I had some interactions on social media about the recent surge in word count differences in low SES and high SES children and how this is problematically connected to universal pre-school. The problem is not that pre-school itself is undesirable; the problem is these policy implications are premised on assimilationist and deficit-based views of low SES families.  Core to this ongoing trend is educational research that theorizes language as bits and pieces skewed towards upper middle class usage rather than deeply embedded in cultural contexts and widely, wildly, and richly varied across those contexts. Educational linguist Nelson Flores breaks it down beautifully in his short essay: Unpacking the so-called \”language gap\”.