The impact of preschool programs for low-income children was the focus of an April 11 hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families. Marnie Shaul of the General Accounting Office (GAO) presented a new report entitled, Federal Investment for Low-Income Children Significant but Effectiveness Unclear. Ms. Shaul told the subcommittee that annual federal spending for preschool education programs is $4.6 billion.
Of that $4.6 billion, about $4.3 billion is used for the Head Start program run by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and about $135 million is used for the Even Start program run by the Department of Education (DoE). Additional children are served by the DoE under Title I of the ESEA, which receives approximately $1.8 billion. About two percent of the children in Title I programs are in the preschool age group.
Another $4.4 billion per year is spent on the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and other programs that provide day care. Created as part of the 1994 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193), these programs provide child care assistance for parents who are entering the workforce or acquiring new education and training to move toward that goal.
In addition, states spend approximately $2 billion annually on their own preschool programs and supplemental Head Start funds.
According to Ms. Shaul and the hearing’s other witnesses, many families face difficulties with preschool programs that are offered for part of the day and/or part of the year. Because the programs “do not always accommodate the schedules of working parents,” Ms. Shaul said, preschool services are sometimes combined with child care services. These “collaboration initiatives” can help “to address working parents’ need for full-day coverage.”
However, Ms. Shaul said the GAO found that there is little data available for evaluating preschool programs. Congress has mandated effectiveness studies in this area, with the DHHS scheduled to complete a review of Head Start by 2003 and the DoE scheduled to complete a review of Even Start by 2002. In addition, she said, the DoE is “developing an evaluation plan for the use of Title I funds for preschool programs.” Congress has not requested an evaluation of child care programs in terms of providing education or preparing children to start school, as that is not the focus of those programs.
Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute commented on the lack of available data regarding preschool programs. “Research evidence about the impact…on child outcomes is extremely weak,” he said, adding: “The problem is, we have very little evidence about what would work.”
Citing estimates that $10,000 to $15,000 is spent per child in a federally-funded preschool program, Mr. Besharov said it could be more beneficial to spend the money differently. “What if we used part of the money to support basic, decent child care and used the rest to allow [a single mother] to work part-time, so she could spend more time with her children? Or what if we used the rest of the money to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that she could take more home?”
However, Elaine Zimmerman of the Connecticut Commission on Children testified that her state has created a successful program combining education-oriented preschool care with regular child care programs. Through a comprehensive evaluation of the program, which functions in four Connecticut cities, Ms. Zimmerman said, “We found that the schools with children who had preschool experience, all else being equal, were showing much higher test scores in our mastery test system.” She added the preschool participants were “three times less likely to require special education during their kindergarten year,” and those without access to preschool programs “were over four times more likely to be retained at the end of the kindergarten year.”
