Preschool for All, Access for Whom? The Experience of Universal Pre-Kindergarten From the Perspectives of Parents and Caregivers in Chicago

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session Two
  In Roundtable Session: Early Childhood Education: Access, Pedagogy, Leadership, and Family Support (Table 3)

Abstract

In 2019, Chicago rolled out a free, mixed-delivery Universal PreK (UPK) program, hoping to combat existing racial and economic segregation in early childhood education (ECE) access by completely saturating high-need communities before moving on to the rest of the city. It remains an empirical question whether such an approach is successful in addressing the barriers to access that low-income families might experience. Moreover, findings from other cities suggest there may be other material or non-material barriers to access that are not being addressed, urging us to develop more broadly an understanding of what accessibility means, and the role UPK plays, in families lives. Building off existing work elevating parent voices in ECE, and justice-based approaches to family engagement (Ishimaru et al., 2019, Navarro-Cruz & Luschei, 2020; Weber et al., 2018), I conduct qualitative interviews with 50 primary caregivers of preschool-aged children currently enrolled in a preschool program in the "high needs" areas who have had historically limited access to ECE. I collaborate with LatinX scholars to interview both Spanish (n=15) and English (n=35) speaking families. Through this study I hope to better capture the opportunities and challenges of participating in Chicago's UPK system from the unique perspectives of parents/caregivers who are making difficult decisions for their children in a changing early childhood policy landscape, and who are often left out of the policy conversations.

Author

• Julia R. Honoroff, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author