10 Reasons why the city’s Preschool for All Proposition 1B is not a good idea
On face value, Initiative 1B appears to be a proposal with great promise but it’s the details, or lack thereof, that is of greatest concern to me.
If Initiative 1B passes, then an implementation plan will be developed to create the program structure. There are many questions that will remain unanswered until this process begins and we will not see this until after we have voted.
Because we will not know the details until after we vote in November, I am providing a list of reasons based on what I know so far and the City of Seattle’s Preschool Program Action Plan which the implementation plan is to be based on.
One of the consultants hired to create this Action Plan was BERK Consulting. BERK was also the consulting firm used to develop “The Road Map Project/CCER Local Race to the Top Application Development”. For more on the Road Map Project as developed in conjunction with Community Center for Education Results (CCER) , see CCER, the Road Map Project and the loss of student privacy, The Road Map Project, Race to the Top, Bill Gates and your student’s privacy and A Look at Race to the Top.
Now for the list
1.The city and its employees do not know enough to create such a program and then run it.
For example, the city has such a limited knowledge of how to establish and run a program that they have hired expensive consultants, rather than local “experts” who have had years of experience and training in this area, to come in and create the program for them. Unfortunately they don’t know who they have hired. See reason number 2 for an example.
2. One of the two consultants who was hired to create and implement the preschool program, Ellen Frede, is also an employee of Acelero, a for profit group that has taken over four Head Start programs in other cities where Universal preK has been established in a similar fashion by the city.