A Closer Look At California Preschools

One of the side effects of our patchwork system of preschool early education is that it’s incredibly difficult to get good, comprehensive data on the extent to which children are receiving early education services or the quality of those programs. That’s why a new RAND Corporation report on preschool in California is hugely important.

The RAND researchers built a portrait of pre-k access and quality in the Golden State from the ground up: First, they interviewed parents of more than 2,000 three- and four-year-old children about their children’s early education and childcare arrangements. Then they interviewed more than 700 preschool and childcare providers. Then they conducted in-depth observations in more than 250 preschool classrooms. That’s a massive undertaking, but because California’s early care and education landscape is so fractured–children are receiving publicly funded preschool through California’s State Preschool Program, Head Start, childcare subsidies, school-based programs, and county-driven “First Five” programs, not to mention the significant percentage of youngsters whose parents pay for private preschool–it’s the only way to get a true picture of what the early education landscape really looks like in the state. Key findings include:

• Half of California three- and four-year-olds are enrolled in preschool, with another nine percent in center-based care, 16 percent in home care settings, and one-quarter cared for by their parents exclusively. Among those enrolled in preschool, slightly less than half are in publicly funded programs (22 percent of the total).
• Preschool enrollment is not evenly distributed in California: Hispanic and low-income children, and those whose mothers have lower levels of education, are less likely to be enrolled in preschool. That’s a problem, because these are the groups of children who are at higher risk for poor school achievement.
• Preschool quality is mixed. California preschool programs do pretty well on class size and child: staff ratios, but less well on teacher credentials. Although preschool quality varies for all groups of children, children from disadvantaged groups attend lower quality programs.
• Quality is especially poor for measures that look at what goes on in the classroom setting: Few programs were rated “good” or higer on the ECER-s, a measure of classroom environment. California preschool programs scored particularly poorly on measures of the quality of instructional support they provided–the measure most closely linked to the educational quality and outcomes of preschool programs.

What are the key takeaways from this study?

First, with only half of California three and four-year-olds enrolled in preschool, there’s plenty of room to expand access–particularly for low-income and racial/ethnic minority children.

Second, there’s even more room to improve the quality of California’s preschool and early childhood settings. In particular, any effort to improve the quality of California’s preschool programs must specifically focus on improving the quality of instructional support in preschool programs.

That’s illustrative of a broader issue here: Some elements of early education quality are much easier to achieve than others–and it’s also easier to know when programs are achieving them. California’s preschool programs do pretty well on class size and adult: child ratios because those things are relatively easy to accomplish, and they’re also easy for parents and regulators to evaluate. Recruiting credentialed teachers is harder–and more expensive–and the relationship between preschool teachers’ credentials and quality is more opaque for parents, so California preschool programs do somewhat less well on that front.

But where California preschool programs do the worst is on the quality of interactions that take place in the classroom between adults and children–because getting high-quality interactions between adults and children is really hard, and it’s also very difficult for parents and outside regulators to judge the quality of classroom interactions. The problem, of course, is that ample evidence shows us that quality of interactions in the classroom is the most important factor in early education quality and outcomes.

That leads back into what we were talking about last week. The quality features pre-k advocates are fighting for right now–small class sizes, bachelor’s degreed teachers, adequate funding–are an essential pre-requisite for quality. But they aren’t enough, because they themselves are not quality. Getting to quality in early education requires building systems that include the structures, supports, and incentives to produce quality interactions between adults and children. That also requires ways of assessing early education quality that take both interactions and outcomes into account. And it requires attention to the content that’s being conveyed to children in those interactions. Putting that in place from a policy perspective is much tougher than simply mandating minimum adult: child ratios or teacher credentials. But it’s essential. Unless policymakers focus on quality of interactions, quality of educational content, and quality of results in the preschool programs they invest in, we’re not going to see the results preschool advocates have promised.