Last month, President Biden laid out a series of bold proposals to ensure that all families can access high-quality, affordable child care and early learning. The American Families Plan, which gathers together those proposals, includes increased support for child care, so that middle-income and low-income families don’t have to spend more than 7 percent of their income on child care; a national paid family and medical leave program, so that parents can afford to take time off when a child is born or when they or someone else in their family is sick; a child tax credit, to provide families with cash that can help support their children in any way they choose; and free universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds.1

If these policies are enacted, millions of children and families stand to benefit. The first five years of life are a period of rapid brain development for children, and the investments we make in young children pay out in dividends over a lifetime. Decades of research have shown that funding high-quality early learning programs is one of the best policy decisions that our society can make.2

Ensuring quality in these programs, however, is essential to their success. High-quality early learning programs need adequate funding to ensure that teachers are well-compensated and well-trained. They also require smart decisions about program design to create the types of classrooms that we know yield strong results for children.

Racial and socioeconomic integration is one of these design elements that can lead to quality. Children of all backgrounds learn more on average in racially and socioeconomically diverse preschool classrooms, and diverse early learning settings can help reduce prejudice among young children. In truly integrated, high-quality early childhood settings, children of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds should also be supported by racially diverse teams of educators using culturally responsive pedagogy and curricula.

Families should have the option of these kinds of racially and socioeconomically integrated early learning settings for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Universal pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds provide a particularly important opportunity for fostering racial and socioeconomic diversity because they allow students of all backgrounds to enroll for free. Translating this opportunity into reality, however, requires intentional policies that encourage integration and break down the silos that exist in the current early education landscape. As part of this proposed historic investment in young children and families, the federal government should include the right incentives and safeguards to support racial and socioeconomic integration in early learning classrooms, rather than reinforce segregation.

The Benefits of Integration in Early Education

A large and consistent body of research shows that attending high-quality early learning programs can have a huge impact on the future success of children of all backgrounds—improving learning and development, boosting health outcomes, and increasing future employment and earnings. A study released this month of Boston’s pre-K program, for example, found that children who attended pre-K were 6 percentage points more likely to graduate high school, 8.5 percentage points more likely to take the SAT, and 8.3 percentage points more likely to enroll in college on time. These benefits applied across different racial and socioeconomic groups.3 Likewise, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, middle-income children who attended pre-K entered kindergarten seven months ahead of their non-participating peers in pre-reading skills. Low-income children benefited even more, entering kindergarten ten to eleven months ahead of their peers.4 In his book From Preschool to Prosperity, economist Tim Bartik of the Upjohn Institute calculates substantial lifetime earnings gains from attending quality pre-K programs: $53,000 for low-income children, and $48,000 for middle-income children.5

Crucially, learning for both middle-class and low-income children can be increased when children of all different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds have the chance to attend preschool together. A 2015 report from The Century Foundation and the Poverty Race Research Action Council highlights these findings.6 One study using a large dataset of children from eleven state pre-K programs found that preschool children in classes with higher average socioeconomic status (SES) learned more on average than those in low-SES classrooms—regardless of the children’s own backgrounds.7 A follow-up analysis of that data also found that the racial diversity of pre-K classrooms was independently associated with children’s outcomes, and that racially diverse classrooms offer advantages for students.8 Another study, comparing preschool children in economically mixed classrooms with those in high-poverty classrooms, found that those in the economically mixed preschools showed greater growth in language skills.9 In addition, a recent analysis of the impacts of universal versus targeted pre-K found that universal programs produced larger test score gains for low-income children and were more economically efficient in producing these gains than targeted pre-K programs that serve only low-income children.10 Although the study did not examine why universal programs were more efficient than targeted ones, the increased opportunity for diversity in the classroom is a possible explanation.

Even after controlling for instructional quality in the classroom, children in diverse preschool settings still show increased learning outcomes.

