ABSTRACT

State and local education agencies account for most of the four-year-olds enrolled in public preschool and a substantial percentage of three-year-olds, though they often contract with private providers to deliver the service. All these programs are considered public education, but many are neither located in nor directly operated by public schools. This chapter describes these programs in detail with particular: governance and administration, evidence of effectiveness, eligibility criteria and enrollment levels, program quality standards, and funding. Each of these features or dimensions of “public school” early childhood education programs varies tremendously among the states. This variation is much more extreme than for K-12 education. Most worrisome is the variation in program effectiveness in recent studies indicating that some programs can even be harmful. We explore the role of continuous improvement processes as a key quality component required to assure success. We also assess the extent to which each state has made progress and attained high levels of enrollment and spending per child over the past 15 years; we identify those with the most and least growth and that attain the highest and lowest levels of access and funding.