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Your points about parents only applying to the quality pre-K programs are good ones.

But's important to be clear that OSSE is not in a position to tell the public (as they are now) that there is a free pre-K spot for everyone, as long as they are willing to look beyond the top couple pre-K programs.

No one can say that, because OSSE won't authorize their auditor to study actual applicants via a household survey to understand their application experiences and placement decisions.

It is hard to believe that the pre-K system is at 101% capacity in October, and yet no parents are turned away due to lack of capacity. How many parents are turned away for lack of capacity, and how many because they were unwilling to consider certain schools (as you describe)? We don't know, because OSSE won't authorize a proper audit. I'm sure there are parents in both camps, but we need to know how many are in each camp in order to know whether and where we need to add capacity. As it is, OSSE appears unwilling to ask this question, because it might expose their universal pre-K claim to be untrue.

by Ken Archer on Jun 19, 2012 3:54 pm • link • report