Rucker Johnson, “Who Benefits from Public Pre-K Expansions & Increased K-5 Funding? Dynamic Complementarity in California’s Education Policies”
Institute of Human Development Colloquium
States spent almost $10 billion on preschool programs in 2021, up from $2.4 billion in 2001. The number of children served in state preschool programs grew over the same period from just under 700,000 to over 1.5 million, more than double the number of preschool-age children served by the federal Head Start program. While several studies have found positive short- and long-term effects of preschool programs on a variety of student outcomes, some have found null and even negative results. There are many unresolved puzzles in the empirical literature on the causal impacts of expansions in public pre-K access that cannot be understood without embedding the collective evidence within a unified conceptual framework that empirically investigates the potential interactive effects of public investments before, during, and after the preschool period.
California's three recent education policy reforms—the introduction of Transitional Kindergarten (TK) and the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), and expansion of State pre-K investments (CSPP)—provide a unique opportunity to study such synergies, and to evaluate the essential public investments requisite to maximize early learning experiences for children. California's State Preschool Program (CSPP) is one of the largest public preschool programs in the country. Yet no large-scale studies have examined the influence of CSPP on children's development.
Dr. Johnson investigates the independent and synergistic effects on student outcomes of three elements of the California education system: (1) State Preschool Program (CSPP), (2) Transitional Kindergarten (TK), and (3) school spending (via LCFF), and asks the following questions:
- Child Access: How have expansions in public pre-K investments—via CSPP and introduction of TK—affected access to early learning experiences for children, and differentially by parental socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and district characteristics?
- Child Impact Evaluation: Do expansions in public pre-K and increases in K-5 funding significantly improve student learning trajectories and narrow achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, parental socioeconomic status and language? What qualities of CSPP and TK classrooms are most predictive of subsequent child outcomes?