LETTERS: Full-day kindergarten’s costs far outweigh benefits

The headline on the article about full-day kindergarten read, "Study finds full-day kindergarten opens door to higher achievement" (July 6 Review-Journal). Nice try! This is another attempt to increase the number of teachers (can you say union members?) and have taxpayers foot the bill for babysitting.

Gov. Brian Sandoval and the 2015 Legislature approved $2.2 billion in K-12 education funding, with $36.5 million going toward full-day kindergarten. So now, after the funding, we get a study to justify this huge increase in education spending. This spending is nothing more than a political move that will not help our students. That's because money isn't the answer, and neither is earlier schooling. We need to make policy changes.

To wit: K-12 education in Clark County has received increased funding every year for the past 30 years, and still our children are at the bottom for test scores in the United States. Our neighbors in Utah spend less per pupil than Nevada, and yet their test scores are higher. You would think that after 30 years, someone would recognize that what we are doing in education isn't working, but I guess not. Because now we have this new study that conveniently provides timely cover for our inept politicians and educators, with their usual policy of "Let's throw more money at education and expect a different (improved) outcome." This is along the lines of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity.

A somewhat similar was done by the Clark County School District and reported in the Review-Journal in February 2007. But unlike this current study, it had very different results. CCSD's own study showed that half-day kindergarten and full-day kindergarten only helped those students who were on the school lunch program. But there are studies which show that any ground these students gained was gone within two years.

The study also showed that second-graders not on the school lunch program who attended full-day kindergarten performed 3 percent worse on standardized tests compared with the half-day kindergarten group. So, one could probably surmise correctly from these results that most kids need play time more than classroom time at this early age, and that the majority of students are better off staying at home before first grade.

Richard McArthur

Las Vegas

The writer, a Republican, is a former member of the Nevada Assembly.

Sandoval's tough talk

I was appalled to read that Gov. Brian Sandoval threatened funding cuts for K-12 education, higher education and services to autistic children if the people of Nevada voted to repeal the huge tax increases just enacted ("Sandoval warns against repeal of tax hikes," July 13 Review-Journal). How about reducing some of the outrageous government salaries and pensions?

Robert Welz

Las Vegas

Gun violence stats

I don't know where Tom Bivins obtained the statistics in his letter, but they are extremely misleading ("Gun-control laws," July 10 Review-Journal). If he had looked at firearms-related deaths, rather than all murders, the story is very different. A historical list of firearm deaths per 100,000 people per year shows the U.S. ranks 13th, not 111th as Mr. Bivins alleges. The countries with higher rates of firearms deaths are in Central and South America and South Africa, not in any developed countries with well-regulated gun ownership.

A good reference for these statistics is the International Journal of Epidemiology. In the United States, the most accurate statistics concerning firearms-related deaths are maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those statistics are truly frightening concerning firearms deaths in American homes; only 2 percent of those deaths involve the shooting of an intruder, while 98 percent are from other causes. Accidental child shootings account for 3 percent, adult partners shooting each other account for 12 percent, and suicides — usually of a young person — account for 83 percent. More guns is not a viable solution to gun violence.

Wallace J. Henkelman

Henderson

Protecting bus stops

One suggestion made to the Regional Transportation Commission about how to make bus stops safer was to place bollards in front of bus stops, to prevent cars from hitting people waiting for buses ("Commission urged to do more to prevent bus stop tragedies," July 10 Review-Journal). In one of the more inane responses of a bureaucrat, RTC official Carl Scarbrough said bollards would not be used, as they might injure the people in the car. So innocent kids waiting for a bus must die so that idiot drivers won't be inconvenienced? I'm for bollards.

G.J. Connors Jr.

Las Vegas