How to Choose? Understanding how Families Select Pre-K Programs in a Free, Universal System

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Integrative Statement

Early childhood education (ECE) has the potential to “level the playing field” by supporting children’s readiness to learn and reducing income-related gaps in knowledge, skills, and behavior that are present as early as kindergarten. However, the magnitude of ECE impacts varies considerably across studies, with large impacts documented in early, “proof-of-concept” demonstrations to much smaller impacts reported when models are brought to scale (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). Even within a given study, impacts vary across what may be conceptualized as a single program model (Morris et al., 2018). Program-level factors—such as interactional quality and the implementation of evidence-based curricula—have been shown to explain some of this heterogeneity in impacts (Phillips et al., 2017), and these findings have informed efforts to strengthen ECE programming and outcomes for children.

While this work has been critical, it is also true that ECE can only realize its potential to reduce income-related gaps in the population more broadly if all children—particularly children experiencing poverty and other early disadvantage—have access to and participate in high-quality, evidence-based ECE. Given known barriers to access, several districts in the U.S. have implemented school choice policies that enable children to enroll in schools outside their neighborhood, which—in theory—provides greater access to high-quality ECE and may even increase quality across the system as programs compete for students.

The success of such initiatives depends on the ways in which families navigate this complex decision-making process, and yet we know relatively little about how families make choices among multiple pre-K program options in a free, universal system, or how choice may vary across subgroups. Even after costs are removed from the decision-making equation, it is possible that families differ in how they weight other program-level factors, or in their capacity to seek out, understand, and act on information about programs in the first place.

The current study examines pre-K choice patterns using data from families who applied to NYC’s Pre-K for All in spring 2016. All children residing in NYC and born in 2012 were eligible to apply to up to 12 pre-K programs through a unified application process. Although pre-K programs prioritize different subgroups of children for enrollment (e.g., children with a sibling already at the site or live in the catchment area), children may apply to pre-K programs located anywhere in the city, regardless of their zoned district.

Participants in the current study were 55,379 children who applied to and subsequently enrolled in Pre-K for All in 2016-2017. Participants listed a total of 186,295 ranked preferences (M=3.36, SD = 2.84) to 1779 unique pre-K programs in the first application round (see Figure 1). Following Glazerman and Dotter (2016), we use rank-ordered logit models to examine how program-level characteristics (e.g., quality, composition, program type) and convenience factors (e.g., distance from home) contribute to choices across the sample overall and for different subgroups. Results will highlight the potential (or missed opportunities) for policies prioritizing choice to reduce income-related readiness gaps.

Authors

• Rachel Abenavoli, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth B Miller, New York Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pamela A. Morris, New York Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christopher Rodrigues, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author