Study Highlights Significant Benefits of Boston Public Schools Pre-K Program

Earlier this month, President Obama proposed a new program that would provide funding for states to offer pre-K to all 4-year-olds from low-income families. Some early education advocates celebrated the announcement as a huge step forward, but others  were more concerned with the details: If the program is implemented, how would the administration ensure new pre-K programs are high quality?

The White House may have a model for high-quality pre-K in the Boston Public Schools. A new study published in the March issue of Child Development analyzed the BPS program and found that it was helping to build cognitive and socio-emotional skills in many of its students.

Boston Public Schools provides a full day of pre-K to any 4-year-old in the district. Unlike the president’s proposed structure or many pre-K programs across the country, there are no income limits on enrolling in the program, and between 34 and 43 percent of the city’s 4-year-olds participate. (For more on why the enrollment number is difficult to track, check out our issue brief examining the challenges of collecting data in early education, Counting Kids and Tracking Funds in Pre-K and Kindergarten.)

The study of the Boston program assessed children who received a year of BPS pre-K. According to the authors, Christina Weiland and Hirokazu Yoshikawa of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, BPS pre-K had moderate-to-large effects on children’s language, literacy and mathematics skills, which are specifically targeted by the program’s curriculum. Enrollees also showed smaller improvements in their executive functioning, like working memory and self-regulation.

There are some clues as to why the program is so successful. The first lies in the rigorous curricula BPS uses across its classrooms. Weiland, the study’s lead author, defines this as “developmentally appropriate curricula” that are evidence-based and target specific skills.

BPS also provides coaching for pre-K teachers, assisting them in improving their instructional skills. And the program’s effectiveness could be driven in part by the fact that Boston Public Schools pays its pre-K teachers as much as it pays K-12 teachers. That might help prevent the common exodus of low-paid pre-K teachers into the elementary and secondary grades.

Another potential reason for the program’s success is that it is available to any child, without an upper limit on income, while many other public pre-K programs are available only to low-income children. (The Tulsa, Oklahoma pre-K program operates under the same eligibility and pay structures, and it has also shown strong positive effects.) According to Weiland, there is not yet definitive evidence on the effects of mixed-income peers, but further research could ultimately make an argument for universal pre-K programs. President Obama’s proposed pre-K program would require coverage only of 4-year-olds with family incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, but it would encourage states to include children over that level, as well

Another noteworthy finding from both Boston and Tulsa is that Hispanics see the largest number of positive effects from high-quality pre-K. Although the English language-learner population is growing, Hispanic children tend to be underrepresented in pre-K programs.

According to Weiland, the Boston Public Schools survey proves that “[w]ith the right investments in teachers and in instructional supports, including developmentally specific curricula integrated with tailored coaching in the classroom, achieving high-quality public pre-kindergarten that benefits all children is possible on a large scale.” If Congress approves a new federal-state pre-K partnership program like the one that the president has recommended, states will be looking for effective, evidence-based models to bring to their own communities. The Boston pre-K program is a good place for them to start.