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State-Funded Preschool in America in a “State of Emergency”

April 29, 2013

Today NIEER released its most recent edition of The State of Preschool 2012: State Preschool Yearbook at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This Yearbook marks a decade of data collection, from the 2001-2002 to 2011-2012 school years, tracking the changes in state-funded pre-K policies during some difficult financial times. Joining NIEER at the release were U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius; President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten; Chairman Emeritus of the Vanguard Group Jack Brennan; and Celia Ayala, CEO of Los Angeles Universal Preschool.

This year’s findings were the most sobering since NIEER started collecting data. Total state-funding fell by nearly half a billion dollars from the previous year, an unprecedented drop. This translated to a $442 decrease in per-child funding, down to $3,841. Enrollment growth basically stagnated – while 10,000 more kids were enrolled in the 2011-2012 school year, population also grew. This translates to only 28 percent of 4-year-olds and 4 percent of 3-year-olds, the same as in the previous year.

As NIEER’s Director Steve Barnett noted in his remarks, “the 2012 cutbacks in quality standards were directly related to shortfalls in state funding.” Quality supports were particularly hard hit by the dramatic cuts. While three programs met a new quality standards benchmark – California for early learning standards, Ohio for site visits, and Pennsylvania’s Pre-K Counts for lead teacher degree – seven programs lost a total of nine benchmarks. We were particularly concerned that five of these losses were related to site visits for monitoring program quality – evidence indicates that only high-quality pre-K programs significantly benefit children’s learning and development, and visiting sites to gauge quality helps ensure programs are serving children’s needs. Quality is of the utmost importance in early education programs, as noted by LAUP CEO Celia Ayala whose experience as a former practitioner informs her work in the field.

The panel conversation at the National Press Club covered not only this new data on state pre-K in recent years but also what the field looks like going forward, including the implications of President Obama’s plan for Preschool for All in his Fiscal Year 2014 budget proposal. The diversity of today’s panel members makes clear that the importance of high-quality pre-K and its lasting benefits are well-understood in our nation’s capital, in the classroom, and in the boardroom. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius noted that as a former governor, she would have welcomed federal investment in early education, while Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stressed the importance of collaboration among agencies and levels of government to best serve kids. He called for a “preschool movement” in America to support the president’s plan

Ensuring children have access to high-quality pre-K isn’t just an issue for the short-term. A significant body of research finds that the benefits of pre-K far outweigh the cost. Good preschool education provides children with a stronger foundation for lifelong success–reducing school failure, raising test scores, and increasing educational attainment. Jack Brennan of the Vanguard Group presented the business case for early childhood education, noting that businesses are the future beneficiaries of the skills that children gain in pre-K. State budgets are only now recovering from the Great Recession and, as Randi Weingarten of AFT noted, now is the time to make sure high-quality pre-K is a top priority of legislators.

Video of the full release event is available on C-SPAN’s web site and the conversation is ongoing on Twitter. NIEER will also be continuing to spread the word of this report at a Capitol Hill Briefing tomorrow, co-sponsored with First Focus.

– Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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(Almost) Everything You Wanted to Know about Pre-K in the Federal Budget

April 12, 2013

Since President Obama announced his goal of quality early education for 4-year-olds in his State of the Union address, the education world has been buzzing for more information. Details provided earlier this month indicated that the president’s plan would call for funding the program through an increase in the tobacco tax from $1.01 per pack to $1.95. The release of the president’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 provides significantly more insight into the administration’s Preschool for All initiative.

The Department of Education budget clarifies that the proposal is for a federal-state partnership to provide all low- and moderate-income 4-year-old children with high-quality preschool with added incentives to expand these programs to reach children from all income levels. The plan is part of a larger approach to expanding and sustaining middle-class opportunity. Education Department documents laid out key elements of the Preschool for All proposal; many are similar from the bills introduced in both the House and Senate since the State of the Union, including:

high staff qualifications, including a BA degree for teachers;
professional development for teachers and staff;
low staff-child ratios and small class sizes;
a full-day program;
developmentally appropriate, evidence-based curricula aligned with state early learning standards;
salaries comparable to those in K-12 education;
on-going program evaluation to ensure continuous improvement; and
on-site comprehensive services for children.

The Department of Education is requesting $75 billion over 10 years in budget authority for this plan with $1.3 billion requested for FY 2014. This is mandatory federal spending that is not dependent on an annual or periodic appropriation bill.

