Universal Preschool in California? Unintended consequences lie ahead.

Hollywood director Rob Reiner has a new project: universal preschool for California children. The ballot initiative, called "Preschool for All" will be decided by voters in June 2006, and features mandatory high standards for preschool teachers, with the price tag paid for by a tax on the wealthiest Californians.

What's not to like?

Well, for starters, "soak the rich" tax schemes never seem to generate the projected revenue, because when the rules change, so does behavior.

And government-run programs inevitably cost more than expected. For example in a SFGate article Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell use the example of Quebec's day care program which cost 33 times what planners projected. There are several reasons for this, for example the threats of strikes by unionized preschool teachers, and the simple fact that when something is free, people will use more of it than they would if they had to pay for it.

For more perspective, there's a December 8th Wall Street Journal commentary over at Lisa Snell's Education Weak. We hope California voters make the right choice this June.