Indicator: Access to full-day pre-K

Definition

Children have access to full-day, publicly funded pre-K programs.

Recommended Metric(s)

Percentage of public pre-K programs that are six hours per day for five days per week

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Percentage of public pre-K programs that are six hours per day for five days per week

CEDS Connections offer guidance, including data elements and step-by-step analysis recommendations, for how to calculate select metrics.

Type(s) of Data Needed

Administrative data

Why it matters

Attending a full-day pre-K program is linked to improved outcomes for students, including greater school readiness in language development, math, and reading.1, 2 Expanding access to full-day pre-K programs increases children’s enrollment in these programs. For example, after Chicago Public Schools expanded full-day pre-K, Black students’ enrollment these programs more than quadrupled. Expanding access to full-day pre-K can also raise mothers’ participation in the workforce. In Washington, DC, introducing universal access to full-day pre-K3 led to a 10-percentage point increase in mothers’ workforce participation rates, with even larger increases for Black mothers and those with low incomes.4 Although more White children are enrolled in preschool than any other group (43 percent, compared to 38 percent of Black children and 34 percent of Latino children), they are the least likely group to be enrolled in full-day programs.5 Enrollment in full-day (versus half-day) programs is more common in households where the mother works outside the home. However, access to affordable, full-day pre-K is still limited: among districts that offer publicly funded pre-K, less than half offer full-day programs.6

What to know about measurement

Information on the duration of pre-K programs could be collected and compared across states. We recommend collecting this information to measure this indicator instead of relying on “full-day” versus “half-day” designations used by states and districts, which are based on varying definitions and are therefore less comparable.7  Our recommended metric is based on the definition used by Civil Rights Data Collection (CDRC), which gathers data from all public districts on whether they offer full-day or half-day pre-K programs. 

The CRDC publishes information at the district level, which is not sufficient to assess equitable access to full-day pre-K. Because many school districts offer both full-day and half-day programs, not all families necessarily have equitable access to full-day pre-K, even in districts that offer full-day programs (for example, if they do not live close to any of the schools that offer full-day pre-K). For this reason, it is important to collect information on duration at the program level.

E-W Case Studies

Tulsa map
ImpactTulsa’s Child Equity Index
ImpactTulsa partnered with Tulsa Public Schools to build a data visualization tool for exploring how environmental conditions vary across neighborhoods and their relationships to academic outcomes.
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Source frameworks

Three source frameworks reviewed for this report included a measure of access to pre-K. Our proposed approach to measuring both program quality and length of school day aligns with the approach taken in the P-16 framework, which notes that “students who attend high-quality full-day pre-kindergarten are better prepared for kindergarten.”

References