State funding allocations would be based on the number of 4-year-olds in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Table 1, based on the Education Department’s School Readiness budget justification, shows how state and federal shares vary over time for both regular and reduced rate states. The “regular” rate applies to states not yet serving half of the children below 200 percent of poverty; the “reduced” rate incentivizes pre-K for all children when at least half the children above 200 percent FPL are served.

Table 1. State/Federal Share of Pre-K Program at Regular and Reduced Rates

Program Year	Regular Rate		Reduced Rate
Program Year	State Share	Federal Share	State Share	Federal Share
Year 1	9%	91%	5%	95%
Year 2	9%	91%	5%	95%
Year 3	17%	83%	9%	91%
Year 4	23%	77%	17%	83%
Year 5	29%	71%	23%	77%
Year 6	33%	67%	29%	71%
Year 7	43%	57%	33%	67%
Year 8	50%	50%	43%	57%
Year 9	60%	40%	50%	50%
Year 10	75%	25%	71%	29%

The budget also requested $750 million in discretionary funds for FY 2014 for Preschool Development Grants. These funds would provide competitive grants to states “most willing to commit to creating or expanding a high-quality preschool system that can serve all of their 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families.” At an Education Department press conference on Wednesday, these grants were characterized as helping states address systemic issues in preparation for expanding preschool, which would include building facilities and workforce development. Eligible states would include “low capacity” states with small or non-existent state-funded pre-K programs as well as states with “more robust” programs looking to support quality improvement and expand access.

How many 4-year-olds children stand to benefit from the president’s plan? Back of the envelope calculations based on data from the ECLS-B study indicate that as many as 1.67 million 4-year-olds who live below 200 percent FPL could benefit because they do not now have access to a quality pre-K program (based on the numbers who attend no program or a program that is not high quality). This includes 365,000 African-American children and 565,000 Hispanic children. Rather than a “federal takeover” of early education as feared by some, the president’s plan would build on state efforts that work and improve those that fall short. With its added incentives to offer quality preschool for all, this plan could increase the number of children attending high-quality pre-K programs at age 4 from less than 1 million to around 4 million nationally.

The federal budget also makes provision for younger children. The Department of Health and Human Services budget has $1.4 billion in new Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships; an additional $200 million to support high-quality child care; and $15 billion over 10 years to support home-visiting programs.

At the state level, a so-called “sin tax,” such as the proposed tobacco tax, is not an uncommon way to fund programs for children. NIEER has written before about the pros and cons of this approach as well as a more comprehensive look at various state funding structures for early education. In fact, tobacco taxes fund early education through First Five California and First Things First in Arizona while Kansas and Maine both report using tobacco settlement funds for various components of early childhood education.

Several other noteworthy initiatives were included in the Education Department’s budget, as noted by Education Week:

$300 million for Promise Neighborhoods;
$112 million to help schools develop emergency plans, collect school safety data, and improve school climate;
$1 billion for a Race to the Top competition focusing on improving student outcomes in college without increasing tuition; and
$215 million for competitive School Improvement Grant program focused on school turnarounds and district capacity.

It’s heartening to see early childhood education at the top of the agenda for new investments in education. The proposed federal investment in pre-K together with the other proposed measures can increase the number of children ready for the early elementary grades, expanding the opportunity for all children to achieve long-term academic, social and economic success.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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Yes, Public Preschool is a Smart Investment

March 22, 2013

Note: This blog post is in response to the question posed by The New York Times in its Room for Debate forum: “Is Public Preschool a Smart Investment?”.

Early education and care programs have two goals — child care so parents can work or go to school and education so children learn and grow optimally. Unfortunately, much of what is called child care in the United States is what others would call “child minding.” Ensuring that children are safe, warm, and fed is not enough to support their healthy development, which also requires well-trained, adequately paid teachers who receive coaching and supervision plus sufficiently teacher-child ratios. This helps ensure caregivers provide children with educational content and play experiences that include language, math and science as well as attending to their social, emotional, and physical development, which are equally important. In a high-quality early childhood education and care setting, children learn language, how letters and books work, and about numbers, shapes, and dimensions. But they also learn how to test a theory, concentrate, self-regulate, develop attention skills, get along with others, and more. The end result is they start kindergarten better prepared to learn and live full lives.

