Is the Charter School Research any Less Compelling than the Preschool Research?
In recent article by Daniel Willingham on whether the Obama reform agenda is research based on not, Daniel suggests that the only part of his reform that is researched based is its early childhood education proposal. This got me thinking, is the preschool research really any more compelling than the charter school research? I am a fan of expansion in both areas, but my take on what the research tells us is that for both areas high quality programs can have dramatic impact on student achievement, but low quality programs don’t really do much.
In a report that I wrote for the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence in California, I summarized the research that made additional investments in quality preschool so compelling (here). The most impressive
