Poster #85 - Enrollment Practices and Child Diversity in State Pre-K, Head Start, and Other Early Childhood Centers

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Introduction

In the U.S., 40% of 3- to 4-year-old children were enrolled in school during 2020-2021 (National Center for Education Statistics; NCES, 2022), with 1.36 million children in state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2022). State pre-K programs often seek to promote equity through enrollment practices. The Arkansas Better Chance (ABC) pre-K program prioritizes enrolling children from low-income families and who have academic risk factors, including low parental education, child disability, and homelessness (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2022; McKenzie & McGee, 2022). Federally funded Head Start programs prioritize children from similar populations as ABC. In Arkansas, most children attend center-based early care and education (ECE) programs operated as ABC, Head Start, independent for-profit centers, public or nonprofit organizations, or religious or school-affiliated programs (McKenzie & McGee, 2022). Our data about implementation of ECE enrollment practices provides a unique opportunity to understand how these practices differ among the broad range of programs available in Arkansas.

Research Question

We compare enrollment priorities and characteristics for three types of programs: ABC pre-K centers, Head Start, and other types of ECE centers (accepting neither ABC nor Head Start funding). Our research question is: To what extent do enrollment priorities, practices, and diversity of populations served differ between ABC and other ECE and Head Start centers?

Sample and Method

Using a list of ECE centers (n=1,231) provided by state administrators, we conducted an electronic statewide survey of Arkansas centers in early 2021. This was part of a larger study to understand child care subsidy participation among centers serving children from low-income families. We received 463 surveys (38% response rate; see Table 1). Participants were compensated with $10 gift cards.

We employed Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) using three center types (ABC, Head Start, and Other ECE), and a series of independent variables about child enrollment (predictors in Table 2). Analyses were performed in R. Missing data were handled with multiple imputation.

Results and Implications

Table 2 shows that, compared to Other ECE centers, ABC centers were 1.20 times more likely to operate in areas of high poverty and 2.49 times more likely to enroll children with IEPs. Compared to Head Start and ECE centers, ABC centers were much less likely to enroll infants and toddlers, but were 4.31 and 2.32 times more likely to be located in rural areas, respectively. While ABC programs were 2.43 times more likely to enroll children experiencing homelessness than ECE centers, they were 3.46 times less likely to enroll children experiencing homelessness than Head Start centers. ABC centers were 2.76 times more likely to be fully enrolled prior to the pandemic than ECE centers, but 2.89 times less likely to be fully enrolled during the pandemic than Head Start centers.

These findings suggest that even though target audiences for different programs serving young children may be similar (e.g., ABC and Head Start enrollment criteria), there are both implementation differences and differences in populations served. This raises issues of equity of access to different types of programs.

Authors

• Jason T Hustedt, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Gerilyn Slicker, University of Nevada Las Vegas

• Melissa Stoffers, University of Delaware

• Cara Lynn Kelly, University of Delaware