Thank you for the link to the articles, John_Kawamoto.  I think your conscience can rest assured that pre-school programs for disadvantaged, ELL, SpEd and other Head Start type qualifiers (of which Hawaii seems to have plenty) are indeed worth it.  The impact study points out, "For all these programs, the benefits of early education which appear to dissipate on standardized tests in grade school reemerge in adulthood through increased adult earnings, perhaps because long-term benefits are mediated by family stability or social-emotional strengths that are not assessed on third grade tests."