Fact Sheets
Pre-K Across the Country
The state of pre-kindergarten varies across the country. These facts are a good starting point for understanding what's happening in pre-k right now.
Availability
State-funded pre-k programs currently serve less than 15 percent of three and four year olds in the U.S. Nationally, about 70 percent of children in state-funded pre-k are served in a school setting. Forand non-profit childcare centers, Head Start centers, and faith-based providers serve the other 30 percent. Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma are the only states that currently make pre-k available to all four year olds. New York, Illinois, and West Virginia have multi-year plans to implement pre-k for all four year olds. Twenty-three states have no state-funded pre-k program for three year olds. Eleven states have no state-funded pre-k program at all.
Funding
States' spending on pre-k programs varies widely, from $1,085 per pre-k child in South Carolina to more than $9,800 per child in New Jersey. Nationwide, state spending on each pre-k child averages about $3,500, or less than one-third of the average dollars spent on each public-school student in K-12. Eight states - Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin - and the District of Columbia include pre-k as part of their school funding formulas (as of FY 2007). This means that at least a portion of pre-k spending is tied to the same funding increases and decreases as K-12 education.
Quality
Thirteen states currently meet eight or more of the ten quality-checklist criteria for its pre-k program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). Thirteen states currently meet five or fewer of NIEER's quality-checklist criteria.
Teachers
About 73 percent of pre-k teachers in state-funded programs report that they have a bachelor's degree (or higher degree). About 56 percent of pre-k teachers report that they hold a teaching certificate from their state designed to include teaching children younger than five years. Twenty-one states do not require all of their state-funded pre-k teachers to have a four-year college degree. Nine of these states do not require any state pre-k teachers to have a bachelor's
degree. The average pre-k teacher earns less than half of what the average elementary school teacher earns. About 70 percent of pre-k teachers report earning a salary below 200% of federal poverty guidelines. Pre-k teachers are, to a great extent, reflective of the children they serve. For instance, 71 percent of classrooms where a majority of the children are African American have pre-k teachers who are also African American, and 46 percent of pre-k classrooms with a majority of Latino children have Latino teachers.
Pre-K Now
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