I haven't read the two articles which Tara earmarked, but I have read many articles that show that there aren't many advantages to preschool after the child has reached the third grade. Just to clarify, while children may appear to be ahead for grades K-3, they don't deliver long-term results.
If I had it to do all over again, I would have held my oldest back for another year. She didn't have the maturity for the skills I was presenting so she just felt stupid. I wish she had played another year, not realizing what she was learning along the way.
I hear a few misconceptions in this discussion. Children who don't go to preschool aren't unsocialized. Unless they are raised by apes they learn to interact with other people. We live in a community so of course they have friends their own age. However, the best social skills they learn aren't from their peers who haven't mastered said skills already, but from adults who know how to behave consistantly.
Second is the misconception that kids only learn in school. They learn every moment they are awake. In fact, if you listen carefully to their make believe, you will hear them incorporating the things they are processing into their playtime.
One thing that is neat is that my kids, who have never been to any school other than homeschool, have never learned the concept of the pecking order. When my eldest's best friend started school she changed radically. Suddenly it was all about being smarter, wittier, prettier. That friendship fell to the wayside, because she was no longer fun to be around. But my daughter (if you don't mind my bragging) never changed. She still dresses the way she wants to dress (even though I think she looks ridiculous), plays using her imagination and does all of the things that most tweenagers are too good to do. She's an individual.
I'm not knocking your choices on where you send your kids to school, but I can say that it does matter. You need to carefully consider what is best for your child, knowing that you reap what you sow. My middle child could be left in the grasslands of Africa and come out knowing how to read and write the native language of whomever she met, as well as having developed a classification system for all of the plants and animals she encountered along the way.
My oldest has a very particular learning style. She would fail miserably in a classroom where she was told to learn the same way everyone else does. Financially speaking, I would rather live on hot dogs and beenie weenies for the next twenty years than to watch her fail. She needs a class of one.
She has blossomed so much over the past few months. While she learns slowly, she is turning into a beautiful young lady. She's learning cursive this year, which she equates with taking an extra art class. I have "y"s all over the place, because she thinks it's the most beautiful letter.
So back to the original question: is universal preschool effective? Mandated preschool is just an excuse to use state funds to pay for childcare. It should be the parents, who know their child more than anyone else, who make the choice where and when (within reason, of course) to send their child to school.
Elisabeth
