Low-income children enter kindergarten 13 months behind their more affluent peers in reading. Black and Hispanic children are nearly seven months and 12 months behind white students in reading, respectively. The initial disparities make it difficult for disadvantaged and minority students to catch up through high school and college.
But a simple policy prescription could narrow those gaps, suggests a new paper from the Center for American Progress.
The analysis looks at how a high-quality universal preschool system could affect achievement gaps between groups of students. Less than 20 percent of black, Hispanic and lower-income students currently attend high-quality early-education programs at schools or other education centers, the study’s authors estimate – but about 24 percent of white children and nearly 30 percent of higher-income children do. White children are more likely to be enrolled in high-quality programs.
Researchers looked at how high-quality universal preschool programs have reduced achievement gaps in Boston and Tulsa, Oklahoma, to estimate what these programs could do nationwide. Tulsa and Boston are rare examples of cities that offer wide-scale, high-quality preschool to all 4-year-olds. These programs have been shown to have significant impact on children, although some critics question the methodology that goes in to determining how successful they are.
Low-income students could gain more than five months of additional reading skills by attending a high-quality preschool, according to the analysis, which would reduct their learning gap by 41 percent. Black children could nearly close their achievement gap in reading by gaining nearly seven months of learning, and Hispanic children could completely catch up to white students in reading skills before kindergarten. Results were similar for math.
Preschool is important in closing what Barnett describes as the “opportunity gap” between rich and poor students. “Think of it as a relay race: Winning the first lap does not guarantee you’re going to win the race. But no one wants to be behind at the first hand-off,” he said.”What the national data shows is children of color and low-income children are far behind when they start kindergarten and that gap – they never catch up.”
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