One of the reasons for the greater learning seen in diverse preschool classrooms may be teacher quality. Research shows that preschool classrooms with higher average SES and low minority enrollment tend to attract more skilled preschool teachers.11 However, even after controlling for instructional quality in the classroom, children in diverse preschool settings still show increased learning outcomes; thus, another mechanism by which diverse preschool classrooms promote children’s cognitive growth may be in effect, such as peer effects.12 Children learn by interacting with peers in the classroom. It is a particular advantage for lower-skilled children to have higher-skilled peers, while higher-skilled children tend to be less affected by the skill level of their classmates. Because children’s exposure to math and language skills outside the classroom is highly correlated with their socioeconomic background, low-SES children therefore may benefit, on average, from having some middle- or high-SES classmates.13

Perhaps even more importantly, diverse preschool classrooms can help young children learn to empathize and coexist with people from other races and classes, which is a huge step forward in addressing the racial injustice and class divisions in our country. Children typically develop awareness of racial and social categories by kindergarten, and exposure to peers helps shape these perceptions. One study of Anglo-British preschool children, for example, found that those children in racially integrated classrooms were less likely than those in homogeneous classrooms to show racial bias toward minorities.14

Much of this research on the specific advantages of racial and socioeconomic diversity in early childhood classrooms is new in the past decade; however, many in the field of early education have long believed in the value of integrated programs. In fact, when it was begun in 1965, Head Start was originally proposed to serve a mix of low-income and middle-class children.15 Developmental psychologist Edward Zigler—known as the “Father of Head Start”—envisioned Head Start as a socioeconomically integrated program, serving both low-income and middle-class children in high-quality, diverse learning environments. In the end, he was only able to get agreement from the program’s planners to allow Head Start programs to enroll up to 10 percent of students from families earning more than the poverty line. It was less than Zigler wanted, but, as he reflected, “at least the 10% rule sent a signal that the planners were aware that a socioeconomically integrated setting was a better developmental setting for children than segregated schooling.”16 Although this idea has been largely absent from the reality of Head Start in its fifty-six years of existence, the goal of racially and socioeconomically integrated early childhood classrooms is an idea worth revisiting as lawmakers build proposals for new large federal investments in early education.

The Scarcity of Diverse Preschool Classrooms

While the research makes it clear that integration works, segregation is the prevailing reality in early education. Diverse preschool classrooms are a scarce opportunity in this country. Data analysis released in 2019 from Urban Institute researchers Erica Greenberg and Tomás Monarrez shows that early childhood settings are among the most racially segregated educational spaces in our country.17 Greenberg and Monarrez looked at data for all center-based and home-based early childhood programs enrolling at least five children, from birth to preschool, included in the federally funded 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education. This included day care centers, private preschools, public pre-K, and Head Start programs, as well as family child care providers, nannies, and informal care arrangements, such as a relative or neighbor providing child care for children. Using the “index of dissimilarity”—a measure of how many children from one group would have to move programs in order to create an even distribution of children from two different groups (in this case, looking at a combined group of Black and Latinx students versus all other students)—the researchers compared levels of segregation in early childhood settings versus elementary, middle, and high schools. Based on this measure, the researchers found that early childhood education was 13 percent more segregated than elementary school education, and 20 percent more segregated than high school education. This is deeply troubling, because elementary school and high school education are themselves already incredibly segregated.

These data echo findings from earlier scholarship. According to a 2015 study of state pre-K programs, only one in five children was enrolled in a classroom that was both racially and socioeconomically diverse.18 Another study looking at school-based preschool programs found that fully half of all preschool children were in highly segregated programs: about 40 percent of preschool children were in programs in which more than 90 percent of children were non-White, and another 10 percent were in programs that were more than 90 percent White.19

