Long-Awaited Report Sheds Light on the Need for Better Pre-K Curricula

This week, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a long-awaited report examining pre-K curriculum quality for children from ages three to five. Two previous reports from the National Academies, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 (2015) and Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (2018), made important contributions to the early childhood field and are still widely referenced, so hopes are high that this new report will spur action for years to come.

The 13-member committee, formed back in 2022, was charged with issuing recommendations aimed at creating a new vision for high quality pre-K curricula with particular attention to the needs of specific subpopulations, including Black and Latino children, multilingual learners, children with disabilities, and children experiencing poverty. It’s worth noting that the committee’s statement of task did not include evaluating or rating any existing pre-K curricula.

Clocking in at 376 pages, the full report contains 19 conclusions reached by the committee as well as 15 recommendations. For those interested in quickly understanding the report’s main takeaways, the National Academies also released an interactive overview that’s a useful tool for navigating through the highlights. The vision laid out by the committee is an admirable one and emphasizes the need for curricula that incorporates the perspectives, experiences, cultures, and languages of a diverse range of children and families.

In a webinar coinciding with the report’s release, committee member Lillian Durán noted that, on average, pre-K programs are falling short in offering children rich content and advancing their thinking. Of course, high-quality curricula isn’t all that’s needed to improve children’s pre-K experiences, and the report acknowledges that “curriculum in and of itself will not solve the deep, intractable challenges faced in early education from inadequate funding, inadequate wages, uneven workforce preparation and supports, and growing issues with staff recruitment and retention, to larger social and economic inequities.” At the same time, the report notes that curricula can play “a critical role” in helping to ensure that all children have the opportunity to experience enriching learning experiences throughout their time in pre-K.

What’s indisputable is that the current state of pre-K curricula leaves a lot of room for improvement. “We’re largely using curricula in public programs now that are not evidence-based and not culturally responsive,” committee member Christina Weiland noted on the webinar. The sixth conclusion reached by the committee notes that early childhood practitioners typically use comprehensive curricula that are intended to address all domains of children’s learning and development. The committee points out the potential problem with this approach: “When compared with domain-specific curricula, the most widely used comprehensive curricula have shown significantly smaller gains in domain-targeted outcomes, such as mathematics, science, literacy, and social-emotional development at kindergarten entry.” The report’s second recommendation seeks to remedy this problem by urging program leaders to transition to implementing evidence-based curricula while still supporting the learning and development of the whole child.

Of course, even a high-quality pre-K experience in which students are led through an evidence-based scope and sequence doesn’t guarantee future academic success. “Preschool’s not a magic bullet. One year of great things can’t be expected to necessarily have an impact on reading in third grade,” said Weiland. The committee’s thirteenth recommendation urges curricula publishers to “document the experiences in grades K-2 and determine whether there is coherence in the curricular vision across the transition from preschool to these grades.”

Much of the report is focused on ensuring that all young children have access to high-quality pre-K experiences, especially children from historically marginalized communities that may face greater barriers in access. The committee places equity at the center of many of their recommendations. For example, the third recommendation urges researchers and developers to develop criteria and metrics for assessing bias in curricula and continually review curricula for potential biases. Relatedly, the fifteenth recommendation highlights the importance of ensuring that children from historically marginalized communities are represented in study samples with “explicit attention to their unique experiences.”

There is no shortage of barriers to the task of transforming the committee’s vision into reality. Young children in this country receive pre-K education in a variety of settings and are guided by teachers with a wide range of preparation and skills. Some children attend a pre-K classroom led by a teacher with a master’s degree while others attend classes guided by educators who might have years of on-the-job experience but lack a college degree. Therefore, a pre-K curriculum needs to be able to be implemented with fidelity by teachers who span the gamut of formal education. That’s no easy task.

Despite these obstacles, the very fact that this report exists means that positive changes might be on the horizon when it comes to children’s pre-K experiences. The next few years will be key to ensuring that the country moves closer to the day when all young children attend pre-K programs guided by evidence-based curricula that reflect their unique experiences and identities.