The evidence for pre-K is substantial and far beyond the few studies commonly mentioned, such as the Perry Preschool Program (which skeptics criticize for being old and small). To date, there are summaries of 123 studies in the U.S. and about a third more elsewhere in the world that demonstrate the effectiveness of high-quality pre-K programs. From all the studies out there one concludes that early educational intervention can have substantive short- and long-term effects on cognition and social-emotional development, as well as on school progress, antisocial behavior, earnings, welfare participation, and even crime. A multiplicity of programs across various social and economic contexts, including large public programs, have been shown to be effective. Among the recent evidence are long-term studies from Michigan and the Abbott preschool program in New Jersey. So how can we choose not invest in it when the evidence also shows that for every $1 spent we get far greater returns?

The President’s pre-K proposal would help states provide high-quality pre-K for low- and middle-income families, which is crucial considering that children of lower income groups start kindergarten more than a year behind in language and math than their upper income peers. And this gap is very resistant to later efforts to close it. Recognizing that parents want quality learning experiences for even the youngest children, the President also proposed partnerships between child care and Early Head Start, a program for at-risk children under age 3 with a track record of success. Improving quality in child care for younger children, particularly the most disadvantaged, while providing expanded pre-K to 4-year-olds is too important to be an either/or choice. We can do more for children of all ages and the President proposes to do that, but ensuring that every child has access to quality education at least by age 4 is an attainable goal right now while pursuing that broader agenda. State leaders have figured out that pre-K is a good choice for families and children in their states and politically viable as a bipartisan policy – last year, 39 states offered state-funded pre-K programs, and enrollment – all voluntary – has nearly doubled in a decade. Even cities have started to push for pre-K programs, such as the recent efforts in San Antonio by Mayor Julián Castro. Nevertheless, finances are difficult for many families, cities and states. A little federal help will go a long way toward ensuring that all families, especially low- and middle-income ones, can have access to high-quality education for their preschoolers.

- Milagros Nores, Associate Director of Research, NIEER

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Fulfilling the Promise of Universal Pre-K

March 7, 2013

Few government investments pay the dividends of high-quality pre-kindergarten education, which has been found to return as much as $10 for every dollar invested, from higher earnings, lower crime, and reduced government costs later in life. Yet, despite powerful evidence that it works, states have a checkered history of implementing quality pre-K. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has now wisely recommended increasing the state’s investment in preschool education and has proposed new support for full-day pre-K. His challenge will be to avoid the pitfalls of other states and learn from their checkered past.

Across the nation, pre-K for all, or even most, has been achieved sporadically. Only eight states – Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin – provide pre-K to more than half of their 4-year-olds. New York trails these states, enrolling only 45 percent at age 4. New York lags behind such states as Florida and Texas not just on pre-K but on achievement at fourth grade, the first point at which we can compare achievement across the states.

New York has professed to offer universal pre-K since 1997, originally with a timetable to serve all children by 2002; follow-through has been the state’s downfall. As the governor fills in the details of his plan, he will have an opportunity to put New York back on track to fulfilling that promise. Success will require strong leadership and an actionable plan. In designing that plan, he should heed three important lessons from other states’ experiences.

First, New York must set a realistic but firm deadline for achieving the goal of pre-K for all with a series of milestones along the way. The state should consider following the example of West Virginia, which specified a number of “soft” mid-course deadlines for rolling out access and quality standards over a decade and is now confidently approaching the finish line of universal access in the fall of 2013. As generations of preschoolers have learned from the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race.

Second, quality must not be sacrificed in pursuit of quantity. Deadlines should be set based on the state’s capacity to build and maintain pre-K at a high standard. It has proven far easier to build quality from the start than to raise quality after a program has been brought to scale. Across the Hudson, New Jersey provides pre-K to fewer children, but it has transformed preschools in its poorest urban communities into a high-quality system of pre-K that attracts visitors from around the globe to see world-class early education. New York should put into place a continuous quality improvement system to ensure that the quality of teaching and learning increases – not just the numbers enrolled.

Third, to improve quality and access slowly but surely, an uncapped stable statewide funding formula is needed that enables every local community to move forward as fast as local conditions permit. States like New York that annually set a fixed expenditure for pre-K waste funds in years when few are prepared to move forward, and limit growth when many are prepared to advance. The simplest and most effective approach is to add pre-K into the school funding formula for K-12. States that have done this are the only ones to significantly increase access to pre-K during the Great Recession.

