ATLANTA — The Southern Regional Education Board member states lead the nation in providing access to high-quality, state-funded prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, but a new report from SREB recommends that states take further action to ensure that all children are ready for school.
SREB states are considered trailblazers in prekindergarten access and program quality, according to the report, Ready to Start: Ensuring High-Quality Prekindergarten in SREB States, available at www.sreb.org. In fact, the majority of all 4-year-olds attending prekindergarten in the United States last year were enrolled in the SREB region, and nearly all SREB states now offer sufficient access to prekindergarten for children from families with annual incomes at or below the federal poverty line.
"Yet all SREB states have increasing numbers of children from English-as-a-second-language families and from low-income families above the poverty level, who may need help becoming ready for school. Few SREB states provide enough seats and services for all children from these families," said SREB President Dave Spence.
"The challenge for state leaders now is to spend prekindergarten funds wisely to serve more children and meet the needs of these diverse groups, while ensuring that programs meet high standards of quality," he said. States also may need to look at making prekindergarten available to more 3-year-olds as funds become available, Spence added.
Research makes clear that high-quality prekindergarten for all children is worth the investment, the report notes. Children who are not prepared for school are the ones most likely to drop out, to find only low-paying jobs, to become unemployed and to face a lifetime of problems.
"The South cannot afford for children to falter in their critical first transition to school," Spence said. "SREB states need to continue to blaze trails for them."
The report shows that five SREB states enrolled 40 percent or more of their 4-year-olds in state-funded prekindergarten in 2006: Oklahoma with 70 percent, Georgia with 51 percent, Florida with 47 percent, Texas with 44 percent and West Virginia with 40 percent. Some SREB states serve very few or even no children in state-funded prekindergarten. Half-day programs and language barriers continue to make enrollment difficult for some families, the report says.
SREB states generally lead the nation in meeting nationally accepted standards of quality for prekindergarten programs. But few states measure how well prekindergarten programs prepare children for school.
Sustainable funding for prekindergarten also continues to be a challenge in some SREB states. To make further improvements, SREB calls for state leaders to focus on per-student spending for prekindergarten, better coordination of statewide programs for young children, teacher training and other actions, including the creation of statewide assessments of children’s readiness for school.
The SREB report is released as the Pew Charitable Trust’s National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force is expected to release its landmark report soon on how states can better evaluate and improve the quality of early childhood education programs.
For more information about your state’s prekindergarten programs, contact SREB Communications or see the full report, including state-by-state details, at www.sreb.org.
SREB, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, advises state education leaders on ways to improve education. SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Each is represented by its governor and four gubernatorial appointees.
