More kids than ever are entering state-funded preschool, with a new report showing record enrollment levels last school year and a large expansion in several states, especially California. The National Institute of Early Education Research said the growth reflects states embracing universal access and spending, but the institute also described uneven progress in both quality and who can access programs.
The report, published Wednesday, said state-funded preschool enrollment rose to 1.8 million children, reaching 37% of 4-year-olds and about 10% of 3-year-olds. It also said states added 44,000 students to preschool enrollment overall, while noting that the gains were smaller than the year prior and that some states even lost ground.
Nationally, the institute said its “If providing high-quality preschool education to all 3- and 4-year-olds were a race” framing captured the mismatch between progress and remaining gaps. The authors wrote that “some states are nearing the finish line, others have stumbled and fallen behind, and a few have yet to leave the starting line,” in remarks included in the report.
California accounted for more than half of the public preschool enrollment gain, with about 25,000 additional students added in the state. This year, California made every 4-year-old eligible for transitional kindergarten, or TK, a policy expansion that supporters say broadens access but that critics say can strain program capacity as the system grows.
The institute’s report laid out 10 quality benchmarks tied to areas including teacher training, class size and curriculum. It said California met just two of those benchmarks last school year, and it noted that private preschool owners have warned that the rapid rollout of more children into public classrooms threatens their businesses.
Jessica Sawko, of Children Now, said the expansion is a major step but not the end of the work. “Universal TK … is a real win, but it’s also just the start of the work and not the end of it,” Sawko said, adding that the state was expected to meet two more benchmarks in the next report, including lowering its student-teacher ratio to 10-to-1 and requiring lead teachers to have early education training.
The report also described longer-term expectations for preschool’s impact, saying evidence is mounting that high-quality programs can carry benefits into adulthood, including better kindergarten preparedness, higher likelihood of graduating high school, and improved chances of finding work. Steven Barnett, founder and director of the early education institute, said the institute has evidence of that benefit, calling it “very strong evidence” that preschool programs improved foundations for later success.
In California, educators and parents described how universal access can change everyday expectations for early learners. Heather Sufuentes, who was principal of Parkview Elementary in Chico when it began transitional kindergarten, said students who attended arrived with more confidence and often volunteered as class leaders. Chico has since more than doubled the number of TK seats it offers since 2022, according to the report.
Marisol Márquez, a secretary who works for the state, said her daughter’s access to transitional kindergarten at 1st Street Elementary in Los Angeles allowed her family to avoid paying tuition that would have become necessary elsewhere. Márquez said the school discovered her daughter was bright and began sending her to kindergarten for math and reading lessons, and she credited the program with helping her family find opportunities they would otherwise have missed.
The report said access to preschool can depend heavily on where families live and what they can afford. It noted that no state mandates that children attend preschool, and it described large differences in availability, including examples such as Wyoming having no state-funded preschool while Colorado offers part-time preschool for every parent without tuition, and the District of Columbia offering two full years of prekindergarten even for wealthier families.
For families without public options nearby, the institute said waitlists can be an obstacle and that lower-income families may qualify for programs such as Head Start. It also said the number of children in Head Start is falling, in part due to staff shortages, and that families may face growing waitlists for state or federal child care subsidies.
The report tied the expansion effort to federal support limits, saying federal support for expanding early education funding is sparse and shrinking. It cited Donald Trump saying the federal government could not afford to support child care while it was waging a war with Iran, and it said Trump argued that states “should pay for it” and that they would have to “raise their taxes.”
The report also pointed to variation in how states approach universal preschool and quality benchmarks. It said several Republican-led states have pioneered universal prekindergarten, while it described lagging progress in wealthier, Democratic-led states, and it said Georgia is the first state where a universal preschool program meets all of the institute’s quality benchmarks.
In Georgia, Rebecca Ellis said her son, John Patrick, attends the private Capitol Hill Child Enrichment Center in Atlanta for free because of the state’s preschool-for-all program. Ellis said the program saved her family a “huge amount of money” and described changes in her son’s social and emotional development, including how children from the program can help calm parents during moments of agitation.
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