These high levels of racial segregation in early childhood education are likely to be byproducts, in large part, of the socioeconomic segregation that households face while raising children. Families with young children must first contend with housing segregation, which shunts lower-income households into neighborhoods with limited early education choices.20 In fact, poor children are more likely than poor adults to live in high-poverty neighborhoods.21 Compounding that, families then face our early education landscape, which itself has evolved as a fractured system, with a mix of public programs such as Head Start, Early Head Start, and state pre-K that mostly restrict eligibility to low-income or at-risk children and private programs that are frequently unaffordable for working families. As a result, many young children attend day care centers and preschool programs with peers who mostly have similar socioeconomic backgrounds. In many cases, this means that child care settings and preschool classrooms are fairly racially homogeneous as well.22

Potential and Pitfalls for Integration in Universal Pre-K Classrooms

In contrast with the rest of the early childhood landscape, both public and private, universal pre-K programs provide a helpful starting ingredient for achieving integration: accessibility to students of all backgrounds. But very few states offer strong universal pre-K programs for 4-year-olds, and even fewer serve 3-year-olds. Just eighteen states plus the District of Columbia offer pre-K programs with universal eligibility for 4-year-olds, meaning that age and residency are the only criteria for participating (see Figure 1). However, in most of these programs, universal eligibility does not translate into universal access, because there simply are not enough seats available. Only Florida, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia enroll more than 70 percent of 4-year-olds in universal pre-K programs. With respect to 3-year-olds, access is even more limited. Only eight states plus the District of Columbia have any kind of pre-K program with universal eligibility for 3-year-olds (see Figure 2).23

Figure 1
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Figure 2
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The expansion of universal pre-K to serve all 3- and 4-year-olds would make huge progress in creating the right building blocks for integration in early education. However, there are still challenges in translating universal pre-K into integrated pre-K. We know all too well from the K–12 public education landscape that universal access does not necessarily result in integrated classrooms, as neighborhood segregation, school zoning decisions, choice policies, admissions criteria, and course assignments all come into play. In the case of early childhood programs, there are added challenges of building on an early education landscape that, because of insufficient public investments to date, is siloed along lines of income and also, oftentimes, along lines of race.

A key element of the American Families Plan is a commitment to providing early care and learning across different settings—in public schools, private preschools or daycare centers, or family child care homes. Head Start programs will also continue to serve many 3- and 4-year-old children. This mixed-delivery approach will allow families to choose the setting that is the best fit for them, and it will ensure that we can reach the ambitious goal of providing universal pre-K seats for all 3- and 4-year-olds who want them by building from and investing in our existing early learning infrastructure. But it also means that universal pre-K programs will have to fight against the tide to serve diverse groups of students in a system that was originally built around a private market that sorts based on who can afford to pay on the one hand and public programs that sort based on who meets income thresholds and other eligibility criteria on the other.

New York City’s universal pre-K program has seen great success across a variety of measures. The city expanded quickly to serve over 60,000 4-year-olds by providing seats in public schools as well as community-based providers and new city-run pre-K centers,24 and the program is regarded overall as high-quality when compared to other pre-K programs in U.S. cities.25 But New York’s pre-K program also serves as an example of some of the challenges to integration in a mixed-delivery model.26

Although families of all socioeconomic backgrounds are guaranteed seats through the universal programs, not every seat is open to every child.

Although families of all socioeconomic backgrounds are guaranteed seats through the universal programs, not every seat is open to every child. Funding for universal pre-K is combined with income-eligible funding streams and delivered across a variety of different settings, yielding a complicated and often segregated landscape. For example, River Park Nursery School, a private preschool in the Upper West Side of Manhattan that offers universal pre-K, gives priority in admissions for its pre-K seats (in accordance with the citywide pre-K admissions policies) to families who already have children enrolled in the center as 3-year-olds. The full-time tuition for 3-year-olds is nearly $30,000 per year, and as of 2017–18, the nursery school enrolled almost all White children (82 percent White, 12 percent Asian, and 6 percent multiracial/other).27 At the other end of the income spectrum but just five blocks away, Open Door Child Care Center, another community-based universal pre-K provider, enrolls only low-income children because it offers additional hours of care for eligible families funded through the city’s EarlyLearn program; all of the children are Hispanic (67 percent) or Black (33 percent).28

