The Effect of Universal Public Pre-K on Public School System Enrollment: Evidence from Washington, D.C

• In Event: Early Childhood Care and Education Enrollment: Policy Drivers and Impacts

Abstract

Universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) aims to broaden access to high-quality early learning (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2024). Research documents system-level effects of UPK on children (Gray-Lobe, Pathak, & Walters, 2022; Cascio, 2021), family labor supply (Humphries et al., 2024; Jackson, Turner, & Bastian, 2025), and early education markets, including the crowding out of private providers (Bassok et al., 2014). Yet whether UPK expansion influences public school participation at the system level remains largely unexplored. Because these programs grow within fragmented early-care markets, implementing UPK through public systems may reshape not only access and quality but also how families engage with and move through K–12 education.
Understanding whether UPK stabilizes, grows, or redistributes public enrollment fills an important empirical gap and speaks to broader spillover effects of early education policy. From a policy perspective, assessing whether UPK strengthens public systems is important amid ongoing fiscal and enrollment declines in U.S. schools (Dee, 2023; Bacher-Hicks et al., 2024).
This study uses 25 years of population-level data (1999–2023) to estimate the effect of Washington, D.C.’s universal pre-K policy on K–5 public enrollment. I address three questions: What was the effect of D.C.’s UPK expansion on K–5 enrollment? Through which pathways did UPK generate gains? What mechanisms explain increased participation?
I find that D.C.’s UPK increased public kindergarten enrollment by 20% relative to comparable systems. It increased participation among eligible children by 10 pp at implementation.

Author

• Sofia Wilson, Stanford University
  Presenting Author