City-Funded Preschool Helps Alleviate Shortage, Improves Child & Family Outcomes
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August 2024
High costs and limited openings put preschool out of reach for many families nationwide, including in Tempe, Arizona.
Until recently, Tempe, Arizona, had few preschool options for families, particularly those with lower incomes. A 2017 study found that only about one-third of 3- and 4-year-olds in Tempe were enrolled in preschool, leaving more than 1,000 preschoolers unserved.
“There is a desperate need for high-quality early childhood care and education, particularly preschool, across the country,” explained Marc Hernandez, the director of NORC's Early Childhood Research & Practice Collaborative. “There is a greater demand than supply, the programs that are available are often expensive, and insufficient subsidized options that meet working families’ needs are available for families with lower incomes.”
Tempe and its partners took a unique approach to solving its preschool shortage.
The City of Tempe, working with the local school district and philanthropic organizations, launched Tempe PRE, a $6 million, two-year pilot preschool program housed within classrooms in two of the city's school districts. The free, full-day program also provided before- and after-school care to make it accessible to working families.
The program hired certified teachers and paid them salaries and benefits commensurate with the district’s kindergarten teacher compensation. The teachers underwent training on how to implement an evidence-based curriculum that emphasized student-led learning, building social-emotional skills, and empowering students to resolve interpersonal conflicts.
NORC's Early Childhood Research & Practice Collaborative worked with local partners to evaluate the program’s impact. To provide the most robust results possible, the partners created a lottery that assigned preschool slots to a random sample of eligible families who applied to participate. Random assignment allowed NORC to compare students’ outcomes between those who were offered a spot in Tempe PRE and those in the control group who were not.
Through classroom observation and interviews with principals, teachers, and parents, NORC found that the program was faithfully implemented despite pandemic-related disruptions and benefited both students and their families. We shared our results in real time with local partners, allowing them to continuously improve the program.
“The City of Tempe and its partners took a unique approach to solving its affordable, high-quality preschool shortage. They used the results of NORC’s evaluation to demonstrate the program’s success to city council members, who then decided to commit ongoing funding for the program.”
Students and their parents benefited from Tempe’s preschool pilot.
The extended day program allowed parents to seek new jobs or continue their own educations. Students who participated in the pilot program were better prepared for kindergarten and had better vocabulary and social-emotional skills than peers who qualified but were not selected to participate.
“The City of Tempe and its partners took a unique approach to solving its affordable, high-quality preschool shortage,” Hernandez said. “They used the results of NORC’s evaluation to demonstrate the program’s success to city council members, who then decided to commit ongoing funding for the program.”
The partners are now sharing their insights and evaluation results with other cities facing similar preschool access problems. In response to community demand, Tempe has expanded the Tempe PRE program to offer tuition on a sliding scale based on family income.
“The increasing demand for enrollment from families across the income spectrum demonstrates how strongly the community values the high-quality preschool experience Tempe PRE offers all of Tempe’s preschool-aged children,” Hernandez said.
This article is from our flagship newsletter, NORC Now. NORC Now keeps you informed of the full breadth of NORC’s work, the questions we help our clients answer, and the issues we help them address.