Over in Brooklyn, Park Slope North–Helen Owen Carey is one of a relatively small number of community-based universal pre-K providers that offers universal pre-K seats open to any child as well as seats specifically reserved for low-income children whose families qualify for additional services, and the center’s enrollment is more racially mixed, with no single racial majority. But in the early days of New York City’s universal pre-K program, the city told Park Slope North–Helen Owen Carey that they must keep the income-qualifying children and the general universal pre-K children in separate classrooms. The center opted to maintain blended classrooms anyway, receiving less money from the city as a result, and the city eventually reversed its policy of requiring students with different funding streams to be in separate classrooms; however, creating integrated classrooms when blending different funding streams in early childhood programs remains a challenge in New York City and elsewhere.29

Policies That Support Integration in Universal Pre-K

Capturing the promise of integration in universal pre-K programs, and avoiding the pitfalls that reproduce the segregation of an early education landscape that has had too little public funding for too long, requires intentional design choices. The complexity of the early childhood policy landscape and variety of stakeholders involved warrant more attention and discussion on this specific issue. The Biden administration should convene a group of early childhood advocates, state early childhood leaders, providers, early educators, researchers, and parents to examine what it would take to create truly integrated early childhood classrooms, with students and educators from diverse backgrounds and teaching materials and methods that support and affirm students’ identities. These conversations should also consider how integration can work alongside other priorities for quality and equity in early childhood, such as supporting early childhood programs run by women of color.

To support the mission of integration, any federal early childhood proposals should consider including the following provisions.

1. Require and support blended or braided funding.

Providing high-quality early learning programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds who want them will likely require bringing together multiple federal and state funding streams. All but six states already have some kind of state pre-K program, but many of these have eligibility requirements based on income or other risk factors. In addition, all states have federal Head Start programs that serve families below the federal poverty level, and federal child care dollars that fund contracted child care or child care vouchers for eligible low-income families. It makes good sense to accomplish universal pre-K by building on some of these existing programs, but if funding streams for the programs remain separate, communities will end up with situations where some programs accept only eligible low-income children, shutting off opportunities for socioeconomic diversity, or where providers receiving multiple types of state funding have to separate children by different funding streams into different classrooms. The examples from New York City described earlier illustrate this challenge.

In order to avoid a situation in which children continue to be separated into different programs and classrooms based on their eligibility criteria, all new federal investments in early childhood education from birth to age 5 must make blending funds (combining sources to pay for a single part of a program) or braiding funds (coordinating sources to pay for different parts of a program) a priority.30 Federal and state lawmakers first need to remove any policies that prohibit blending or braiding and align rules and regulations where possible, so that providers can meet the requirements of multiple funding streams at the same time. But it is not enough simply to allow blending or braiding at the level of individual programs: the administrative burden of managing multiple sets of requirements places an undue and often unmanageable burden on many early childhood providers, particularly single-site programs or family child care programs with limited administrative staff. Government agencies at the federal, state, or local level should take on the administrative work of blending or braiding funds so that individual early education programs can use the funds to enroll a diverse group of students, meeting different eligibility criteria, in integrated classrooms. For example, District of Columbia Public Schools worked with federal regulators to blend its Head Start funding and state universal pre-K funding at the city level, converting classrooms into hybrid early learning environments that met both the state pre-K standards and the Head Start standards, and that enrolled children of all backgrounds together.31

2. Create a set-aside that devotes a portion of funds to integration.

Federal funding for early education should reserve a portion of funding for states to spend on activities that help to promote racial and socioeconomic integration in early childhood programs. These funds could support activities such as outreach to enroll families of diverse backgrounds and grants or training for early childhood programs to encourage and facilitate blended funding. This “integration set-aside” would be parallel to the quality set-aside in federal child care funding that reserves a portion of funds (currently 12 percent) to support specific efforts (such as workforce development, implementing a tiered quality rating system, and supporting providers seeking national accreditation) in order to help increase the supply and quality of services for children in underserved areas, infants and toddlers, children with disabilities, and children in non-traditional-hour care.32

3. Create a grant program to fund the planning and implementation of locally-driven early education integration initiatives.

