxes at both the federal and state levels, while the results are any bodies guess. The last thing the economy needs right now is to be burdened with more taxes and to fund an every expanding and inefficient government.
Another problem is that the government approved curriculum would be subjected to state approval, meaning they will most likely include content that is highly questionable by most parents, like ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ training which are used to disguise ideas that are the bases on a rebellion against God, like gender identity, multiculturalism, post-modernism, humanism and feminism.
If the supporters of this new government expansion get the legislation to pass, they will soon push to make early education mandatory – which would likely enforce new rules on homeschoolers.
If you are not part of HLDSA, then I encourage you to join and help them battle the legal issues that are testing the freedoms of homeschooling in America.
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