A Second Look at the Georgia Pre-K Audit

If you read an article about an audit of Georgia’s pre-k program in the Atlanta Journal Constitution over the weekend, you probably thought you were reading bad news. According to the article, a recent state audit found that “the state has spent more than $216 million on a program to help low-income children get kindergarten-ready, without any concrete proof it’s working.” But the news is not as bad as it may sound.

The program in question is not the Georgia pre-k program, Bright from the Start, but a part of that program, the Resource Coordination (RC) Program, which provides grants to pre-k providers to provide enhanced services such as home visits and parent counseling. Pre-k directors are already responsible for the provision of these services, but the grant helps 227 programs across the state employ 484 dedicated resource coordinators to enhance these services in communities with greater need. Granted, the AJC article pointed out this distinction but did not mention that the $18.5 million spent on the RC program represents only 5.7 percent of the state’s total pre-k expenditures.

Still, legislators want to know if this money is being put to good use, right? This is where the lack of “concrete proof” comes in. The study did not find that the program was ineffective. Rather, the auditors wrote that they did not even attempt to study whether the presence of a Resource Coordinator made children more kindergarten-ready because, they write, they “did not have sufficient information to include this in the scope of [the] review.” (A 2006 study by researchers at Georgia State University came to the same conclusion).

“Kindergarten readiness” is a stated goal of the RC program (and the pre-k program overall). But Georgia, like most states, does not collect comparative data to track students as they make the transition from pre-k to kindergarten and beyond. However, this is about to change. Beginning with the 2008-09 school year, Georgia assigned pre-k students a state ID, which will allow pre-k data to be included in the state’s year long assessment program for kindergarten, known as GKIDS. The state is also working to develop online methods for submitting data, and is revising the reporting process so that information about RC services received can be included.

We know that support services (or “comprehensive services”, as they are often called in the Head Start world) are important, especially for low-income children, among whom the higher prevalence of health problems, toxic stress, and lack of access to social services can present additional barriers to kindergarten readiness. But this multiplicity of risk factors also makes it difficult to identify a single factor (such as the provision of support services) that impact later academic achievement. Experts in Georgia say that using qualitative methods, such as surveys, in addition to quantitative measures helps to paint a better picture of the intensity and effectiveness of services received.

For those who are wondering about how the rest of Georgia’s pre-k program is doing, check out NIEER’s State of Preschool Yearbook, which gives Georgia high marks for quality. A 2008 report by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) expressed concerns about low enrollment in the universal program, especially among low-income and at-risk children, and worried that the program’s quality standards were beginning to slip.