One of the most oversold social policy interventions, running neck and neck with sending unqualified kids to college to try for a bachelor’s degree, is early childhood intervention. The programs used for the optimistic claims are primarily Perry Preschool and Abecedarian, both of which were extremely small-sample programs evaluated by the same people who ran them and riddled with serious methodological questions. The advocates of early childhood intervention seldom even mention the Infant Health Development Project, a much larger, independently evaluated replication of Abecedarian for low birthweight babies, which produced extremely modest results—no significant results at all, some argue. If you want more description and references, see chapter 2 of Real Education. But I’ve been making similar points for years, without visible effect.
A great idea has surfaced for blowing the claims for early childhood intervention out of the water. Congressman Jared Polis has proposed creating securities whereby people could invest in early childhood education and participate in the eventual returns. I think we all ought to get behind this idea, and thereby prompt some unsentimental hedge-fund guys to take a hard look at the claimed returns for early childhood intervention and the data that are being used to support those claims. I predict their technical conclusion will be “You can’t be serious.” Maybe someone will pay attention to them.