RAND Review
Many Happy Returns
Early Childhood Programs Entail Costs, but the Paybacks Could Be Substantial
Challenges Remain
While the evidence on the potential benefits of broad-scale public preschool is compelling, significant challenges to the implementation of high-quality programs remain. These challenges should not be taken lightly as states move toward expansion. The quality factor is key to achieving policy and outcome goals for such efforts, and until state programs with ambitions of universality can also deliver quality, the benefits that may accrue from them are unlikely to be as significant as hoped.
About half of preschool participants nationwide today are in publicly supported programs. Public preschool is funded through a mixture of federal, state, and local government money, supplemented by private and nonprofit funding. The federal government supports preschool targeted to the disadvantaged, both directly through the Head Start program (which serves about 900,000 children) and indirectly through state-level allocations of other federal funds to preschool efforts. (These other federal funds come primarily from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Child Care Development Fund.) Thirty-six states provide additional support to make preschool available to greater numbers of disadvantaged children.
Public awareness needs to be raised about this matter: Many factors beyond cognitive growth are essential for healthy child development and school readiness. |
The movement to expand public provision of preschool has gained momentum in recent years. Georgia and Oklahoma already offer preschool to all 4-year-olds. Other states and localities are in various stages of implementing universal programs.
Because funding for preschool is often scarce, most states combine their resources with funds from Head Start and the other federal programs. But therein lies a central dilemma: The federal and state programs typically stipulate different eligibility and reporting requirements and often operate on different timelines, producing administrative obstacles to a unified effort.
Departments of education, of health and human services, and of economic development are all key players in preschool programs across the states. Programs with these multiple departmental auspices at the funding level may also create bureaucratic confusion or competition at the implementation level and thus undermine strong state efforts to streamline preschool systems. Having multiple uthorities can also result in fragmented or confused data systems used for monitoring and evaluation efforts, which are essential to ensure that investments are justified and quality is maintained.
Cobbling together funding from various sources could also influence content and quality as states struggle to streamline their accountability systems across funding streams. States balancing multiple demands may feel pressure to adopt narrow accountability systems that focus primarily on academic standards. Such accountability systems run the risk of artificially separating cognitive achievement from multidimensional child development, thus imposing an undue emphasis on cognitive growth in program design, implementation, and assessment.
Public awareness needs to be raised about this matter: Many factors beyond cognitive growth are essential for healthy child development and school readiness. These factors include child wellness and nutrition, family and workforce support, and parent education. If preschool focuses merely on cognitive development, other program components that promote broader school readiness skills might be less easily justified in a tight funding environment.
Preschool quality may also be compromised by staffing constraints. At this time, there are not enough high-quality teachers available for expanded preschool programs because of low salaries and limited training opportunities for staff. Training, professional development, and compensation of preschool staff will be core concerns as programs develop.
In most states, making high-quality preschool programs accessible to all children will likely require close and collaborative relationships among public schools, community preschools, and Head Start providers to meet the staffing, facilities, and access needs. Efforts across state bureaucracies responsible for these various providers should be integrated and, if necessary, reorganized to reduce turf wars. In particular, officials should consider whether having school districts dominate preschool efforts might reduce access to the programs, especially among minority families and others who are most in need of the services and who may be more effectively served by other providers.
If the currently limited levels of funding for public preschool remain constant or decline as program eligibility expands, the participation of all eligible families may be constrained. Families who currently do not meet the income guidelines for subsidized program participation might continue to be excluded at the local level if “universal” implementation is provided by states that lack enough classrooms or other resources to offer preschool to all eligible children. Without substantial, sustained funding for all families in all neighborhoods, “universal” preschool could fall short of reaching all the intended children.
For policymakers considering investments in early childhood intervention programs, a body of sound research exists from which to guide resource allocations. The evidence sheds light on the types of programs that have been demonstrated to be effective and the potential for returns to society that exceed the investments. These proven results signal the promise of investing early in the lives of children.
The economic benefits of universal preschool also appear favorable, although our results rest on the assumption that high-quality programs could be implemented and sustained on a large scale. Given the implementation concerns we have raised, the transition to publicly financed universal programs would best be accomplished by phasing in their coverage. The place to start would be in low-income communities, where the benefits are likely to be the largest and where access is currently the lowest. From there, the programs could grow to benefit all children within a state, not just those at greatest risk. 
Top