Full-time preschool should be required
Minnesota took too long — the better of a decade or more — to go from acknowledging the benefits of all-day kindergarten to helping school districts provide it.
A new University of Minnesota study about the benefits of preschool should motivate the state — from parents to policymakers — not to make the same mistake twice.
The study, done by a research collaborative at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, found the more time low-income children spend in preschool the better prepared they are for kindergarten. It echoes similar U.S. studies done in 2006 and 2013.
Collectively, the message is clear: If the state is serious about improving overall academic performance, especially in closing its well-documented achievement gaps, Minnesota should begin plans now to create and fund all-day public preschool programs statewide.
Yes, it will be complex. And no doubt, it will require more public funding. But can Minnesota afford not to do it?
The biggest areas of difference were attendance, language and behavior development. Overall, the study’s authors estimated the full-time students entered kindergarten with a 4- to 5-month head start on the part-timers, to say nothing of kids coming with no preschool experience.
The good news is Minnesota already is focused on helping low-income kids gain access to preschool. The Legislature last year increased funding for such scholarships, and Gov. Mark Dayton indicated that could happen again this session.
While increasing targeted aid certainly is welcome in the short term, why don’t policymakers see the bigger picture and start now to develop mandatory, full-time preschool programs statewide?
Still, the lesson from all-day kindergarten should be clear. More preschool means more Minnesota kids will be better prepared for kindergarten and beyond.
St. Cloud Times, Dec. 8
Many Americans probably assumed the CIA had employed techniques most would call torture in an effort to gain information following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program proved the routine use of torture as policy.
We’ve heard both sides of the argument.
Some people say torture was justified to get information from the people who were involved in the 9/11 attacks about future plans to harm our citizens and allies. Without use of these techniques, they say valuable information that could have protected other Americans could never be obtained.
We lean with others, who say the use of cruelty to gather information should never be endorsed by the United States and is never justified. This side of the argument contends use of torture by our nation makes us just as bad as the terrorists on which it was approved for use.
Will this report hurt the ability of the U.S. to seek out and act against terrorists? It’s doubtful. Will the report be used to spur lasting reform of this nation’s policies? We hope so.
When a staunch Republican like veteran and former prisoner of war U.S. Sen. John McCain decries the use of torture, we ought to listen. McCain knows too well the impact of torture, experiencing it after his own capture by the North Vietnamese in 1967.
He testified on the Senate floor the practices failed their purpose, which was to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and its allies. Instead, he said the practices damaged our nation’s security interests and its “reputation as a force for good in the world.”
The United States should have that reputation and we should work hard to repair the damage done to that reputation.
We should be proud, despite the ugliness in the report, the torture detailed within was reported. Many nations which are doing the same kind of torture, and even worse, never admit it to its own citizens, let alone the rest of the world.
The report must serve for some good. By acknowledging the cruelty of which we are capable, we have set ourselves apart from those who aim to do us harm. We must go a step further by allowing the report to help guide us away from the justification by the actions of our enemies to again employ these methods.