Because the status quo in early education is a siloed and segregated landscape, creating integrated programs will require innovation. The federal government should fund communities to develop local approaches to integration in early education and use these efforts as examples from which the rest of the country can learn. A competitive grant program that administers these funds could draw inspiration from the Strength in Diversity Act, a piece of proposed legislation that would create a grant program for individual school districts, groups of districts, or states to develop voluntary, community-driven strategies to reduce elementary and secondary school segregation. A parallel grant program for early education could fund local government agencies or states to develop and implement plans to support racial and socioeconomic integration for young children. Grant funds could be used to support activities such as studying segregation in the current local early education landscape and identifying the levers for integration, creating administrative systems to blend or braid funding streams at the agency level, or conducting enrollment outreach and implementing new enrollment priorities designed to promote diversity.

4. Build toward universal in a way that supports integration.

Federal support for early education should include the end goal that all states provide universal pre-K access for 3- and 4-year-olds, but getting to universality could take multiple years. Federal funding should require states to build toward universal access in a way that creates opportunities for integration along the way. For example, states could gradually increase the income eligibility for pre-K programs, working up to universal eligibility, while also opening up these programs to fee-paying families above the income eligibility on a sliding scale. Alternatively, states could prioritize expanding pre-K programs in low-income communities first but ensure that these programs have universal access. In New Jersey, for example, over thirty of the state’s most disadvantaged school districts provide universal pre-K programs as a result of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in the education equity case Abbott v. Burke.33 While universal programs in disadvantaged communities will likely still enroll children who are mostly from low-income families, they may enroll some children from middle- and higher-income families, and they will also establish important practices around universal eligibility that can then be expanded to communities across the state.

5. Create more opportunities for children with disabilities to attend integrated programs.

In addition to these efforts to promote racial and socioeconomic integration, federal early education policies should promote integration and inclusion for children with disabilities. A large body of research shows that inclusive educational settings, in contrast with segregated classrooms, provide many benefits for children with disabilities, including greater cognitive and language development, increased social competence, and stronger academic and employment outcomes in the long run. Children without disabilities in these settings can also develop empathy and reduce bias by interacting with peers of diverse abilities.34 For this reason, federal law requires that students with disabilities are educated in the “least restrictive environment,” in the same classrooms as other students whenever possible and without being removed from the regular classes unless necessary. Nevertheless, many state pre-K programs currently serve children with disabilities in self-contained classrooms (which enroll only children with disabilities), even if those children would be better served in integrated programs. States need support and accountability to create more inclusive early childhood programs where children with disabilities can get the accommodations, services, and supports that they need in an integrated setting. Federal investments in early education should be coupled with increased Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding, as well as with a requirement that states set and reach goals in their work to serve more children with disabilities in integrated settings.35

Conclusion

The path to a racially just and thriving future for the next generation must include creating high-quality early education programs for all families who want them, where children of all backgrounds can learn together. The American Families Plan would provide an important and overdue public investment to help make this happen through expanding funding for child care and creating universal pre-K. But funding alone is not enough to ensure quality and equity. Racial and socioeconomic integration must be a goal and a design principle as our nation’s leaders expand and build early learning opportunities, and strong, intentional policy is needed to ensure that the future that we want for our children comes to pass.