New York has come a long way from a decade ago when it offered preschool education to only about a quarter of its 4-year-olds, but it is nowhere near its goal of quality pre-K for all. It can achieve that goal by heeding these lessons. Without learning from them, New York will continue to shut thousands of deserving children out of pre-K and continue to pay the price of this unkept promise in higher rates of school failure and crime – and lower incomes – for years to come.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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Federal Proposal Would Build on State Efforts

February 26, 2013

President Obama’s call to action on early education is a watershed moment that has the potential to improve education for millions of American students. Ensuring all students have the opportunity to attend high-quality preschool, regardless of income and geography, is a key component of an effective education system that prepares students for success in school and society.

State-funded pre-K has grown substantially over the last decade to serve 28 percent of 4-year-olds, up from 14 percent in 2001. Yet, this is only part of the picture. As many as 40 percent are served by public programs when Head Start and preschool special education are counted, though the latter may consist of only a few hours of therapy a week. Over 80 percent are in some type of out of home arrangement including private programs and family home child care. Unfortunately, research now makes it clear that the quality of many of these arrangements as assessed by direct observation is far too low to promote educational opportunity. Some are so poor they may actually increase children’s risk of school failure. Head Start’s weaknesses have been noted by many as debate over this proposal has unfolded, but Head Start is far better than many of the private centers and day care homes children attend. NIEER has just released an in-depth look at what the research tells us about the outcomes of early education which can help clarify some confusion seen in media report.

That is why it is so important to understand that the President’s pre-K proposal will raise quality and educational effectiveness, not just increase the number of seats available. And, it will do this by lifting up the entire field. The models of successful pre-K for all already operate show the way. Oklahoma, New Jersey’s Abbott program, and West Virginia all integrate private providers and Head Start into state-funded pre-K. What does this mean? Head Start teachers nationally are paid barely more than pet sitters and dog walkers. This is Head Start’s Achilles heel. Teachers in private child care make even less. To use the New Jersey example, when integrated into state pre-K these teachers were given the opportunity to go back to school and get stronger preparation, they were assigned teacher coaches who worked with them as partners to improve their teaching, and their salaries were doubled. Of course, this came with accountability for results, but the vast majority delivered. Teaching quality in all classrooms, private and public, was raised from poor/mediocre to good/excellent.

Planning for this reform process has already begun in most states through their state early learning advisory councils. In addition, 35 states and the District of Columbia developed reform plans when they applied for funds to expand early education through the federal Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge in 2011. However, only nine states were awarded funds. These applications demonstrate a clear interest and capacity by state governments to partner with the federal government to start all children on the right path. States have never been better poised to prioritize early education and the federal government’s role is welcome support.

The White House preschool proposal has a few key words that are important in understanding how this would play out: “federal-state partnership” and “cost-sharing.” This isn’t the federal government signing a blank check to foot the entire bill for early education; it is limited support based on the number of low-income children in a state and tied to a small number of standards already adopted by many states. If other states do not want to raise quality, they do not have to participate. If they do participate, they will be in charge, not the federal government, which could list its requirements on a single page. The list of states that we believe might qualify with little or no change to state policy includes not just Oklahoma and Georgia, but also Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia. Mississippi is currently advancing legislation that would meet the test as well.

Once it is understood, the President’s pre-K plan should be endorsed by practically everyone. It supports equity and excellence in the pre-K policies advanced by governors of both parties. Both critics and supporters of Head Start should welcome it as Head Start reform that will strengthen that program and improve its effectiveness. Those who want to see more choice and competition should applaud federal support for state programs that incorporate private providers. To return to our New Jersey example, two-thirds of the children are served by private providers supported by local school districts responsible for ensuring quality through teacher coaching and supports to help children with special needs succeed in regular classes.

Given all of its advantages, the primary objection in Congress to the President’s proposal is likely to be that we can’t afford new spending when deficits loom so large. Yet, this is fundamentally a pro-growth, deficit reduction proposal. The biggest returns to this investment will kick in years down the road when the deficit is projected to become a more serious problem. And, it addresses root causes of the deficit–slow growth and rising costs of government including health care costs. Quality pre-K will enhance productivity to increase growth, decrease the costs of school failure and crime, and reduce smoking and other risky behaviors that harm health. Sure, it’s just one small contribution to deficit reduction, but a $50 billion investment over 10 years could contribute a few hundred million dollars to deficit reduction.

