Students attend a pre-K class at P.S. 124 in New York City on Jan 13, 2021. A new report found enrollment drops at state-based preschool programs during the 2020-2021 school year.
NIEER has been releasing its annual State of Preschool report for two decades now, and this year’s edition, looking at the 2020-2021 school year, offers a remarkable, albeit dated, snapshot of the pandemic’s impact on preschool in the U.S. Now the good news: The federal government provided roughly $440 million in preschool pandemic relief that states were able to use to more than offset that $254 million drop.
Similarly, the report notes that, overall, state spending on preschool has more than doubled over the last two decades, from $4.1 billion in 2002 to roughly $9 billion in 2021. But when you slice the data another way, looking at state dollars“I can tell you, preschool matters,” said U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on a Monday call with reporters. “Preschool should be available for everyone, but right now it’s not. We made some strides as a nation, but we still have a long way to go.
Idaho, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming did not offer a public preschool program during the 2020-2021 school year.NIEER’s annual review isn’t just about enrollment and funding; it’s also about quality control. Researchers evaluate every state using 10 benchmarks of quality, including whether they have early learning standards, small class sizes and well-trained teachers.