Preschool is good for disadvantaged children. But is preschool alone sufficient to significantly reduce poverty and inequality? Like many researchers, I'm delighted about the current enthusiasm for preschool at the policy level, and would not want to throw cold water on it. Yet almost all studies of garden-variety replicable preschool programs show that the clear positive effects of preschool in the early grades fade as children go through elementary school. This should not be a cause for despair, but rather for realism about how to help children succeed all the way through to adulthood. If preschool is seen as the first step in a multi-step societal strategy, it is worthy of all the attention and investment it is currently receiving. If we're counting on preschool alone to solve all problems, we're just not being serious.

Isabel Sawhill and Quentin Karpilow at the Brookings Institution recently issued a paper making exactly this point, and illustrating it with evidence. They argue for intervening early and often rather than once and done. To support their position, they take proven, replicable programs that are readily available and imagine that government provided disadvantaged children with all of them in sequence, from early childhood to adolescence. 

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