Does pre-K give kids a lasting academic boost?
This question has plagued early education researchers for years, yielding widely mixed results. Some studies show decidedly positive outcomes, others find that initial benefits fade by 3rd grade, and still others show worse academic outcomes for children who attended pre-K over peers who didn’t.
Findings from the latest study to examine this question, conducted by Florida International University and George Mason University researchers and published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, boosted the case for public pre-K attendance. It found that poor children in a large urban community in the Southeastern United States who attended public school pre-K performed better academically in 3rd grade than their peers who attended either center-based care or family childcare as 4-year-olds.
“The take-home point is that kids who went to public school pre-K do better in 3rd grade compared to those who went to center-based care, who did better than those who went to family childcare,” said Adam Winsler, a professor in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University and an author of the study.
These latest findings come at a pivotal time for early education. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle many of the regulations that guide Head Start, the decades-old federally funded program serving over 700,000 low-income children from birth through 5, and to cap individual programs’ administrative budgets at 5%, down from 15%. At the same time, several states are pushing to increase access to publicly funded preschool or have already done so.
Given the current spotlight on preschool, policymakers and district officials are eager to understand the effects of pre-K on students long-term—especially as they pertain to children from lower-income families, whom researchers say have the most to gain from early formal education. While there doesn’t seem to be any clear path to long-term academic success, this and other related studies offer clues to a path forward.
Study background and findings
This study collected information between 2002 and 2007 on an estimated 30,000 students, mostly from low-income households, in Florida. Among the students, 60% were Latino, 33% were Black, and 7% identified as white/other. A partnership with the Miami-Dade County public schools allowed the researchers to access data on academic outcomes in 3rd grade from 4-year-olds who had attended either public pre-K, family childcare in a provider’s home, or center-based care.
Students who attended public pre-K had higher GPAs and scored better on 3rd grade reading and math tests. Also, pre-K attendees were 35% less likely to be retained in 3rd grade than those who attended family childcare. Researchers did not evaluate behavioral outcomes.
The study authors did not observe the pre-K classrooms directly, limiting their ability to evaluate specific instructional quality.
Researchers speculate on link between pre-K and academic performance in 3rd grade
The researchers did, however, speculate on why children in the study who attended pre-K fared better academically in 3rd grade than their peers who did not.
Kaitlyn Mumma, a research associate at Abt Global, a consulting and technology agency and a study author, suggested that simply attending pre-K in the same building where students would likely later go to elementary school could incur advantages.
“Maybe there’s more alignment between the curriculum,” Mumma said. “Maybe [teachers] understand a little bit more about the kids that they’re getting from pre-K.”
She also suggested that families—especially those with older children who attend the public school where their younger siblings are in pre-K—are more engaged in the [school] community compared to parents whose children attend center-based or family childcare and, in turn, may not have as many explicit connections with those elementary schools.
Winsler pointed to broad differences between pre-K and less formal settings as a possible difference-maker.
“We find, like other scholars have also found, that kids do better in public school pre-K than in other kinds of childcare arrangements,” Winsler noted, citing higher teacher pay, greater staff stability, standardized curricula, and shared school resources as key factors.
Other early education experts agree that, in general, pre-K trumps childcare options for children at age 4. This latest study “adds to the research suggesting that family childcare, which tends to have pretty low standards and may not be licensed at all, is not a great place for kids if we could provide them with an alternative,” said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Barnett did note, however, that in sparsely populated rural areas, family childcare may be the only option.
When preschool advantage fades
Pre-K programs are often lauded for their ability to get students “kindergarten ready.” But some research shows that those advantages often fade by 3rd grade. And in one oft-cited study, children who attended pre-K fared worse on several metrics by 6th grade.
That study tracked 2,990 children from low-income families who attended Tennessee’s state-funded voluntary pre-K program between 2009 and 2011. State educational records showed that those students had more disciplinary infractions, worse attendance, and lower state achievement test scores through 6th grade than their peers—some of whom attended Head Start, center-based childcare, or home-based care.
Dale Farran, a research professor at Vanderbilt University and one of the authors of the landmark Tennessee preschool study, suggested that pre-K classrooms characterized by a “high level of negative control from teachers” and an emphasis on measurable skills (like letters, numbers, and sounds) may actually be detrimental to students’ long-term success. She suggests that pre-K curriculum should instead promote curiosity, persistence, and working memory.
Some findings point to sustained quality in elementary school as key to continued success
While Farran suggested that perceived weaknesses of the state-funded pre-K program contributed to students’ later struggles, other researchers home in on elementary school quality as key to sustained academic success.
A 2018 study that tracked one group’s early-childhood experiences enrolled in high-quality childcare and early-learning environments from birth to 5th grade. Trained professionals assessed program quality by observing child-teacher interactions.
The authors concluded that good childcare and preschool reap benefits that continue through adolescence if these positive experiences are followed by high-quality elementary classes. When the elementary classrooms were of “observably lower quality,” positive gains made in early childhood faded out.
“This basic communication across systems"—childcare, preschool, and elementary—"is the really big issue we’re going to have to grapple with,” Arya Ansari, lead author of the 2018 study, told Education Week.
Strength of elementary school programs aside, experts say that the quality of early education can’t be overlooked in the debate about pre-K’s effects on long-term academic success.
“There are consistent patterns across multiple studies where low quality experiences in preschool had long-term negative consequences,” said Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research, who suggests that factors including teacher pay, class size, coaching and other supports, and resources all affect program quality. And pre-K programs, he notes, are far more likely than family childcare to provide access to these assets.
“If I’m a family childcare provider and I get a kid tonight, and I’m tearing my hair out because I don’t know how to deal with it,” said Barnett, “there’s nobody for me to call.”
