Closer to Home: More Equitable Pre-kindergarten Access and Enrollment

• In Event: Improving Quality and Access to Early Care and Education in the United States

Abstract

As pre-kindergarten (pre-k) expands across the country, school districts are making choices about where to place pre-k classrooms and developing policies for how families can apply and which children are enrolled. In doing so, districts are pulling policy levers that influence students’ access to pre-k. Research shows that some families have less access to pre-k than others, which contributes to inequitable enrollment within districts (Burgess, Chien, Morrissey, & Swenson, 2014; Dupéré, Leventhal, Crosnoe, & Dion 2010; McCoy, Connors, Morris Yoshikawa, & Friedman-Krauss, 2015; Nores & Barnett, 2014). We hypothesize that improvements in access may play a key role in the success of these policies by helping to increase enrollment rates among students who traditionally have benefitted the most from pre-k.
This descriptive study explored whether and how one urban city’s school-based pre-k system was more equitable after the district implemented a set of policies focused on changing access to and enrollment in school-based pre-k. Beginning in 2013, this city launched major policy efforts aimed at enrolling more students from “high-priority” groups (students of color, students speaking a language other than English, and students living in neighborhoods with lower income and higher unemployment), who were most likely to benefit from pre-k.
Specifically, we compared patterns of enrollment and geographic access (i.e., distance from home to a school with pre-k and number of pre-k classrooms nearby), and used multilevel logistic regression analyses to examine how access was related to enrollment for different student groups before and after the policy changes. Results showed that both access to, and enrollment in, full-day pre-k expanded substantially among Black students, lowest-income students, and students living in mostly-Black neighborhoods, even as overall school-based pre-k enrollment remained relatively constant. Furthermore, there was a modest association between access to full-day (but not any) pre-k and enrollment, and this relationship became stronger following the policy changes, especially for high-priority student groups.

As school districts nationwide grapple with limited full-day pre-k capacity, this study offers important insights. Most notably, findings demonstrate that the geographic distribution of school-based pre-k, particularly full-day, may be an effective policy strategy for addressing inequities in student access and enrollment to pre-k by improving access and increasing enrollment among high-priority student groups. Providing more pre-k seats for historically under-served students is likely to better prepare them for success in kindergarten and beyond.

Authors

• Stacy Ehrlich Loewe, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maia C Connors, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Stein, Ounce of Prevention Fund
  Presenting Author

• John Francis, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• John Q. Easton, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Kabourek, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Isabel Farrar, Start Early
  Non-Presenting Author