CREATE Open Seminar: Nationwide State Pre-K Investments and Achievement in the United States

Despite widespread interest in the role that publicly funded pre-k can play in supporting student achievement, evaluations of scaled-up programs have produced mixed results. Although the past 20 years have seen unprecedented investment in public pre-k programs across the United States, the evaluation literature relies heavily on studies of local programs. The current talk will present new data on the nationwide scale-up of public pre-k in the United States, which we leverage to investigate whether state-level financial investments in prekindergarten improve population-level student achievement. The talk will consider the factors that have led to the expansion of public pre-k in the United States and whether continued investments are likely to improve academic outcomes for affected populations.