The Push for Preschool
Advocates Seek Universal Availability, but Cost-Conscious States Set Limits

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 8, 2009

School may never be quite as enchanting as it is in pre-kindergarten.

"Good morning to you, good morning to you," Mary Mears, a pre-K teacher, sang to her 24 students at Greenbelt Elementary School one recent morning. She held a stuffed tiger in her lap and gently asked the children to keep their eyes on it. "Today is a brand-new day with no mistakes in it," she repeated several times.

The children paid attention, for the most part. Through the eyes of 4- and 5-year-olds, the world is full of distractions: There are the colorful walls, sprinkled with pictures and unfamiliar words; their classmates, behaving in unexpected ways; even their own bodies, which they are just learning to control.

Mears shook out a little bit of their energy by telling the youngsters to stretch and run in place. Then she told them something that was sure to get them excited.

"Guess what?" she said. "We are going to be going to the firetruck today!" (A truck was parked at the school for Career Day.)

The kids clapped and cheered. "Yessss!" one boy cried.

They were so pumped up that Mears seemed worried they wouldn't be able to handle the next exercise. "We're not going to get carried away, right?" she asked. The students didn't make any promises. Mears played a song, to the tune of "Buffalo Gals." The next few minutes illustrated the proverb that everything you really need to know you learn in kindergarten, or in this case pre-K:

"Everybody shake a hand, shake a hand, shake a hand,

Everybody shake a hand and walk around the room . . . "

(This skill is useful in many situations, including politics, parties and job interviews.)

"Everybody give high five, give high five, give high five,

Everybody give high five and walk around the room . . . "

(Great for sporting events and other male bonding rituals.)

"Everybody smile and wink, smile and wink, smile and wink,

Everybody smile and wink and walk around the room . . . "

(A little strange, but sometimes useful when pursuing more advanced adult relationships.)

"Everybody hug a friend, hug a friend, hug a friend,

Everybody hug a friend and walk back to your seats."

(Knowing when, and whom, to hug is one of the finer social arts.)

By then, the kids were getting a bit wild, tumbling into each other and going beyond what they had been asked to do. One child fell down. "He kissed me!" a boy complained.

A shy girl who didn't much like the exercise was on the brink of tears. Even for the very young, learning can be painful. But the storm cloud on her face passed as soon as the song was over and they started to learn about the alphabet.

Costs and Benefits

Kindergarten has earned a hallowed place as the grade in which 5-year-olds enter the public school system, to emerge 13 years later as young adults ready for college or the workforce.

Preschool, which includes various programs for children ages 2 to 4, is less closely associated with public education, and its availability in public schools varies from state to state. In addition, some parents are reluctant to place very young children in a school setting. Over the past few decades, however, states have ramped up spending on preschool, particularly pre-K for 4-year-olds.

Nationally, state and local governments spend about $4,600 annually per student enrolled in state pre-K, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. (More than $8,000 is spent per student in Maryland and about $5,600 in Virginia; statistics were not available for the District.)

Public preschool advocates argue that the cost is worth the benefit, pointing to studies showing that students who participate in preschool tend to do better in kindergarten. They also note that preschool is cheap compared with the nationwide average of nearly $12,000 spent per student enrolled in K-12 programs.

The campaign for greater preschool offerings has gained traction. The percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in state-funded pre-K nationwide increased from 14 percent in 2002 to 24 percent in 2008.

Although many supporters of public preschool want it to be offered free to all students regardless of income, cost-conscious states have made it a priority for students from low-income families, who tend to lag behind their wealthier peers in measures of academic achievement.

Maryland began providing preschool for at-risk 4-year-olds in 1980, beginning in Baltimore and Prince George's County. Since then, the state has steadily ramped up funding for the preschool program and now offers it to all children who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, one common measure of poverty.

Last year, 37 percent of the state's 4-year-olds were enrolled in state pre-K, well above the national average. Virginia started an initiative in 1995 to serve at-risk students. About 13 percent of Virginia 4-year-olds are enrolled in the state's pre-K program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Promising Statistics

What's the benefit of pre-K? In Maryland, the statistics are mixed but promising.

Maryland measures the effectiveness of its pre-K programs with an assessment called the Maryland Model for Student Readiness, which students take at the beginning of kindergarten. Students rated fully ready for school are eight times as likely to perform well on later tests in reading and math than are those with deficient skills, according to the Maryland State Department of Education; they also tend to get held back a grade less often.

Statewide, 75 percent of entering kindergartners who attended public pre-K were rated fully ready. (The rate was 86 percent for students who attended tuition-charging, nonpublic nursery schools.) Among students who had stayed home or been informally schooled, 63 percent were rated fully ready when they entered kindergarten.

Perhaps the most notable success of the state pre-K program has been narrowing the "readiness gap" that shows white students more prepared for kindergarten than black students. In 2002, there was a readiness gap of 19 percentage points between white and black kindergartners and a 17-point gap between white and Hispanic kindergartners. By 2008, the black-white gap had closed to nine points. But although Hispanic students made substantial gains overall, they remained 15 percentage points behind white peers.

In Prince George's County, the black-white readiness gap was eliminated entirely. The county's Hispanic students were only eight points behind white students.

A Variety of Programs

The Chapel Forge Early Childhood Center, a county-run center in Bowie, has about 350 children ages 2 to 5, some of them with autism or Down syndrome or from families in deep poverty. Because special education students require more intensive supervision from teachers, paraprofessionals and therapists, Principal Elyse Hurley has an unusually large staff of more than 100 people.

"We don't want anybody to fall through the cracks," said Diane Bonnani, coordinating supervisor of the county's early childhood centers.

A recent tour of the school showed a wide variety of educational situations. In one room, 2-year-olds began to learn choice by pointing to pictures of food on a plastic mat. In another, a boy with autism played catch with an occupational therapist who was trying to get him to understand how to take turns. A girl who had had disciplinary problems rode a tricycle through the hall. Children in a special education classroom made butterflies with a soft material.

In a federal Head Start class, part of a program to help families in poverty, teacher Maria Princesa showed the students cards with printed words.

"Can you read the word?" Princesa asked.

"I can read it!" a child shouted. "Brag!"

"What do you mean by bragging?" Princesa asked.

This stumped the youngsters. "You were sleepy?" one of them ventured.

"Bragging means you're talking to each other," tried Eyimofe Okonedo, 4.

"Very close, very close," Princesa said.

"That means you gotta get more energy!" said Taniyah Keel, 4.

"Bragging means you're talking a lot," said Abraham Kamano, 5.

"You're talking a lot, about the things you can do," Princesa said.

"And that means you're smart," Abraham said.