Rejecting the President’s pre-K plan is the far more costly alternative. We cannot afford to leave so many children behind with more than a third not ready to succeed at kindergarten entry. We cannot afford the lost growth and increased costs to government when they subsequently fail. We cannot afford failing to recognize that this is not just a problem for the 45 percent of our children who live below 200 percent of poverty, but for the vast majority of families. Deficit hawks, education reformers, and civil rights activists should unite to lead the charge for this proposal in Congress. States–red and blue–have already shown the way forward. Congress should follow.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

This entry is cross-posted to The National Journal and is in response to the post “Holy Preschool, Batman” by Fawn Johnson.

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Early Education in the State of the Union Spotlight

February 12, 2013

Rumors have been swirling that President Obama would address early childhood education in State of the Union speech, but there was still a thrill for early education advocates in hearing the President’s words rings out from the podium tonight. The full details of his early education plan will be revealed in coming days but inclusion in the State of the Union makes clear the White House has elevated early learning to a national priority. The emphasis on return on investment was particularly gratifying as NIEER’s Steven Barnett, working with Larry Schweinhart and others on David Weikart’s Perry Preschool study, noted the high returns to preschool with the $7 returned to $1 invested figure first reported 20 years ago.

In human terms, it is difficult to overstate the benefits of high-quality early education programs. Children who are enrolled in these programs are better prepared for school, which is particularly important at a time when 40 percent of kindergarteners are not ready to be in the classroom. Schools benefit from students coming into class academically and socially prepared to learn, resulting in reduction in grade retention and special education services. Families are better able to work when they know their children are in a safe and educational environment while benefiting from socializing with children their own age. Millions more Americans who may not even have preschool-age children benefit from long-term societal benefits — pre-K has been found to reduce participants’ future reliance on welfare and likeliness of being imprisoned, not to mention the fact that any of the 3-year-olds playing doctor in the dress-up corner today could be your surgeon twenty years from now. Opponents may argue that the proposal shared tonight could come with a considerable price tag. But $100 million invested in early education over the next decade could return as much as $1 trillion in benefits to the nation. And that is present value – or the equivalent value today – not a simple sum of benefits over time, which is much larger. That is an investment well worth making.

For too long, high-quality early education has been out of reach for most low- and middle-income Americans. As we noted last week, “Among children from low-income families, more than 1 in 3 attends no preschool program at age 4 and most do not attend at age 3. For those lucky enough to attend a state-funded program, real spending per child declined during the Great Recession, sapping quality. Children in higher income families have better access to programs, but those are not necessarily of high quality.” The President’s plan to seeks to ensure that all 4-year-olds can access quality programs, which will put children on an early path to success. Early childhood education can help all children at risk of school failure and close much of the achievement gap that plagues American education. This proposal improves opportunity for everyone, offering a hand up to lower and middle-income families that will help them reach the American dream.

Like all education programs, this new early education plan will work only with a strong commitment to quality. This means ensuring that all classrooms have highly qualified teachers, both through initial preparation and ongoing professional development. And, preschool educators must be paid on the same scale as K-12 teachers. Until all early educators are valued as highly as their higher grade counterparts, quality will be difficult to ensure. Some states have achieved more on this front than others, and it is hoped this new plan will flexibly help all states bring their current systems up to high quality, including teacher qualifications, while expanding access. States like Alabama, with high quality but little access, have very different assistance needs than states like Florida, with lots of children enrolled but low quality standards.

Moving this proposal from Capitol Hill into classrooms will require that Congress move beyond partisan politics in the interest of America’s children. This proposal is in line with the traditional role of the federal government in education: ensuring that the most disadvantaged students and states are given an equal opportunity. If there is any doubt that states are interested in pursuing these collaborative partnerships with the federal government, consider that thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge funds in 2011. In the end, pre-K is not a “red” or “blue” issue, a fact highlighted by the Obama administration’s plan to visit an early learning center in Georgia, a red state with a historically strong, large-scale program that has been embraced by politicians and parents alike. Oklahoma is a another leader in state-funded early childhood education, and early educator Susan Bumgardner, a 2013 nominee for Oklahoma City Public Schools Teacher of the Year award, was a special guest of the first family this evening. Early education efforts in the United States present a bipartisan state commitment to doing what is best for the nation’s children. Federal leaders should follow in the footsteps of the folks back home.

We applaud President Obama for introducing a vision tonight of what early education can do for millions of the nation’s children and families. In the coming days and weeks, we will be eagerly following the details of this proposal, hoping to see a pre-K plan move through Congress that supports high-quality early education for families and states most in need of expanded opportunities. America’s children deserve nothing less.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

- W. Steven Barnett, Director, NIEER

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

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Principles for New Federal Early Education Policy Initiatives

February 8, 2013

Anticipation is building that President Obama will propose a significant new investment in early education in his State of the Union address. There are many big issues to be addressed, and young children always seem to be considered a small issue so it would make a real statement if the President chose to mention them. There are two good reasons to do so. First, new investments in young children make sense from a purely economic perspective—high-quality early education increases long-term productivity and economic growth and reduces inequality. Second, this is a political winner. The states leading the way on access to quality pre-K are a highly bi-partisan mix—New Jersey, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Maryland, Georgia, and West Virginia. Two of the newest high-quality start-ups are Rhode Island and Alaska. When Americans put their children’s future first, that stubborn partisan divide seems to disappear. And, as the cost is quite modest that offers hope a well-designed plan might actually make it through Congress.

Such a plan should address two significant shortcomings in our current situation. Many children still have no access at all to preschool education. Among children from low-income families, more than 1 in 3 attends no preschool program at age 4 and most do not attend at age 3. For those lucky enough to attend a state-funded program, real spending per child declined during the Great Recession, sapping quality. Children in higher income families have better access to programs, but those are not necessarily of high quality. In fact a Rand study of quality in California revealed that access to high-quality preschool is a big problem for middle- and upper-income families who do not qualify for income-tested public programs.

Having studied preschool education programs closely, we propose the following principles for new proposed federal investments in early learning:

Put child development first. America does not need more poor quality child care; it needs serious investment in high-quality education that also recognizes the child care needs of parents.
Offer quality preschool education to all children regardless of family income. Every child is important. Children from middle- and higher-income families are at lower risk of school failure and other problems, but they fail to succeed at a rate that is far too high. In the interests of equity, offer a higher match for children from low-income families.
Prepare and pay all teachers well, including those in Head Start. High-quality education requires excellent teachers, which in turn requires adequate pay and preparation. Teacher preparation does not end with college graduation, so federal matching funds should be contingent on states putting into place continuous improvement processes that focus on learning and teaching.
Make public preschool education free to all. Public education benefits everyone, and we should all pay for it through taxes. Better off families can be expected to pay for additional hours provided for child care purposes beyond the school day. Create sustainable early education finance systems. States should be encouraged to support early education through school funding formulas that guarantee steady funding equivalent to that provided to K-12 students.
Begin with age 4 as this is the low-hanging fruit, but don’t forget about younger children. Access to early education drops dramatically at age 3, and every age is important. Nevertheless, we must remember that most of 4-year-olds do not yet attend a high-quality pre-K.
Provide incentives to all states to move forward, from those that have no state-funded pre-K programs at all to others that serve all 4-year-olds.
Support research to design more effective approaches to early education. The federal government is ideally positioned to support research and development through Early Head Start and Head Start. Permitted the flexibility, these federal programs can be the nation’s engineers of early education excellence rather than Gullivers tied down by myriad strands of Lilliputian regulation.

If these principles guide a new federal plan, we believe they would lead to smart new investments in early learning that everyone can get behind.

- W. Steven Barnett, Director, NIEER

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Not Just Wishful Thinking

January 10, 2013

Ensuring that all our children are ready to succeed when they enter kindergarten is a tremendous task, made much more difficult in the United States by high levels of poverty and low levels of parental education. One in four preschoolers lives in poverty, nearly half in low-income families. Twenty-seven percent are born to mothers without a high school diploma or GED. Assessments at kindergarten entry show that surprisingly many children from middle-income families are poorly prepared to succeed. There are many public policies that could contribute to reducing this problem, and there is no single solution, but let us consider one that seems obvious and for which there is considerable evidence, public preschool programs.

Public preschool education could be an important part of the solution, but currently it is not given a chance. Ensuring school readiness through preschool education is precluded by low levels of investment and high levels of wishful thinking. Far too many children lack access to preschool education, and it is least available to those who could benefit most. The majority of 3-year-olds in homes where Spanish is the primary language don’t attend any preschool program. Some don’t qualify for publicly funded programs because their parents work long hours to keep them out of poverty. Others live in states that don’t fund any preschool program at all or in neighborhoods that aren’t served. As a nation we spend far more public money on prisons than on preschools. Federal and state governments together spend less on preschool education than Americans spend on pet food.

