Pre-kindergarten

United States

By the 2016–17 school year, 44 states and the District of Columbia had some state funding for pre-kindergarten. Nine states—Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—plus D.C. included pre-K in their school funding formulas. In contrast, six states—Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming—offered no state funding at all. In 2013, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, and San Antonio, Texas, started or expanded pre-K programs.

A 2014 poll showed 60% of registered Republicans and 84% of Democrats backed expanding public preschool by raising the federal tobacco tax. Funding challenges led to different strategies: San Antonio raised sales taxes, while Virginia and Maine turned to gambling. In Oregon, only 20% of children had access to any publicly funded pre-K, and a 2016 campaign aimed to fully fund pre-K through 12th grade for all interested families. A 2012 review from Rutgers University named Oklahoma, Georgia, and West Virginia as leaders in program quality and enrollment share.

Florida had the highest enrollment that year—nearly 80% of four-year-olds—though most were in private, religious, or family-based centers, and the state’s programs scored poorly on quality.

Impact

A 2024 review published in Science found mixed results on pre-K effectiveness, with lottery-based studies generally showing null results. A randomized control found that children assigned to full-day pre-K had substantially greater outcomes in cognition, literacy, math, and physical development at the end of pre-K than those assigned to half-day. A longitudinal randomized control study of 2,990 low-income children in Tennessee found that those assigned to pre-K had lower state achievement test scores in third through sixth grades, with the strongest negative effects in sixth grade, along with negative effects on disciplinary infractions, attendance, and special education receipt, and null effects on retention.

The Perry Preschool Project found that high-quality pre-kindergarten was associated with higher high school graduation rates, lower crime rates, lower teen pregnancy rates, and better economic outcomes in adulthood.

Children of immigrants

Children of immigrants are the fastest-growing group in the United States, with Asian and Latino families making up the two largest racial categories. Cultural values influence how these families choose childcare. Asian parents tend to enroll their children in pre-kindergarten more often than Latino parents, largely because these programs include academic content. Latino immigrant families more frequently choose informal care, such as care by parents, relatives, or other in-home providers, reflecting a belief that formal academic instruction should begin after children start primary school.

Parents who have limited English skills are also more likely to select parental or in-home care. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development show that low-income immigrant families use center-based childcare like pre-kindergarten less often than non-immigrant families do. In interviews, immigrant mothers said they wanted pre-kindergarten for reasons including work, learning English, and their children’s social and emotional growth.

Barriers they faced included high costs, long wait-lists, needing to provide documentation (especially for those without legal status or English proficiency), and not knowing how to qualify for subsidized programs. On average, immigrants experience higher poverty rates due to low wages, less education, and limited English.