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Will public pre-K really close achievement gaps?: Gaps in prekindergarten quality between students and across states

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Publicly funded pre-K has often been touted as a means to narrow the achievement gap, but this goal is much less likely to be achieved if poor/minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor/non-minority peers. In this paper I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor/minority students and non-poor/non-minority students, ranging from 0.3 to 0.7 SD on a range of classroom observational measures. I also find that even after adjusting for a series of classroom characteristics, significant and sizable quality gaps remain. Finally, I find much between-state variation in gap magnitudes, and that state-level quality gaps are related to state-level residential segregation. These findings are particularly troubling if a goal of public pre-K is to minimize inequality. (author abstract)

Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Author(s):
Country:
United States
State(s):
California; Georgia; Illinois; Kentucky; Massachusetts; New Jersey; New York; Ohio; Texas; Washington; Wisconsin

Related resources include summaries, versions, measures (instruments), or other resources in which the current document plays a part. Research products funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation are related to their project records.

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