California’s preschool expansion has increased enrollment and it ranks high nationally for the amount of money spent on its youngest students, but it needs to focus on improving the quality of its early education programs, researchers said.
Across the country, the number of 4-year-olds attending state-funded preschools reached a record high last school year, driven by states adopting universal access and spending an unprecedented $14.4 billion across 44 states and Washington, D.C. The report was published on Wednesday From National Institute for Elementary Education Research.
The annual report said state-funded preschool enrollment in the US increased to 1.8 million children, up 37% among 4-year-olds and about 10% among 3-year-olds. More than half of the nation’s public preschool enrollment gains — about 25,000 students — came from California, which made every 4-year-old eligible for its transitional kindergarten program this school year.
Overall, states added 44,000 students to their preschool enrollments. But the report’s authors said the gains were smaller than last year and said preschool access remains highly uneven from state to state. Some states – including Alaska and Arizona – also lost land.
“If providing high-quality preschool education to all 3- and 4-year-olds was a race,” the authors wrote, “some states are near the finish line, others have faltered and been left behind, and some have yet to leave the starting line.”
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Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi and Rhode Island are the only six states to meet all of the benchmarks evaluated by the report.
The rapid implementation of California’s transitional kindergarten program has yielded its results. The national institute has outlined 10 quality standards for preschools related to teacher training, class size and curriculum.
Transitional kindergarten, which serves about half of the state’s 4-year-olds, received only three of them last school year, according to the report. The report said it fell short in several areas and needed improvements including expanding professional teacher development, further limiting class sizes and requiring health screenings.
“We really want to make sure that quality content and academic learning goals are centered in the program,” said Allison Friedman-Cross, associate research professor at NIER.
Other preschool providers in California have also had unintended effects. Private preschool owners say the influx of 4-year-olds joining public schools threatens to hurt their businesses.
“Universal vaccines … are a real victory, but it’s just the beginning of the work and not the end of it,” said Jessica Socco of Children Now, which advocates for early childhood issues in California. He said the state is expected to reach two more quality standards in next year’s report. The TK student-teacher ratio was reduced to 10-to-1 this school year and lead teachers are now required to undergo initial education training.
The California State Preschool Program, which serves roughly 11% of 3-year-olds based on income eligibility, meets six of 10 benchmarks with room to grow on teacher degree requirements, professional development and class size limitations.
The state ranks fourth in spending on average $14,907 per student across both programs.
There is growing evidence that the impact of high-quality preschool can carry children into adulthood, making them better prepared for kindergarten, more likely to graduate high school, and more likely to find work. And it is increasingly recognized as essential for success in kindergarten and beyond. Teachers now also expect youngsters to start their first year of school already equipped with the basics to help them navigate kindergarten.
“We have too many kids who are still not meeting their potential,” said Steven Barnett, founder and director of the Early Learning Institute. “We have evidence – very strong evidence – that preschool programs significantly improve the foundation for later success.”
Preschool means confident kindergartners
Heather Sifuentes saw the impact of preschool when she was principal of Parkview Elementary in Chico, California, as it launched its transitional kindergarten program. He said students participating in the program, which has a sports-based curriculum and the length of a weekday, arrived with more confidence and often volunteered to be class leaders.
“They are well prepared for the transition to that larger elementary school,” said Cifuentes, now director of elementary education for the Chico Unified School District. Chico has more than doubled the number of TK seats for 2022.
Marisol Marquez, a secretary who works for the state, sends vaccines to her daughter at First Street Elementary in Los Angeles. She and her husband, a UPS driver, are grateful for the free public school option.
Teachers there immediately realized that their daughter was bright and began sending her to kindergarten to learn math and reading. “If this program hadn’t happened, we would never have known about it,” Marquez said.
In some states, preschool is expensive. In others, it’s free
No state mandates that children attend preschool, and only a few cities and states make it accessible to every 4-year-old.
Preschool offerings vary greatly. A family living in Wyoming, which has no state-funded preschool, can go across the border to Colorado, where every parent can send their 4-year-old child to part-time preschool for free. All families in the District of Columbia have access to two full years of pre-kindergarten, while neighboring Virginia has a much less robust program.
Unequal access from one state to another can increase inequalities. Wealthy families can often afford private preschool tuition, which can average more than $12,000 for 4-year-olds, according to Child Care Aware of America.
For families who can’t afford preschool tuition, options are limited in many states. State-funded preschool programs often have waiting lists.
If a family’s income is low enough, they may qualify for programs like Head Start, but the number of children in Head Start is declining due to staffing shortages. Low-income families can also qualify for state or federal child care subsidies, but their waiting lists are also growing.
Trump says states should pay
Federal support for expanding early education funding is sparse and shrinking. Recently, President Trump said the federal government cannot support child care while it is waging a war with Iran.
“We’re waging a war. We can’t afford day care,” Trump said. He added, “States have to pay for this… they have to raise their taxes.”
Republican-led states have introduced universal prekindergarten, with Oklahoma starting in the late 1990s. Alabama and West Virginia also have preschool programs for all that receive top marks. Democratic-led states have lagged behind. New York state lost enrollment last school year, while New York City, which already has universal prekindergarten, is moving forward on a plan to make all child care free for young children.
This article is part of The Times’s Early Childhood Education initiative, which focuses on the education and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, visit latimes.com/earlyed.
Balingit writes for the Associated Press.
