Cincinnati voters will likely decide this fall on whether to approve a tax hike to expand pre-K. The Cincinnati Preschool Promise is the organization driving these efforts; if they get a thumbs-up from the electorate, the tentative plan is to provide families with a subsidy that covers the cost of two years of all-day preschool (full tuition for families up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level and partial tuition, on a sliding scale, for those with higher incomes). Only high-quality pre-K providers—those receiving at least a three-star rating on the state’s Step Up to Quality system—will be eligible to receive these public funds.
To help inform the debate as Election Day draws near, the Cincinnati Business Committee and United Way of Greater Cincinnati commissioned the RAND Corporation to review national research on the effectiveness of pre-K. The study doesn’t add any new evidence, but does provide an overview of the findings from fifteen evaluations of pre-K: One federal program (Head Start), eleven statewide programs (all non-Ohio), and three district-level programs (Boston, Chicago, and Tulsa). Broadly speaking, the authors paint an optimistic picture, highlighting the positive short-term effects of pre-K on kindergarten readiness and noting the positive longer-term findings from both the 1960s-era Perry Preschool Program and the 1980s-era Chicago Child-Parent Centers Program.
To their credit, the authors also include a discussion of more recent studies—the Head Start and Tennessee pre-K studies, in particular—that call into question the sustained impact of pre-K. These studies have uncovered a troubling pattern of “fadeout” in positive pre-K effects; namely, throughout the early elementary grades, students who had participated in these pre-K programs failed to demonstrate an achievement advantage over their non-participating peers. The authors posit two explanations: First, the fadeout could actually be understood as a “convergence” in outcomes. The authors explain, “Children who arrive well prepared for school are not able to capitalize on the gains they made in the preschool year, and the children who arrived behind are provided with more resources in order to catch up.” Second, the authors suggest (with some evidentiary basis), the positive effects of pre-K could erode if students enter a low-quality K–3 environment.
In general, this paper gives Cincinnati’s pre-K advocates information that they can use to win public support. It emphasizes primarily the benefits of pre-K (for a more critical take, see here); and in sum, the authors suggest an approximate return of between $2.50 and $4.50 on every dollar spent on pre-K. Of course, it is far from sure that the Queen City’s initiative will bear such fruit—as the authors rightly caution, much will depend on the quality of pre-K and whether it can be well implemented at scale. (Smartly, Cincinnati’s leaders have commissioned a follow-up study by RAND that will suggest options for implementing and scaling pre-K.) As former Tennessee education commissioner Kevin Huffman asks in the context of the debate over national pre-K, “Why do we think we can build a ‘high-quality’ program for all the nation’s four-year-olds when decades of effort have failed to produce universal high quality in any other grades?” ‘Tis true, and if the levy passes, Cincinnati leaders must be mindful that the work will have just begun.
Source: Lynn A. Karoly and Anamarie Auger, “Informing Investments in Preschool Quality and Access in Cincinnati” RAND Corporation (2016).