The latest research on preschool program outcomes to cross my desk is the third grade follow-up of the national randomized trial of Head Start. It is now clear: Head Start produces no perceptible lasting gains in any domain of child development. This does not rule out very small persistent gains, but Head Start is not meeting its goals. Yet, much of the field seems to be in denial, responding that bad public schools erode the effects of Head Start. Somehow they fail to see that even initial gains are quite small and that children in the study made much larger gains in kindergarten and the early grades than they did in Head Start. Other studies confirm that learning gains in kindergarten are much larger than in Head Start. The root of the problem is that Head Start is locked into a program model that fails to focus on intensive education and pays teaching staff abysmally. This model has failed every true experimental test (Early Head Start, the Comprehensive Child Development Program, the Child and Family Resource Centers).

State pre-K programs often are little better than Head Start since they too usually lack the funding and standards of public education for kindergarten. State subsidized child care (as opposed to preschool education) is so poor that it may actually harm child development on average. Clearly, just shifting Head Start to the states is not enough to solve the problem. However, for all the faults of public education, one only has to look at growth curves for learning over time to conclude that if preschool were supported like kindergarten, children would be much better prepared. And, looking at the programs found to produce substantive lasting gains for children in well-controlled studies, the common theme is that they are much more educationally intensive than our current preschool programs. It is time to face facts and change directions.

If the United States is to effectively address the school readiness problem, public preschool programs must provide much more intensive education to many more children. Only public preschool education for all children is likely to achieve this goal. Means-tested programs exclude too many children who need help. The federal government should incentivize states to offer preschool programs that meet a small number of well-defined criteria for quality and set a goal to serve all children by a certain date. Then let states innovate as they have a track record of creating flexible public-private preschool partnerships. The focus of accountability should be on strong teaching and truly substantive gains in broad child development. Head Start should be integrated into public education as a funding stream to enhance the education of young children in poverty so that they start early and receive the best teachers and smallest classes. Once we stop thinking of preschool as charity and start thinking of it as an investment in everyone’s future we might actually do what is necessary to meaningfully improve the education of young children.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

This entry is cross-posted to The National Journal and is in response to the post “Pre-K for Everyone?” by Fawn Johnson.

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Preschool for Y’All: The Rise of Early Education in the South

November 1, 2012

(PART 1 OF 2-PART SERIES)

As our State of Preschool 2011 report made clear, state-funded pre-K nationwide has fallen victim to tight budgets. As rises in enrollment outstripped funding increases, per-child spending was dragged down. We’ve also seen that disparities in quality, access, and resources have been exacerbated over the last decade, as some states prioritized early education during budget crises while others cut spending. A quick look at regional trends finds one important point: early childhood education is a priority down South.

The South, as defined by the Census Bureau, comprises 16 states* — Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. (These states are further subdivided into three smaller regions, as grouped here.) A quick look at our Access map below, demonstrating the percent of 4-year-olds enrolled in each state’s state-funded pre-K program, shows that some of the highest access states are in the South. In fact, 10 of the top 15 states for 4-year-olds are in this region.

Mississippi is the only state in the South without a state-funded pre-K program. Otherwise, the South has prioritized access to state-funded pre-K, as evidenced by data such as:

All-age pre-K enrollment in this region is more than 700,000 children. This is 54 percent of children enrolled nationwide, though these states account for only one-third of the total U.S. population.
Most states in this region maintain impressively high enrollment levels, including Florida with the highest enrollment percent in the nation for 4-year-olds at 76 percent.
Since the 2001-2002 school year, the percent of 4-year-olds in the Southern region has consistently, and significantly, outpaced the 4-year-old enrollment rate across all 50 states, as can be seen below.

A large proportion of both Southern and national enrollment growth was the implementation of Florida’s Universal Prekindergarten Program in the 2005-2006 year, which enrolled more than 100,000 4-year-olds in its first year alone and has continued growing. Enrollment of 4-year-olds has increased nationwide in the last decade due in part to increased advocacy efforts at the state and national levels as well as a growing body of research proving the effectiveness of pre-K. However, the impact of these efforts can be seen even more clearly in the South, where enrollment has increased by a staggering 23 percentage points during the past decade, compared to only 14 percentage points nationwide.

Most Southern states also excel in terms of our Quality Standards Benchmarks.

Only five states nationwide meet all 10 of these, and three of them are in the South—Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. (One of Louisiana’s three state programs also meets all 10).
Another nine Southern states meet eight or nine benchmarks, an exceptional track record for one region.
However, the South also has two of the states with the lowest quality standards—Florida meets three and Texas meets four, which is particularly problematic considering their extremely high enrollment levels.

