Approaching universality: Trends in public preschool expansion and financial support in the United States.

• In Event: Financial Aspects of Education

Proposal

High-quality preschool education is a powerful tool to reduce intergenerational inequality and can yield significant long-term economic and social benefits (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994, Heckman et al., 2010). Several resource-intensive targeted programs that were implemented in the United States couple of decades ago provided strong evidence for a high rate of return among children from low-income families, and later became “model” programs for public preschool programs in the country (e.g., Heckman et al., 2010; Campbell et al., 2008; Dobbie & Fryer, 2011). Meanwhile differences in persistence of effects from larger state-wide preschool in the U.S. have highlighted potential variability that occurs in program design and curriculum, as well as challenges sustaining financial support when a program is scaled (e.g., Gormley et al., 2005; Lipsey et al., 2013; Barnett, 2010).
In the past two decades, the landscape of U.S. public-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) has changed markedly, with a growing share of 3- and 4-year-olds now participating in formal programs (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2020). However, despite high levels of public and academic support, in 2019 only six percent of 3-year-olds and one third of 4-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded pre-K. This enrollment coverage is considerably low compared to coverage in other high-income countries, and many children in the U.S. enter the K-12 system without formal preschool education, contributing to the widened “achievement” or “opportunity” gap.
State-level policies have played a large role in supporting pre-K in the U.S. The nature of public pre-K (who it serves, how it is funded, and the government’s role) can differ dramatically between states. While most states still offer targeted (means-tested) pre-K to children who meet enrollment requirements, which are often based on family income levels, a growing number of states have broadened their programs’ enrollment eligibility to only age, with some approaching nearly a universal coverage (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2020). How states run their pre-K programs often differ from its K-12 counterpart. For example, unlike funding at the K-12 level, pre-K funding in the U.S. has rarely been set based on pre-determined technical assessment of per-pupil cost of providing a high-quality program (Barnett & Kasmin, 2018). Whether enrollments rise or fall, states often need to consider the total appropriation for pre-K funding.
Early childhood education programs in many high-income countries often support all age appropriate children’s participation and promote social and economic integration. This study utilizes the diversity in states’ approaches to enrollment in the U.S. to examine the subsequent outcomes in financial supports that state pre-K. We aim to investigate whether more open programs attract more politically powerful parents and hence more public dollars that they may influence using the theoretical framework of Sniderman and Carmines’ (1997) Theory of Policy Particularism and contemporary welfare theory. The study seeks to answer the following research questions:
1. To what extent is expanded enrollment in state pre-K programs associated with greater (or lower) levels of per-pupil financial support in the U.S.?
2. To what extent does the relationship between program growth and funding depend on the universality (targeted vs. open) of the program in the U.S.?
We first explore trends in state-funded pre-K enrollment and per-pupil pre-K funding levels. We then address the first stated research question by estimating the relationship between expanded utilization (percent enrollment of 4-year-olds) and financial support (pre-K per pupil expenditure) in a two-way fixed effect framework. The primary analytic strategy provided a local average treatment effect for states whose pre-K enrollment levels expand (or shrink) during the 12-year window between 2007-2016. To address the second research question, we use a simple interaction term and subgroup analysis to estimate the degree to which the relationship between expanded pre-K enrollment and per-pupil financial support differs based on whether the state’s primary pre-K program is means-tested or open enrollment.
We primarily use data from 2007-2016 from three U.S. data sources. National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) and its State of Preschool Yearbooks provides data on enrollment, program offering types, and pre-K spending. The National Public Education Financial Survey Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides information on state-level PK-12 Per Pupil Expenditure (PPE). The district-level Common Core Data (CCD) pre-K (and PK-12) enrollment files capture school racial composition as control variables in our model. We also plan to add important economic data (e.g. unemployment, gross state product) to account for time-variant state specific financial strength or hardship that might influence program support.
We find descriptively that while both states with open programs and target ones have expanded enrollment over the past decade, the relationship between that expansion and their subsequent level of financial support differs significantly, such that only open programs attract more funding per pupil as they grow in enrollment. We find that percent of 4-year-old enrollment predicts pre-K PPE in states with open enrollment programs at levels that are both substantively and statistically significant (p < .01), such that an increase in 10 percentage point increase in enrollment of 4-year-olds in previous year is associated with an increase of over $600 in pre-K PPE. The significant negative interaction term for states with targeted pre-K only, which is similar in magnitude to the main effect, suggests that percent enrollment of 4-year-old is not associated with shifts in support.
While preliminary, results are consistent with our theoretical framework that revealed preference support among parents for open enrollment pre-K go hand in hand with stronger fiscal support from the legislature. We find preliminary evidence that states with open enrollment programs may have some advantages. They showed more stability and growth in program coverage and program spending. These states also appear to spend more per child as their program coverage increases, corresponding to previous studies demonstrating that universal programs can be higher in quality than targeted ones (Cascio, 2019). We further discuss policy implications of the findings, drawing comparisons from evidence base regarding the effective approaches to pre-K from international contexts, including research on preschool funding structure, establishing preschool as a legal right, and preschool universality.

Author

• Shuyang Wang, University of Georgia