Notes

  1. “Fact Sheet: The American Families Plan,” The White House, April 28, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-the-american-families-plan/
  2. Beth Meloy, Madelyn Gardner, and Linda Darling-Hammond, “Untangling the Evidence on Preschool Effectiveness: Insights for Policymakers,” Learning Policy Institute, January 31, 2019, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/untangling-evidence-preschool-effectiveness-report
  3. Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walters, “The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston,” School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative, MIT Department of Economics, May 2021, https://seii.mit.edu/research/study/the-long-term-effects-of-universal-preschool-in-boston/?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210510&instance_id=30528&nl=the-morning&regi_id=136864203&segment_id=57667&te=1&user_id=878a31de3cd6c2bed41619ab28a76b87
  4. http://fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/Policy%20Brief_draft_071613_0.pdf
  5. Timothy J. Bartik, From Preschool to Prosperity: The Economic Payoff to Early Childhood Education (Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2014), 44.
  6. See Jeanne L. Reid and Sharon Lynn Kagan, “A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education,” The Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, April 2015, https://tcf.org/content/report/a-better-start/.
  7. Jeanne L. Reid, “Socioeconomic Diversity and Early Learning: The Missing Link in Policy for High-Quality Preschools” in The Future of School Integration, ed. Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York: The Century Foundation, 2012), 67–126, https://tcf.org/content/book/the-future-of-school-integration/.
  8. Jeanne L. Reid, “The Racial and Ethnic Composition of Pre-Kindergarten Classrooms and Children’s Language Development,” Penn State Law Review 119, no. 3 (2015): 645–85, http://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/the-racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-prekindergarten-classrooms-and-childrens-language-development/.
  9. Carlota Schechter and Beth Bye, “Preliminary Evidence for the Impact of Mixed-Income Preschool on Low-income Children’s Language Growth,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 22 (2007): 137–46, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ752960.
  10. Elizabeth U. Cascio, “Does Universal Preschool Hit the Target? Program Access and Preschool Impacts,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 23215, March 2017, rev. July 2019, http://www.nber.org/papers/w23215.
  11. Jeanne L. Reid and Sharon Lynn Kagan, “A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education,” The Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, April 2015, 11, https://tcf.org/content/report/a-better-start/.
  12. Jeanne L. Reid, “Socioeconomic Diversity and Early Learning: The Missing Link in Policy for High-Quality Preschools” in The Future of School Integration, ed. Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York: The Century Foundation, 2012), 67–126, https://tcf.org/content/book/the-future-of-school-integration/.
  13. Jeanne L. Reid and Sharon Lynn Kagan, “A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education,” The Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, April 2015, 11, https://tcf.org/content/report/a-better-start/.
  14. Adam Rutland, Lindsey Cameron, Laura Bennett, and Jennifer Ferrell, “Interracial Contact and Racial Constancy: A Multi-site Study of Racial Intergroup Bias in 3-5 Year Old Anglo-British Children,” Applied Developmental Psychology 26 (2005): 699–713, https://kar.kent.ac.uk/26168/4/rutland%20et%20al%20JADP.pdf
  15. See Halley Potter, “50 Years On, Head Start’s Best Hope for the Future May Lie in an Idea from Its Past,” The Century Foundation, May 15, 2015, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/50-years-on-head-starts-best-hope-for-the-future-may-lie-in-an-idea-from-its-past/
  16. Edward Zigler and Sally J. Styfco, The Hidden History of Head Start (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 127.
  17. “Segregated from the Start Comparing Segregation in Early Childhood and K–12 Education,” Urban Institute, October 1, 2019, https://www.urban.org/features/segregated-start.
  18. Jeanne L. Reid, “The Racial and Ethnic Composition of Pre-Kindergarten Classrooms and Children’s Language Development,” Penn State Law Review 119, no. 3 (2015): 668–69, http://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/the-racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-prekindergarten-classrooms-and-childrens-language-development/. The study defines socioeconomically diverse classrooms as those with a standard deviation of family income that is at least 0.5 times the mean standard deviation for all classrooms. Racially diverse classrooms are defined as those with 21–70 percent minority children.
