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Drew Johnson In his “State of the State” address, Governor Phil Bredesen reiterated his costly plan for a statewide, government-controlled, voluntary pre-kindergarten. Bredesen’s scheme—which according to the governor’s own varying estimates stands to cost taxpayers from $275 to $380 million each year—puts state bureaucracy in the business of raising children. The idea comes at a time when policymakers nationwide agree that despite fifty years of research and billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, governmental preschools do little, if anything, to improve the lives of their students. In his “State of the State” address, Governor Phil Bredesen reiterated his costly plan for a statewide, government-controlled, voluntary pre-kindergarten. Bredesen’s scheme—which according to the governor’s own varying estimates stands to cost taxpayers from $275 to $380 million each year—puts state bureaucracy in the business of raising children. The idea comes at a time when policymakers nationwide agree that despite fifty years of research and billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars, governmental preschools do little, if anything, to improve the lives of their students. Governor Bredesen claims that a pre-k system aimed at high risk, low income children would lead to a “ Tennessee where fewer of our young people end up behind bars” or “on welfare.” These promises are nearly identical to those offered by proponents of the Head Start program at its inception four decades ago. Thus, assessing the value of Head Start to the children served by the program is a particularly useful tool to indicate expected outcomes of a pre-k plan for Tennessee . Vast research about the effects of Head Start and other government-funded school preparation programs indicates that the benefits of early interventions fade after children leave the program. A Department of Health and Human Services study captures this “fade out” effect, stating: “The long run, cognitive and socioemotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start.” The study continues, “Once the children enter school there is little difference between the scores of Head Start and control children. . . . By the end of the second year there are no educationally meaningful differences.” The sad reality of Head Start is that there is no evidence of any positive, lasting impact on children resulting from the program—educationally, economically, or otherwise. While there are no clear-cut winners in a statewide pre-k scheme, the losers are evident. Universal pre-k discriminates against families with a stay-at-home parent—who, on average, earn $20,000 a year less than dual-earner families—by using their tax dollars to subsidize the care and education of the children of other parents. Stay-at-home parents won’t be the only Tennesseans to feel the pinch. According to the National Education Association (NEA), Governor Bredesen’s estimated cost of $5,000 per child is extremely optimistic. The NEA pegs the average cost of state-funded pre-k programs at between $8,000 and $9,000 per child. If NEA estimates prove accurate, taxpayers would face a nearly $3.5 billion tab just to address Tennessee ’s existing preschool aged population, a burden of over $1,500 to every household in the state. Governmental preschools also suffocate existing private providers . In England , where the government recently launched a taxpayer-funded preschool system, more than 2,000 preschools have shut their doors since 1997 and 1,500 others avoided closure only because of emergency governmental funding. Not only would socialized pre-k create uncertainty for the current preschool teachers in Tennessee , it would also effectively eliminate the volunteer community of teachers and child caregivers who give of their time to ensure children receive quality education and supervision at minimal cost. Rather than gambling billions from the pockets of taxpayers, the Governor would be wise to apply the $10 million already allocated for pre-k pilot programs towards direct preschool education grants to families. Such a plan would offer 10,000 of Tennessee’s children of greatest need a $1,000 award for use at any preschool in Tennessee. Direct pre-k grants ensure that the government—with its proven record of failure in early childhood education—stays out of the business of raising children, while allowing disadvantaged children the opportunity to utilize the quality private preschool programs already succeeding across the state, at no added cost to taxpayers. Given the obvious cost and the unlikely upside of Bredesen’s pre-k proposal, the governor should shelve his pricey preschool scheme before Tennesseans get an expensive lesson in the failures of state-owned childcare services.