Universal Pre-K: 'This Whole Thing Is a Scam'

Universal Preschool 'a Waste of Money'

While there is no guarantee that government would run preschools well, there is one guarantee: It would cost taxpayers billions.

One argument against universal Pre-K is that most American kids already attend preschool. Parents...

One argument against universal Pre-K is that most American kids already attend preschool. Parents pay for it themselves, and if they can't afford it, there are free programs like Head Start. But under a universal system, taxpayers would pay for every child, regardless of who needs it.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

"Now with the economic situation being what it is, you're telling me that we're going to devote billions of dollars that we don't have? It's a waste of money," Levi said.

Making matters worse, private preschools that are already functioning well would have to conform to government standards, reducing the incentives to compete and provide the best-quality education. Levi and many others recognize this.

"The beauty of preschool is that there are myriad choices. If we didn't do our job, families would go down the street to the next school. Public schools aren't doing their job, and they get to just keep opening their doors," she said.

Yet the president and many universal pre-K advocates point to statistics that claim for every $1 the government invests in pr-school, we will get $10 back.

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Lisa Snell, education director of the Reason Foundation, points out that those impressive pre-K statistics are misleading because they're based on small studies of kids with very low IQs.

"They have these tiny studies of severely disadvantaged kids. But then they extrapolate as if you would have the same benefits for middle-income and higher-income children," she said.

She also pointed out that the most well-known of these studies, the Perry Pre-School experiment, followed only 58 children. These kids received many benefits like parent counseling and home visits -- all bonuses that would certainly skew the results.

Libby Doggett, executive director of one of the leading universal preschool advocacy groups, Pre-K Now, defends the study because she believes it demonstrates the benefits of a massive investment in preschool for low-income children.

"Well that study was an incredible study because they did have a random assignment. They had children who didn't get this treatment and children that did get the treatment, and the treatment was really high-quality," she said.