Early Childhood

Study Finds U.S. Trailing in Preschool Enrollment

By Lesli A. Maxwell — September 11, 2012 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The United States lags behind most of the world’s leading economies when it comes to providing early-childhood education opportunities to young children despite improvements in recent years, according to a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

According to the Paris-based OECD’s “Education at a Glance 2012,” a report released today, the United States ranks 28th out of 38 countries for the share of 4-year-olds enrolled in pre-primary education programs, at 69 percent. That’s compared with more than 95 percent enrollment rates in France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Mexico, which lead the world in early-childhood participation rates for 4-year-olds. Ireland, Poland, Finland, and Brazil are among the nations that trail the United States.

The United States also invests significantly less public money in early-childhood programs than its counterparts in the Group of Twenty, or G-20, economies, which include 19 countries and the European Union. On average, across the countries that are compared in the OECD report, 84 percent of early-childhood students were enrolled in public programs or in private settings that receive major government resources in 2010. In this country, just 55 percent of early-childhood students were enrolled in publicly supported programs in 2010, while 45 percent attended independent private programs.

“The United States is still pretty far behind much of the rest of the industrialized world,” in terms of publicly supported early-childhood opportunities, Andreas Schleicher, OECD’s deputy director for education and the special advisor on education policy to the secretary-general of the OECD, said in a briefing.

Mr. Schleicher noted that the benefits of early-childhood education are apparent in the outcomes for individual students, but are less obvious at the school system, or country level. He pointed to France, where participation is nearly universal, but overall outcomes for students who take OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, are nearly as strong as they are in Finland, for example, which ranks even lower than the United States on participation in formal early-childhood programs.

But, apart from outliers like Finland, “generally, what we see is that those children who have participated in early-childhood education and care have significant outcomes at age 15 at the individual level,” he said. Overall, students in OECD countries who have attended early-childhood programs tend to perform better on the PISA test than those who did not, he said.

OECD’s annual international comparison of education systems included the early-childhood indicators for the first time this year, just as the focus of state and federal policymakers in the United States increasingly homes in on the need for increasing access to quality early education for 3- and 4-year-olds as a key strategy for preparing students—especially those from poor families—for academic success later on.

The study also examined other new measures, including how a parent’s education influences a child’s academic-attainment levels and factors that affect how immigrant children perform academically.

The study found that the United States presents some of the longest odds for college attainment for children born to parents who did not finish high school, ranking near the bottom on this indicator for upward social mobility. Just 29 percent of U.S. students whose parents did not finish high school are likely to go onto college, compared with over 70 percent in Iceland, and more than 60 percent in Turkey, Portugal, and Ireland. Only Canada and New Zealand ranked behind the United States on the social-mobility measure.

The study also found that the relationship between poor reading performance and the proportion of students whose mothers have low levels of education was much stronger than the relationship between reading performance and the proportion of immigrant students who do not speak the primary language of instruction at home, or the relationship between reading and the share of immigrant students in a school. Across OECD countries, including the United States, more than one-third of immigrant students attended the schools with the highest concentrations of low-educated mothers, according to the report.

Among other key findings for the United States, the report also notes that:

• The United States ranks 14th in the world in the percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds who have earned a postsecondary degree;

• American students rely more heavily on private sources to pay for higher education than their peers in other OECD countries; and

• Teachers in the United States are paid less and spend more time teaching—between 1,050 and 1,100 hours per year—compared with their peers in most other OECD countries.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the September 12, 2012 edition of Education Week

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
College & Workforce Readiness Webinar
From Classrooms to Careers: How Schools and Districts Can Prepare Students for a Changing Workforce
Real careers start in school. Learn how Alton High built student-centered, job-aligned pathways.
Content provided by TNTP
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Early Childhood Letter to the Editor Why Head Start Remains a Smart Investment for America
Full funding of Head Start is about strengthening our nation’s social and economic fabric, says this letter to the editor.
1 min read
Education Week opinion letters submissions
Gwen Keraval for Education Week
Early Childhood The Expectations for Kindergarten Have Changed. How Teachers Are Adapting
Here's how three kindergarten teachers keep the fun in formative learning.
6 min read
Kindergarteners in a play-based learning class look around at the site of their forest play time at Symonds Elementary School in Keene, N.H. on Nov. 7, 2024.
Kindergarteners in a play-based learning class look around at the site of their forest play time at Symonds Elementary School in Keene, N.H., on Nov. 7, 2024. Across the nation, kindergarten classrooms have become more academic over the past few decades.
Sophie Park for Education Week
Early Childhood Trump Allies Say the Case for Head Start Is Weak. Researchers Say They're Wrong
Head Start critics oversimplify research to justify calls for its closure, researchers said.
9 min read
A student participates in a reading and writing lesson at the Head Start program at Easterseals South Florida, Jan. 29, 2025, in Miami.
A student participates in a reading and writing lesson at the Head Start program at Easterseals South Florida in Miami on Jan. 29, 2025. The organization gets about a third of its funding from the federal government. Supporters of President Donald Trump's plan to cut Head Start say it's ineffective. Advocates say they are oversimplifying key research.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Early Childhood Pre-K Programs Expand Nationwide, But Quality Falls Behind
Preschools experienced a boost in funding and enrollment nationwide, but a deeper look reveals a disparity in quality.
6 min read
Teacher Grismairi Amparo works with her students on a reading and writing lesson at Head Start program run by Easterseals South Florida, an organization that gets about a third of its funding from the federal government, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Miami.
Teacher Grismairi Amparo works with her students on a reading and writing lesson at a Head Start program run by Easterseals South Florida on Jan. 29, 2025 in Miami. The organization gets about a third of its funding from the federal government.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP