Reply to Are we fools not to play lottery for our 3 y o?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

To begin: I do not want free preschool. I DO love the fact that this city does provide free preschool for some (not all) of the nation's poor children. And, you are mistaken in your own perceptions of what and how this preschool is designed to do for kids in the city. You say that PS and PK is designed as an offshoot of head start to provide free early education to kids whose parents can't afford it? That is the definition of headstart itself. The OFFSHOOT of head start, however is NOT INCOME BASED. DC's preschools were opened up to all families, not just poor families. In fact, one could easily make the argument that these schools are not serving the poor kids nearly as well as the original head start programs would have, considering there's no income requirement now, and there are limited spots, and there are no in boundary guarantees for preschool. All of this means that poor kids who would have qualified for the free services previously only had to compete with one another for these spots, but now have to compete with children of all income brackets. So really, that argument does not carry. Now, the upside of this might be the benefits of mixing up poor kids with children of means, due to a host of complex issues that is tough to unpack on this post. Anyway, it's not that I am not saying there is no benefit to the "free" preschool. I'm just saying that the expansion of the program came with some drawbacks. The above is the most obvious. The poor kid might really benefit from preschool, but might get closed out if too many other kids (including those of affluent families who could afford to pay for it anyway) take the few spots. It's musical chairs, to begin with, and not every kid gets a seat. So, if you think this program should be about helping poor families, we agree. BUT, it isn't. That is a different post, but it's worth saying since PP tried using it to suggest I'm entitled. 
 
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This is actually not true. Every year there are extra spots for PS and PK. They just might not be at a school that YOU would consider to be an OK place to send your child.

And let's not kid ourselves. Rhee expanded the PreSchool program to attract EXACTLY the kinds of middle to upper middle class families it has attracted to the public school system, with the hopes that once these families are in DCPS/charters, they will stay rather than head for private or the burbs. [/quote]
Send your kid there all day long! Put your money where your mouth is. Not likely! Me neither. I'm not sending my kid to a school where only 23% of the kids can read. Wouldn't send my dog there. But, surely YOU would send YOURS because they're good enough for YOU! Bad liar!!! [/quote]

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