Description:
Advocacy for universal preschool is booming. Although it has gained no traction in Congress, the bellwether of that advocacy is the Obama administration's proposal for a new federal program, Preschool for All, which anticipates about $120 billion in additional federal and state expenditure over the next decade to provide all low- and moderate-income four-year-olds with free preschool. But, do we already have universal pre-K? We find based on our new analysis of data from the National Center of Education Statistics that 69 percent of the nation's children who entered kindergarten in the 2010-2011 school year regularly attended a preschool program in the preceding year. This is 14 percent higher than the rate of attendance for this age group reported elsewhere, and provides a very different impression of unmet need than other reports, including those produced by the White House, that aggregate attendance rates for three- and four-year-olds. We also find, consistent with other reports, that rates of attendance vary considerably by the socio-economic status of parents. But our attendance rates are higher for all groups than sometimes reported elsewhere. We use our numbers on present levels of participation to model the costs of providing universal access for four-year-olds to a voluntary half-day pre-K program. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Executive Summary
Publisher(s):