Lessons from Arkansas

A few weeks ago I traveled to Arkansas, where I had an opportunity to learn more about the state’s early education system and meet some of the people who play a critical role in implementing, overseeing, and supporting pre-k programs in Arkansas. Arkansas has a high-quality pre-k program that is producing positive results for children, and the state agencies that operate the program have also done important work to align standards and expectations in pre-k across different types of pre-k providers and with the public kindergarten programs children attend after pre-k. Here are a few lessons from Arkansas’ experience:

1. Put quality in place up front: Arkansas has good pre-k quality and outcomes because the state put strong pre-k standards, and funding to support them, in place in 2003 when it enacted the Arkansas Better Chance for School Success state pre-k program. The program’s design grew out of the recommendations of a 2000 Task Force that reviewed the evidence, defined what a quality pre-k program would look like, and costed out those quality recommendations. Today ABC programs operate 7.5 hours a day, require teachers to have a bachelor’s degree in early childhood with P-4 certification, and meet other important quality standards. The one area where Arkansas compromised on quality–allowing some teachers in non-public school settings with multiple classrooms to teach with less than a bachelor’s degree–has proven difficult to change, however. The lesson here: It’s easier to get pre-k quality right from the start than it is to try to improve quality once a program has already been implemented.

2. Put quality in place first, then work towards scale: In 2004-05, the first year after Arkansas passed Arkansas Better Chance for School Success legislation, the state enrolled only 6 percent of 4-year-olds and 2 percent of 3-year-olds in pre-k. Today it’s on track to provide high-quality pre-k (either through ABC or Head Start) to all 3- and 4-year-olds from families with incomes below 200% of poverty–about half of children in the state. By starting out small, getting quality right, and building over time, Arkansas is now able to deliver high-quality to a significant percentage of its children–a better approach than states that start out big but with low-quality.

3. Build on what you already have in place: Arkansas’ pre-k program built on assets that were already in place in the state. For example, it uses the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS), which the state had already been using to measure quality in early childhood settings. Similarly, in the late 1990s Arkansas put in place a strong system of state academic standards in the early elementary grades, and the standards and curriculum used in ABC pre-k classrooms are aligned with those standards. States seeking to expand or improve quality in pre-k programs should identify the assets they already have in place and leverage those assets to support quality pre-k.

4. Relationships and collaboration at the state level matter: Arkansas has been able to build a diverse delivery pre-k program that maintains high quality across diverse providers in large part because collaborative relationships exist between relevant state level agencies and officials. The Department of Education, the Division of Child Care and Early Education within the Department of Human Services, and the Arkansas Head Start State Collaboration Office have all worked together to improve quality and alignment across diverse providers. Building collaborative relationships at the state level is essential to create a culture of collaboration on early eduction within the state.