California’s Transitional Kindergarten Expansion

• In Event: California’s Child Care Supply: Enrollment Capacity, Facilities Constraints, and Labor Constraints

Abstract

In 2021, California passed AB 130, launching the Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) program with the goal of providing free, high-quality, inclusive pre-kindergarten for all four-year-olds. The initiative incrementally expanded access to Transitional Kindergarten (TK) to all four-year-olds beginning in 2022-23 with full implementation by 2025-26. TK is just one of California’s Early Childhood Education (ECE) options for families with preschool-aged children. TK is free, provided by the K-12 system, and meant to use curriculum, instruction, and facilities developmentally appropriate for 4-year-olds.

As the completion of TK expansion approaches, we ask how state, district, and school-level trends in enrollment and take-up across demographics, student needs, and region compare to enrollment and take up in 2019-20, before the policy expansion and the COVID-19 pandemic.  Next, we ask what challenges districts are facing in TK implementation during the expansion phase. Our data come from enrollment records from the California Department of Education and from interviews with a variety of California school districts in a range of phases with implementation of TK expansion.

We find that TK enrollment is growing, but take-up rates have declined since pre-expansion years. In 2023-24, TK served over 150,000 students statewide out of an estimated 215,000 eligible children, about a 70 percent take-up rate. While this is a significant increase in TK enrollment compared to prior years, the take-up rate has fallen by 7 percentage points from 2021-22 and 13 percentage points from 2018-19. 

TK participation trends among Dual Language Learners (DLL) have declined since pre-pandemic rates. DLL take-up rates have fallen 18 percentage points. As TK eligibility expands, participation among DLL students is similar to socioeconomically disadvantaged (SED) students and all students at 71 percent. TK expansion does not appear to increase participation rates among children from underrepresented communities. Most significantly, TK participation among Latino children has sharply declined since pre-pandemic by 16 percentage points

We find expanding eligibility for younger four-year-old’s presents new challenges. School districts need ongoing support with facilities, staffing, and curriculum, to reach UPK expansion goals. Of the districts we interviewed, the top challenges cited included upgrading facilities to be age-appropriate for four-year-olds, developing TK curriculum, and building capacity of staff and leadership to accommodate early childhood education in K-12.  Now, most elementary and unified school districts are offering TK, and a growing number of districts are offering a full day TK option. School districts reported increasingly moving away from more academic kindergarten-like curriculum to more structured play-based learning.

Remaining questions exists about what explains take up rates by race/ethnic group.  In our conversations with districts, they were keenly aware of the tensions between TK and the other ECE/childcare options (e.g., CSPP, Head Start, and subsidized / private childcare providers). To truly understand both the need for UPK and the impact of UPK, it is essential to have integrated data on the other types of care available (including the capacity) in local markets.

Authors

• Laura E Hill, Public Policy Institute of California
  Presenting Author

• Maya Lawton, Public Policy Institute of California
  Non-Presenting Co-Author