Governor Jon Corzine and Education Commissioner Lucille Davy are touting the results of a new study called “The APPLES Blossom: Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study.” The research was sponsored by NIEER, the National Institute for Early Education Research, and looked at the publicly-funded preschools in 15 of the largest Abbott districts: Camden, East Orange, Elizabeth, Irvington, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Newark, Passaic, Paterson, Perth Amboy, Plainfield, Trenton, Union City, Vineland, and West New York.

The results are heartening, showing that 3 and 4 year-olds who attend the full-day programs enter kindergarten considerably ahead of other poor urban children who don’t attend. The Press of Atlantic City reports,

Students showed the most gains in vocabulary and basic literacy skills, with those attending preschool for two years showing twice the gain of those attending for just one year. Students held those gains through second grade, although they still scored slightly below the national average

Math scores were also up, although the improvements in reading were not statistically significant. Retention rates went down: kids who didn’t attend preschool were held back a grade 11% of the time, but kids who attended for the full two years of preschool were only held back 5% of the time. Longitudinal studies will continue.

The price tag is high. New Jersey spends more on public preschool than any other state — $12,500 per child in 2009 – which adds up to almost $600 million in the 2009-2010 budget. Maybe you get what you pay for.

Though we do pay a lot. The 2008 data is available in more detail from NIEER, and it shows that New Jersey spent $10,989 per child. Running a distant second, third, and fourth was Maryland at $8,558 per kid, Oregon at $8,337 and Minnesota at $8,310.

So cost is one factor. Another is equity. While we are apparently doing a fine, if profligate, job with our urban poor youngsters, Corzine’s failure to fully fund his new School Funding Reform Act cheats non-uban poor 3 and 4 year-olds because they are not getting the much-lauded preschools. (The Education Law Center is no doubt culling the data to prove to the State Supreme Court that the SFRA, which replaced the Abbott funding formula, is a dud because it doesn’t perform as promised: serve all poor kids with extra services, regardless of zip code.) Sure, the economy tanked. But in the meantime about 500 local districts, whether they had 10 impoverished kids or 100, put their elaborate preschool plans on hold when the money didn’t come through. The result: no preschool for those kids.

We’ll say it again. With all the talk of consolidation and shared services, why are we redundantly creating cookie cutter preschools all over the state? Could one of the reasons we spend so much more than other states be that we needlessly replicate programs because we have so many school districts?

Solution: take our lovely county facilities and use them for preschools. Serve all the kids who qualify and integrate them into one space. We get equity and efficiency and maybe, just maybe, nudge New Jersey a tiny step toward a sense of a shared educational mission.