Poster #126 - Disparities in Post-COVID Prekindergarten Participation in New York City

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

In the period following the spring 2020 COVID-19 shutdowns, families with young children have faced difficult childcare challenges, such as uncertainty about whether their child’s pre-K will remain open or use remote schooling if their work schedules will permit them to keep their children at home, and if they have access to alternative childcare options. These disruptions to childcare consistency, along with the reduction in childcare supply, have contributed to substantial enrollment declines in state-funded pre-K by an estimated 15% to 41% (Weisenfeld, 2021). National-level analyses on preschool participation suggest that these declines are larger for children from lower-income families (Barnett & Jung, 2021), and non-white families have been disproportionately affected by childcare closures during COVID-19 (Lee & Parolin, 2021). These trends are a cause for concern, given the importance of equitable access to high-quality pre-K in closing the educational opportunity gap for children from low-income households and from minoritized racial/ethnic backgrounds (Chaudry et al., 2017).
This study focuses on New York City, which offers free, high-quality pre-K to all 4-year-old children in the city through the Pre-K for All program. In the context of this large, diverse urban area that provided universal pre-K to an estimated 68% of 4-year-olds across the city in the year prior to the pandemic and 58% of 4-year-olds the following year, we explore the disparities in post-COVID pre-K participation across income and racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, we aim to address the following questions: 1) How have pre-K enrollment rates, childcare settings, and childcare costs changed pre- and post-COVID? 2) Are there disparities in these changes by income and racial/ethnic groups?
For this analysis, we use the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker, a longitudinal panel survey data from a representative sample of New York City families with young children (N = 1,198). We use a subsample of families with four-year-old children in the 2019-2020 academic year (pre-pandemic, n = 546) and the 2020-2021 academic year (post-pandemic, n = 652).
We use a series of OLS regressions to conduct preliminary models on the outcome of parent-reported pre-K enrollment (Table 1). We find that the overall pre-K enrollment was lower by 13% in the post-pandemic period, as compared to the enrollment rate in the prior year (b = -0.13, p < .001) (Model 1). When examining the moderation effects of poverty level on post-COVID enrollment (Model 2), we find that low-income families (i.e., between 100-200% of the poverty line) showed a smaller decline in enrollment relative to families living in poverty (i.e., below 100% of the poverty line) (b = 0.22, p < .05). We find no significant effects in models examining enrollment by race/ethnicity (Model 3). To understand the implications of differential responses in pre-K enrollment on child development and family economy, we will conduct additional analyses examining childcare settings and childcare costs.

Authors

• Eunho Cha, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Jill Gandhi, Columbia University