Preschool Fight Becomes a Battle of Numbers

The campaign surrounding the preschool-for-all measure on Tuesday’s ballot has been tame, compared with that of past initiatives. But in the usually reserved halls of academia, it has created vigorous and sometimes rancorous debate about the effect of creating a universal preschool system in California.

The result is that voters considering Proposition 82, which would tax the wealthy to provide free preschool to all the state’s 4-year-olds, are being bombarded with contradictory studies and statistics.

“Most voters know during the heat of a campaign it’s kind of like a war: God is on both sides, and sometimes the data is the same way,” said Fred Smoller, a political science professor at Chapman University in Orange. “We have to be careful as citizens and as consumers of information, because data can be twisted and turned and selected in a way that supports one position.”

The measure, created by filmmaker Rob Reiner, would tax individuals who earn more than $400,000 and couples who earn more than $800,000 to raise $2.4 billion annually that would pay for voluntary, half-day preschool classes.

Proponents say the measure would help ensure that all children are prepared for school when they start kindergarten and would help close the achievement gap between whites and minorities, and between rich and poor. Critics argue that the program would be better directed at poor students and would create an unnecessary subsidy to families who can afford to pay for preschool.

The tenor of the debate was obvious during an April phone-in press conference held by UC Berkeley professor and measure opponent Bruce Fuller. Fuller was releasing a policy analysis of the measure to reporters when several proposition supporters, including the dean of the School of Education at Stanford University, interrupted the call to dispute the report and its findings.

“Bruce is grasping at straws and has been on a fishing expedition for finding things wrong with the policy,” Maryann O’Sullivan, founder of Preschool California, told those listening in.

The confusion factor for voters is perhaps best exemplified by what has become the mantra of proposition supporters: that every dollar spent on universal preschool will save $2.62 in future spending on crime, special education and other programs. The figure, which comes from research from the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, is prominent in the text of the ballot measure, as well as campaign press releases and events.

The Rand research was funded by the Packard Foundation, whose stated long-term grant-making goal is to make preschool available to all California 3- and 4-year-olds.

Senior economist and research coauthor Lynn Karoly said the Packard funding did not affect the research’s findings, because Rand retained the rights to publish its research regardless of outcome.

“In this case, our analysis of the preschool program was consistent with the position that the foundation has taken. If it had gone the other way we would have published it as well,” she said.

But the $2.62 return is a figure in dispute. Last week, a San Jose State study countered that the state would actually lose as much as 30 cents on every dollar spent. On Thursday, a Stanford researcher further complicated matters with a study arguing that Rand underestimated the benefits of preschool because it left out billions of dollars in benefits.

In both of those cases, the research was not funded by an outside organization. However, study authors in both cases had a set position on the measure.

Stanford University economics professor Martin Carnoy said he decided to study the matter because he questioned other researchers’ work.

“I’m definitely for the measure, and the reason ... I did this is because I read the op-ed pieces by people I know ... that I thought were sort of really off base and had nothing to do with the economics of it,” he said Wednesday.

Data overload has pervaded politics over the last decade, according to John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. “Giving it a number makes it seem like you are concrete.”

But voters are increasingly cynical about data they hear from politicians, he said.

“There’s a lot of people playing fast and loose with the numbers in many campaigns, and that makes ordinary voters skeptical when they hear someone throw out a number,” Matsusaka said.

Clearly, voters cannot be expected to analyze thousands of pages of data to judge the veracity of research.

“As far as sorting through competing claims, we obviously can’t expect the average voter to have a graduate degree in statistics,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Political strategists say voters ought to look at the source of research, its financiers and the expertise of the authors. Voters can also turn to parties who are not involved with the measure, such as the state’s legislative analyst’s office, for nonpartisan information, said Mark Petracca, a political science professor at UC Irvine. In this case, however, that office’s report shed no light on the measure’s financial return.

Petracca said voters should hold research to “a common-sense standard.”

“Do the claims seem reasonable, or are they fanciful?” he asked.