Our Democratic officials are all reading from the same hymnal.

Another State of the Union address; another call for the federal funding of universal pre-kindergarten. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has chimed in with his call for phasing in pre-k. The mayor of Syracuse has added her voice, and the Big Apple’s new mayor rode to victory on the need to immediately implement pre-k.

They tell us that pre-k will level the playing field for low-income children so that they can catch up to middle-class kids by the time they reach kindergarten. Early intervention will mitigate some of the disadvantages of poverty.

Surely, the collective call for universal pre-k is based on its success. After all, we have had the Head Start program since 1965, which currently covers 900,000 children for an annual cost of more than $7 billion, or $8,000 per child. President Obama wants to double the federal expenditure and encourage the states to join him in making pre-k universal.

The most comprehensive study of Head Start, sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, followed 4,667 3- and 4-year-olds in a national sample covering 23 states. The study examined cognitive development, social-emotional development, health status and access to health, and parenting practices. While the children showed positive development in the program, the improvements did not carry into kindergarten or elementary grades. The only significant positive effect was an improvement in children’s attention as reported by the parents. Unfortunately, independent assessors and teachers saw no improvement.

Defenders of Head Start contend that the curriculum and teacher education need to be improved to produce a high-quality program. Independent studies by Peter Bernardy and a team from the University of North Carolina headed by Diane Early find very low correlations between curriculum quality and teacher education and cognitive and social-emotional outcomes in pre-school programs.

Any rational person running a cost-benefit ratio of the program would conclude it was ineffective and a waste of hundreds of billions of dollars. Based on this, one would either abandon the program or reconfigure it to produce the desired results. I wonder whether the promoters of universal pre-k ever considered a national demonstration program to prove that pre-school for everyone actually works?

Which leads me to conclude that politics is not necessarily a rational business. Too many politicians are measured by their inputs, not their outcomes. The all-too-common answer to solving problems is to express your concern verbally and then spend money. Otherwise, how do you explain doubling down on a failed program?

Pre-k has now attained the status of motherhood and apple pie. It cannot be questioned by mere reason. Whatever America does to cancel our inequality is worth the effort and cost.

Excelsior!

Norman Poltenson is publisher of The Central New York Business Journal. Contact him at npoltenson@cnybj.com

Have you ever wondered why Big Apple mayors rarely move up to other offices? We have seen why in the past few weeks.

Think about it. How many mayors of New York City have become governor of the state? How many have gone onto Congress, as senators for instance? How many have become president of the country?

Diddly-squat. That is how many. And why is that? You might expect them to easily climb the political ladders of this state and country. After all, running a city the size of New York demands a lot of executive ability. And tons of political savvy.
The mayor is responsible for a $75 billion budget. And many thousands of employees. And thorny negotiations galore. Great preparations for higher office.

So why do most of them drop off the political cliff when they leave office? I think we see why with the crowning of the new mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced he wants to whack the city’s biggest earners with a half-billion dollars in new taxes. I’m your new mayor, watch your pockets. At first, he said the new tax grab was to find bucks to fund pre-K classes. (What better way to reward the teachers’ unions?) Then the governor said you don’t need to raise taxes. The state would pay for Pre-K. Even so, the mayor still wants to raise taxes on the 1 percent. Just to show them who’s boss.

Gov. Cuomo is trying to thwart the mayor. Give him credit. He realizes there is life outside the city. He senses the rest of the state may not be too crazy about whacking the rich with more taxes. After all, we are about the heaviest-taxed state. And we keep losing rich people. They flee to Florida and other no-tax or low-tax states. When they leave, the state loses the tax dollars they used to pay to Albany. The rest of us have to make up the difference.

I wrote about how the state legislature got too greedy. When it raised taxes on the likes of Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano, he fled to Florida. The state misses out on $16,000 per day he was paying in taxes. Take that, Golisano. We sure taught you a lesson for making a lot of money.

Back to the Big Apple. It has been losing rich people. Now the mayor makes a big show of going after those who remain. The more he taxes them, the more will leave. Hmmm.
 I don’t believe the people of Jamestown or Buffalo or Utica or Binghamton want to gouge their big earners. In that respect, they think differently than too many residents of New York City.

My point? The city is not like another state. It is like another country. So many of its residents don’t know Poughkeepsie from Watertown from Elmira. The upstate wilderness to them is Westchester County. Their knowledge of the state is limited to where the subways and taxis run. They figure the U.S. has, maybe, 10 other states. There’s Boston, Philly, D.C., and a few more.

A city politician run for state or national office? How about the Prime Minister of Botswana run. At least he probably knows where Syracuse is located.

The jousting that is going on between the governor and the new mayor boils down to this. The governor is saying to the mayor, “We have to consider the cities and towns and taxpayers and economies of the rest of the state.”

And the mayor is saying to the governor, “What do you mean state? You talkin’ about Jersey?”

Some pundits suggest there will be a showdown in Albany. I doubt it. De Blasio doesn’t know where it is.

From Tom…as in Morgan.

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home near Oneonta, in addition to his radio shows and new TV show. For more information about him, visit his website at www.tomasinmorgan.com