(Click on the Google Motion Chart image below to explore longitudinal changes in access, enrollment, and quality standards in the Southern region.)

Funding per child in the South declined in eight states since the 2001-2002 school year, though both Arkansas and Louisiana posted impressive increases in per-child funding in that time. Only six of these states (Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and West Virginia) met NIEER’s estimate for the per-child spending needed to meet all quality standards benchmarks as well as pay pre-K teachers a salary on par with kindergarten teachers.

Preschool has come a long way in the South, even serving as a national model in many ways, and advocates for children must be vigilant to ensure it serves those children who need it. In our national press release for the Yearbook, we expressed concern than political and financial conditions in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas could threaten program progress. (Individual state releases with more information can be found here). Given these threats to programs, it is important to remember this question posted by the Southern Education Foundation in 2010: “This is the South’s challenge and its moment of truth: Do we sustain the one area of public education needed by little children that is successful? Or shall we take steps to reduce or eliminate the best way we have to help little children become ready for success in education for years to come?”

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

- Jim Squires, Senior Research Fellow, NIEER

* The District of Columbia is also included in the Census definition of the South, though their enrollment figures are not included here as it would be inconsistent to compare a city among states. However, the District of Columbia has also shown a substantial commitment to early childhood education and provides publicly-funded pre-K to the majority of its 3- and 4-year-olds in a variety of settings.

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These Hours Were Made For Learning: State Pre-K Operating Schedules

September 21, 2012

Last week we wrote about changes in schedules for kindergarten classes, noting that some states and school districts are scaling back from full-day to half-day programs to stretch tight budgets further. This week we’re taking a look at pre-K programs and their operating schedules, using longitudinal data from our State Preschool Yearbook report series.

Like their counterparts in kindergarten, preschoolers may be in full- or half-day programs, depending on the state or school district in which they live. Indeed, most state-funded preschool programs (55 percent in the 2010-2011 school year, as seen in Figure 1) do not have a state policy on the length of the program day, leaving this decision up to local school districts. Of the remaining state programs, 24 percent have a state policy dictating a part-day program while another 22 percent require full-day programs.

Figure 1. Operating schedule policy by program

Program Year	Part-day	Full-day*	Determined Locally
2010-2011	24%	22%	55%
2009-2010	23%	21%	56%
2008-2009	20%	20%	61%
* Programs that report “school day” are included in “full-day” in these figures, resulting in some rounding errors.

Since the 2008-2009 school year, the percent of state programs requiring full-day pre-K programs has increased steadily. Still, an increase in the percentage of states with full-day pre-K policies isn’t the full story. As we’ve noted before, state pre-K programs are far from uniform, with some enrolling only 1 percent of the state’s 3- and 4-year-olds and others enrolling upwards of 70 percent of the preschool-age population. As a result, when we look at the percent of children enrolled in state-funded pre-K, as we do in Figure 2, we see a very different story.

Figure 2. Operating schedule by student*

Program Year	Part-day	Full-day**	Determined Locally
2010-2011	52%	41%	6%
2009-2010	50%	42%	8%
2008-2009	50%	43%	7%
* Out of those children whose schedules can be reported. In the 2010-2011, 75% of state-funded pre-K students can be reported by schedule (995,707 of the 1,323,128 served); in the 2009-2010 year, 62% (or 797,235 out 1,292,310). In 2008-2009, this was 63% (763,560 out of 1,216,077). Notably, California was unable to report its large enrollment by schedule during the 2008-2009 year.** Programs that report “school day” are included in “full-day” in these figures, resulting in some rounding errors.

More than half of the children enrolled in state-funded pre-K during the 2010-2011 school year can be found in part-day classrooms, up two points from the both of the previous program years. While this may sound like a small difference, in reality it means a difference of tens of thousands of children.

And, looking at media reports for the current school year, we fear that some states and school districts may be tilting the scale further toward increased numbers of children enrolled in part-day, rather than full-day, programs. For instance, Texas school districts in the past funded full-day pre-K classes by supplementing the state-funded part-day program, but the grants many districts used to do so were removed from the state’s 2012-2013 budget. Some districts are working to maintain full-day programs but will require parents to pay tuition as a result.

We are still collecting data on the 2011-2012 school year for The State of Preschool 2012, and we’ve worked to modify our questions regarding operating schedules to get even more precise data. Stay tuned for more when that report is published this spring. In addition, look out for the findings to be released from our colleagues on a study of half-day vs. full-day programs in Chicago preschools.

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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