Long-Term Effects of Michigan’s State-Funded Preschool Program

• In Event: 1-050 - As the Twig is Bent...Sustained Effects of Contemporary Public PreK Programs

Integrative Statement

Established in 1985, Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP; renamed in FY2009 from Michigan School Readiness Program) is a state-funded preschool program for four-year-olds, at risk of educational failure. In 1995, a longitudinal evaluation was launched, which currently is one of the only state-funded preschool program evaluations that followed children through high school graduation. The evaluation served to inform continuous quality improvement and to show impact that generalizes across the state. The positive findings, reported in 2012, leveraged a $130 million expansion of GSRP.

Research Question and Study Population

The premise of GSRP is that high-quality preschool can mitigate risk factors and support the school readiness and subsequent achievement for children with demographic factors that predispose them to poorer school and life outcomes. The key research question, therefore, was whether GSRP participation improves school success. We also asked whether the GSRP expansion of 2013-2015 enabled the state to spread the benefit of GSRP to more eligible children.

The evaluation sampled geographically and demographically representative GSRP programs across six Michigan school districts – Detroit, Grand Rapids, Grayling, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Port Huron. 338 children attended GSRP in the 1995-1996 school year, and 257 children did not attend a preschool program but had family incomes under $30,300, low enough to qualify for GSRP. Table 1 compares the background characteristics of the two groups of children. The groups did not differ at entry.

Methods and Results

Matched comparison quasi-experimental design was used to follow treatment (GSRP) and comparison (non-GSRP) children through high school graduation. We also analyzed the benefits and costs associated with GSRP’s two-year expansion.

GSRP participants outperformed comparison groups on school success indicators, with the most prominent being grade retention at every stage of the evaluation (kindergarten entry, 2nd grade, 4th grade, middle school, high school graduation; Daniel-Echols & Schweinhart, 2007; Florian, Schweinhart, & Epstein, 1997; Xiang & Schweinhart, 2002; Xiang, Schweinhart, Hohmann, Smith, Storer, & Oden, 2000). At high school graduation, children who participated in GSRP were retained less often, and graduated on time significantly more than those who did not participate (Figure 1; Schweinhart, Xiang, Daniel-Echols, Browning & Wakabayashi, 2012). Grade retention, by itself, led to almost twice as many high school dropouts as high school graduations. GSRP group also scored higher on Michigan Merit Examination in Mathematics and Mathematics and ELA combined (see Table1 for retention and achievement results).

Discussion and Implications

From its inception to 2018, the total funding for GSRP grew from $1,000,000 to $233,600,000 (plus $10,000,000 for transportation). The number of slots available to serve children grew from 694 (part-day) to 32,220 (school-day). The recent benefit-cost analysis based on the high school graduation results show that the GSRP expansion will more than double the investment through increased lifetime earnings, reduced public health costs, crime, and welfare receipts. Besides the the long-term effects of GSRP, we also discuss results from RDD, and interviews with GSRP administrators and program staff across the state on how GSRP sustained its high-quality programming while also increasing the access during its recent expansion.

Authors

• Tomoko Wakabayashi, Oakland University
  Presenting Author

• Lawrence J Schweinhart, HighScope Educational Resaerch Foundation
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zongping Xiang, Independent Consultant
  Non-Presenting Author