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Thanks for your comment; we appreciate hearing the opinions of others. Please note that in this particular blog post, we were using “haves” and “have nots” to refer to states’ levels of access to pre-K programs — not to the economic situations of families with preschoolers.

However, that said, research does indicate that preschool has benefits for all children, not just children from low-income families. For instance, this policy report discusses the benefits of pre-K for children from middle-income families: http://nieer.org/publications/policy-reports/policy-report-benefits-prekindergarten-middle-income-children The research on Oklahoma’s universal pre-K program is quite clear in this regard as well.

It is a mistake to think that all children from middle-income families are just fine. Many start kindergarten more poorly prepared than the average child in poverty. And, if we look at the other end of the education pipeline, it is clear that most high school dropouts are not poor. We can’t solve the school readiness and failure problem by just focusing on the poor.

It also is incorrect to assert that there are plenty of high-quality pre-K programs in the private sector. While there are some, recent studies including this one from Rand (http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR539.html) indicate that high-quality preschool is far from widely available to middle and higher income families, much less those who live above the poverty line but still can’t afford a quality pre-K.

In addition, targeting is not particularly successful. It falsely assumes that “the poor” is a fixed population. The truth is that families move in and out of poverty presenting a moving target to any program that is just for the poor. Such programs miss as often as they hit their targets.
Even in states where resources are prioritized to help “at-risk” children, states are struggling to maintain the funds they need to provide a quality program. Also, even while many states partner with private centers, children still lack access to quality pre-K programs.

Research also demonstrates that targeted programs do not reach all of the children they are intended to benefit. As our State Preschool Yearbook shows, 11 states do not have state-funded preschool programs at all; another two (Alaska and Rhode Island) have small pilot programs operating in a limited range of communities and reaching only 1 to 2 percent of the preschool population. In addition to these 13 states, 8 other states serve less than 10 percent of their 4-year-olds in state-funded pre-K. This is at a time when 11.7 million (46 percent) of children under age 6 live in low-income families (http://nccp.org/publications/pub_972.html).

- NIEER