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Giving Compass' Take:
• Researchers have built the following consensus about the effects of pre-K on long-term outcomes. Effective pre-K programs can improve outcomes, but rigorous evaluation is necessary to ensure impact.
• How can funders work to increase the impact of existing pre-K programs? Where is there the greatest need for new pre-K programs?
• Read a roadmap to evaluating pre-K effectiveness.
Convincing evidence shows that children attending a diverse array of state and school district pre-k programs are more ready for school at the end of their pre-k year than children who do not attend pre-k. Improvements in academic areas such as literacy and numeracy are most common; the smaller number of studies of social-emotional and self-regulatory development generally show more modest improvements in those areas.
Convincing evidence on the longer-term impacts of scaled-up pre-k programs on academic outcomes and school progress is sparse, precluding broad conclusions. The evidence that does exist often shows that pre-k-induced improvements in learning are detectable during elementary school, but studies also reveal null or negative longer-term impacts for some programs.
Studies of different groups of preschoolers often find greater improvement in learning at the end of the pre-k year for economically disadvantaged children and dual language learners than for more advantaged and English-proficient children.
Children’s early learning trajectories depend on the quality of their learning experiences not only before and during their pre-k year, but also following the pre-k year. Classroom experiences early in elementary school can serve as charging stations for sustaining and amplifying pre-k learning gains. One good bet for powering up later learning is elementary school classrooms that provide individualization and differentiation in instructional content and strategies.
States have displayed considerable ingenuity in designing and implementing their pre-k programs. Ongoing innovation and evaluation are needed during and after pre-k to ensure continued improvement in creating and sustaining children’s learning gains. Research-practice partnerships are a promising way of achieving this goal. These kinds of efforts are needed to generate more complete and reliable evidence on effectiveness factors in pre-k and elementary school that generate long-run impacts.
Pre-k does not happen in a vacuum. It builds on the base provided by children’s prior levels of development and experiences, which vary widely within and across homes and classrooms. Moreover, as we’ve noted, pre-k experiences themselves are heterogeneous and are layered on to the broader circumstances of children’s lives while they are in pre-k. Following pre-k, children are exposed to widely divergent k-12 experiences that can either support or undermine the gains made in pre-k. Understanding children’s experiences before, during, and after pre-k can help policymakers better weigh the evidence from evaluation studies of pre-k impacts and consider the most promising next steps for optimizing pre-k education.