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Organizations and lawmakers across the country are leading the charge for publicly-funded, universal pre-kindergarten.

Last month, “Pre-K Now” held its annual satellite conference, reaching more than 1,500 supporters in 35 states. The event included live interviews with the Governors of Connecticut and Tennessee, and legislators from Texas and elsewhere—all of whom heralded the benefits of pre-K for all children. 

Advocates claim universal pre-K will result in increased test scores, lower dropout rates, and students who are better prepared for a global economy. The evidence suggests otherwise.

United States fourth-graders perform well compared to their international peers – including France, whose fourth-graders trail the United States despite having access to universal preschool. But by the time American students reach high school, they rank near the bottom of all industrialized countries. At the same time, we spend more educating each student than almost any other country in the world. 

Our education bureaucracy is spending vast resources for dismal results. Further expanding this ineffective system to encompass toddlers is the last thing we should do – especially when evidence suggests our focus should be on the upper grades. 

Numerous researchers have studied the academic effects of preschool. While some studies have found positive effects for disadvantaged children, these benefits do not apply universally. Only one study has examined the long-term benefits of preschool on non-disadvantaged children. Its conclusion: children in programs not targeted to disadvantaged populations were no better off than those not attending any preschool.

In fact, research has shown preschool can actually hinder social development, especially for children from the poorest families.

In cases where students do benefit, the results are typically short-lived. Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara – in the largest-scale longitudinal research of its kind – found that the academic gains made by children in preschool faded by the third grade. 

Unfortunately, state legislators in Georgia have learned this the hard way. In the first 10 years of that state’s universal pre-K program, taxpayers spent over $1 billion on the initiative, and overall student test scores failed to improve. In fact, upon kindergarten entry, the scores of students who completed the preschool program were virtually identical to the scores of those who did not. The state’s leading education official admitted that the kindergarten non-ready rate was the same, regardless of the resources poured into pre-K.

The country as a whole follows a similar pattern. From 1965 to 2001, four-year-old participation in preschool grew from 16 percent to 66 percent. If preschool were related to academic achievement, one would expect great academic progress over that time period. Instead, student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress remained essentially flat.  (Keep in mind that real per-student spending has tripled, teacher salaries have increased, and class sizes have decreased over the same period.) 

As Darcy Olsen of the Goldwater Institute writes, “The lack of any apparent relationship between increased enrollment in early education programs and later student achievement suggests more formal early education is unlikely to improve student achievement.” Yet Texas currently spends more than half a billion dollars on public pre-K, in addition to federal and private dollars spent on early childhood education.

So what would universal pre-K do? It would further government’s creep into the lives of families and children. It would provide taxpayer-subsidized daycare for parents, many of whom already choose and can afford to send their children to center-based care. It would fail to increase overall student achievement, and it would do all of this at a cost to taxpayers of at least $2.3 billion each year.

The expansion of public pre-K does not address the academic defects that plague public education. Rather, shifting energy and talent away from K-12 does a disservice to all American children.

Jamie Story is the education policy analyst of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.