The effects of universal pre-K in Oklahoma: Research highlights and policy implications

Policy Studies Journal

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 65-82

  Gormley Jr , William T ^a   Phillips, Deborah ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHILD DEVELOPMENT; EDUCATION POLICY; ETHNICITY;

NORTH AMERICA; OKLAHOMA [UNITED STATES]; UNITED STATES; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 14844317309     PISSN: 0190292X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0072.2005.00092.x     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Personal communication, Mary Gill, August 29, 2003.
2. A child's participation in a particular type of program is based on parental reports.
3. This penetration rate includes Head Start programs with some sort of collaborative relationship with the public schools. In effect, it means that 65% of Oklahoma four-year-olds were participating in either the state-funded pre-K program or a Head Start collaborative program. Personal communication, Melissa Basse, Oklahoma Department of Education, August 13, 2003.
4. Unpublished tables based on data regarding workers in the Child Day Care Services industry from the 2002 Current Population Survey, Keystone Research Center, Tracking the Educational Qualifications of Early Care and Education Workers Using the Current Population Survey, July 2003.
5. The CDA requires teachers to possess at least: (1) a high school diploma or equivalent, (2) 480 clock hours of appropriate preschool experience; (3) 120 clock hours of specific formal early childhood education; (4) documented competency through formal observation of their teaching, and (5) passing scores on the CDA written and oral examinations (Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition, 1996).
6. As of FY2003, at least half of all Head Start teachers must hold a two-year associates degree or higher in a field related to early-childhood education.
7. Personal communication from Mark Ginsberg, executive director, NAEYC, August 8, 2003.
8. See Licensing Requirements for Child Care Centers, 2/1/2002, http:// nrc.uchsc.edu/oklahoma/oklahoma.htm, (August 7, 2003). Centers that seek to be designated as three star centers must meet NAEYC requirements for ratios and group sizes, plus additional teacher qualification requirements See Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Reaching for the Stars: For Child Care Centers, Oklahoma DHS Publication No. 99-39, rev. June 1, 2003.
9. The Georgia Office of School Readiness, which runs the pre-K program, has prepared a 12-page single-spaced list of curriculum goals. For example, language development features four goals: Children will develop and expand receptive language (listening) skills; children will develop and expand expressive language (speaking) skills; children will begin to develop age-appropriate writing skills; and children will begin to develop age-appropriate strategies that will assist them in reading Each gold includes lots of specific examples. See http://www.osr.state.ga.us/ Prekgoals.htm.
10. Beginning in July 2003, pre-K curriculum guidelines developed by the state Department of Education became available to pre-K programs. As the term guideline implies, however, these are voluntary, not mandatory.
11. Oklahoma State Department of Education, Low Income Report for 2002-2003. According to Joanie Hildenbrand, Oklahoma Department of Education, the figures are based on October 2002 data.
12. Oklahoma has a higher child poverty rate (20%) than the U.S. average (17%). In 200, Oklahoma ranked 39th in the nation in child poverty (Kids Count Data Book, 2003, Baltimore, Md., Annie Casey Foundation, 145).
13. According to the TPS Attendance Report for 2001-2002, 1,626 four-year-olds were in the TPS pre-K program and 663 four-year-olds were in Head Start programs linked to TPS as of October 17, 2001. This yields the numerator 2,289. According to the TPS Attendance Report for 2002-2003, 3,641 kindergarten students were in TPS as of NOvember 8, 2002. This is the denominator, because it captures those students who were eligible for pre-K the year before. Thus the penetration rate for Tulsa was 66.4%.
14. The information on early-childhood enrollments by school comes from the Office of Pupil Accounting, Tulsa Public Schools, Attendance Report for 2000-2001. Information on full-day versus half-day programs comes from Tulsa Public Schools Early Childhood Sites, 2000-2001.
15. Approximately 78% of the tested children were tested in August 2001. Approximately 12% were tested in July 2001, and approximately 10% were tested in other months, due to scheduling challenges. It is important to note that the child's age in our analysis is always the age at the time of testing.
16. The Director of Elementary Schools Improvement for TPS, Andrew McKenzie, reports that teachers may have accepted some answers in Spanish.
17. Of the children tested, 93% responded appropriately to a greeting, 87% displayed an adequate attention span, and 94% behaved appropriately.
18. A parallel evaluation, of a more conventional nature, focuses on children enrolled in kindergarten in 2001-2002 and compares those who enrolled in pre-K the previous year with those who did not. Because the parallel evaluation does not control for selection bias, it provides a good baseline for assessing the extent of selection bias. The results of the parallel evaluation are reported in (Gormley, W., & T. Gayer, in press).
19. As noted elsewhere (Gromley & Gayer, in press), some modest demographic differences between the treatment and control groups vanish altogether when we focus our attention on the regression-discontinuity point, the observable characteristics of the treatment and control groups are, in statistical terms, identical.
20. Thirty-five percent of white children receive the maximum cognitive score as opposed to 24% of black children and 15% of Hispanic Children, For the future, we have remedied this problem by administering the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement test, with no artificial ceiling, to all children.
21. Our sample included 42 Asian children and 191 Native American children. In future research, we hope to be able to assess the effects of pre-K on Native American children.
22. It is easier to demonstrate statistically significant findings for a sample of 745 children (blacks, full-day) than for a sample of 145 children (blacks, half-day). Thus we hesitate to assert that full-day programs benefit black children more than half-day programs, even though the evidence does point in that direction.
23. Although the Tulsa data suggest this to be the case, given the likely difference in the mixes of children in full- vs. part-day programs in our sample (a larger share of disadvantaged children in the full-day programs), the fact that the white children benefited from the part-day (but not the full-day) program could be as attributable to the peer group as it is to the duration of the program day.
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