  19. Erica Frankenberg, “Segregation at an Early Age,” Center for Education and Civil Rights, PennState College of Education and the National Coalition on School Diversity, October 2016, 12, https://cecr.ed.psu.edu/sites/default/files/Segregation_At_An_Early_Age_Frankenberg_2016.pdf
  20. Richard D. Kahlenberg, “Updating the Fair Housing Act to Make Housing More Affordable,” The Century Foundation, April 9, 2018, https://tcf.org/content/report/updating-fair-housing-act-make-housing-affordable/.
  21. Paul Jargowsky, “Architecture of Segregation,” The Century Foundation, August 7, 2015, https://tcf.org/content/report/architecture-of-segregation/.
  22. Jeanne L. Reid and Sharon Lynn Kagan, “A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education,” The Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, April 2015, https://tcf.org/content/report/a-better-start/.
  23. Note that Multnomah County, Oregon, approved the creation of universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds in November 2020, and the first children will enroll in September 2022. This program is not yet reflected in the data for Figures 1 and 2. See “Preschool for All,” Multnomah County, https://www.multco.us/dchs/preschool-all (accessed May 25, 2021).
  24. Halley Potter, “Lessons from New York City’s Universal Pre-K Expansion: How a Focus on Diversity Could Make It Even Better,” The Century Foundation, May 13, 2015, https://tcf.org/content/report/lessons-from-new-york-citys-universal-prek-expansion/.
  25. Elise Franchino, “Pre-K in American Cities,” New America, March 4, 2019, https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/pre-k-american-cities/
  26. Halley Potter, “Creating Integrated Early childhood Education in New York City,” The Century Foundation, October 28, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/creating-integrated-early-childhood-education-new-york-city/
  27. Programs and Tuition, River Park Nursery School http://www.riverparknurseryschool.com/programs.html (accessed May 19, 2021); and New York City Department of Education, 2015-2018 Demographic Snapshot Pre-K For All, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Education/2015-2018-Demographic-Snapshot-Pre-K-For-All/u4g8-wkku
  28. New York City Department of Education, 2015-2018 Demographic Snapshot Pre-K For All, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Education/2015-2018-Demographic-Snapshot-Pre-K-For-All/u4g8-wkku
  29. https://tcf.org/content/report/lessons-from-new-york-citys-universal-prek-expansion/
  30. See Margie Wallen and Angela Hubbard, “Blending and Braiding Early Childhood Program Funding Streams Toolkit,” Ounce of Prevention Fund, May 2013, https://startearly.org/app/uploads/pdf/NPT-Blended-Funding-Toolkit.pdf
  31. See “Building a National Early Childhood Education System That Works,” Learning Policy Institute, March 4, 2021, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/early-childhood-education-system-2021-brief. Note that District of Columbia Public Schools ended its Head Start contract in 2020.
  32. “Quality Improvement,” Early Childhood Training and Technical Assistance System, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, https://childcareta.acf.hhs.gov/ccdf-fundamentals/activities-improve-quality-child-care-services (accessed May 19, 2021) and Hannah Matthews, Karen Schulman, Julie Vogtman, Christine JOhnson-Staub, and Helen Blank, Implementing the Child care and Development Block Grant Reauthorization: A Guide for States, National Women’s Law Center, 2015, https://www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/public/issues/child-care-and-early-education/pages/body/Chapter3_CCDBGGuide.pdf
  33. Linda Jacobson, “Pre-to-3: 20 Year of NJ’s Abbott Pre-K Provides Lessons for Other States,” K12Dive, March 9, 2018, https://www.k12dive.com/news/pre-to-3-20-years-of-njs-abbott-pre-k-provides-lessons-for-other-states/518522/
  34. “Policy Statement on Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Programs,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Education, September 14, 2015, https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/earlylearning/joint-statement-full-text.pdf
  35. See “Building a National Early Childhood Education System That Works,” Learning Policy Institute, March 4, 2021, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/early-childhood-education-system-2021-brief.

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