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Preschool, head start, day care, or whatever program is available to a child who is not quite old enough to enter kindergarten can be a beneficial experience as it provides a valuable opportunity for young children to interact with each other. Meanwhile, instructional staffs presumably have been trained in techniques that will help young children develop the skill sets they will need to later perform well in the classroom. Furthermore, it accustoms young children to spend time away from their parents. As many families have two parents who work fulltime, preschool can be a valuable tool that satisfies the burden of finding a babysitter while formal preschool offers superior teachers that are trained beyond the basic skills of a babysitter. Additionally, mandatory preschool would be useful in helping children whose parents lack the skills necessary to prepare their children for school and help foster their learning potential. On the other hand, mandatory preschool is not necessarily the most effective strategy to improve academic achievement in schools.

The reality of child care is that there are a limited number of resources, including human and financial resources, so plans which seek to improve education in American must be very cost effective, such that they are well targeted, achievable, and provide the most academic success possible for the allocated resources. Mandatory preschool is a strategy that limits parental involvement in the day of a young child; thus, good parents are denied the full ability to influence their children's learning through their better parenting and as preschool classes are group oriented, a lack of the one on one interaction that parents can give their children limits the usefulness of preschool. Regulation is useful in all industries when it targets performance that is below bar; however, bad regulation limits those who are able to perform better. Frankly, instead of mandatory preschool, efforts should focus attention on parent programs that teach some of the techniques that preschool teachers use.

There are still plenty of parents who would rather choose to interact with their own children instead of sending them to preschool. By helping parents improve their parenting skills, it not only helps them improve their current teaching methods, but it helps parents better manage their children throughout the rest of their childhood. This means parents will be better involved in their child's school work while being better disciplinarians resulting in greater academic achievement. Leaders in education and America politicians always point to more schooling as the solution to poor school performance when they should focus on the efficiency of school. Mandatory preschool is not the best solution for improving achievement in America's schools.

Learn more about this author, Matthew J. Geiger.
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