The Impacts of Expanding Access to High-Quality Preschool Education
研究评估了佐治亚州和俄克拉荷马州的全民学前教育项目，发现其提高了低收入家庭的入学率、亲子共读时间、母亲就业率和儿童八年级成绩，但对高收入家庭影响有限。
President Obama’s “Preschool for All” initiative calls for dramatic increases in the number of 4-year-olds enrolled in public preschool programs and in the quality of these programs nationwide. The preschools proposed by the initiative share many characteristics with the universal preschools that have been offered in Georgia and Oklahoma since the 1990s. This study draws together data from multiple sources to estimate the impacts of these “model” state programs on preschool enrollment and a broad set of family and child outcomes. We find that the state programs have increased the preschool enrollment rates of children from lower- and higher-income families alike. Among lower-income families, our findings also suggest that the programs have increased the amount of time mothers and children spend together on activities such as reading, the likelihood that mothers work, and children’s test performance as late as eighth grade. Among higher-income families, however, we find that the programs have shifted children from private to public pre-schools, resulting in less of an impact on overall enrollment but a reduction in childcare expenses, and that they have had no positive effect on children’s later test scores.