EarlyStories has been urging reporters to think hard about dueling trends in pre-kindergarten education as long planned expansions run into hard fiscal realities. The National Institute for Early Education Research has explored the issue in depth. Their annual survey of state-funded programs, released in Washington D.C. on Tuesday is a must read for journalists, especially because it provides state-by-state snapshots. NIEER, based at Rutgers University In New Jersey, has produced an annual report on state preschool programs since 2002.
NIEER found ample evidence of the growth of pre-kindergarten programs, as follows:
• Enrollment increased by more than 108,000 children. More than 1.1 million children attended state-funded preschool education, 973,178 at age 4 alone.
• Thirty-three of the 38 states with state-funded programs increased enrollment.
• Eleven states improved the quality of their preschool programs, based on quality standards developed by NIEER. One fell back.
• State funding for pre-k rose to almost $4.6 billion. Funding for state pre-k from all reported sources exceeded $5.2 billion, an increase of nearly $1 billion (23 percent) over the previous year.
But the report also noted that the economy has taken a toll on expansion, as Sam Dillon of the New York Times noted. Nine states have announced cuts to state-run pre-kindergarten programs while legislatures continue to debate cutting others.
As the debate over the value of spending money on pre-k programs continues, Congress is raising federal funding for preschool while President Barack Obama continues to promise new investment in early childhood education. That means reporters will be monitoring state budget cuts, use of stimulus money to boost early childhood education and long-planned state expansions all at the same time. In this confusing and quickly changing landscape, the NIEER report is an especially helpful tool.
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