The first group of students who attended Pre-K 4 SA in its first year has taken third-grade STAAR exams, and results showed the students were more likely to perform better on state exams and attend class than those who did not attend public pre-K.
A new study from the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Urban Education Institute also showed the former Pre-K 4 SA students were less likely to be identified as needing special-education services. The study also suggests the first group of Pre-K 4 SA students “fared slightly better” than children who enrolled in public pre-K.
Pre-K 4 SA is the City of San Antonio’s taxpayer-funded, full-day pre-kindergarten program. It serves 2,000 4-year-old students each year and started with a class of 750 students in 2013.
In 2020, voters will likely be asked to reapprove the 1/8 of a cent sales tax appropriation to fund the pre-K program. In recent months, City Council members have asked for results from the first class of Pre-K 4 SA students, anticipating the future election issue.
The research presented Monday is the first study of the program’s impact in relation to other public pre-K programs or no public pre-K.
Mike Villarreal, the director of the UTSA institute, presented his findings to Pre-K 4 SA’s board at a meeting Monday morning. He explained his process to board members, telling them that he compared almost 400 original Pre-K 4 SA students to other students with similar demographics enrolled in the same third-grade classes and schools.
The comparison groups included both students who participated in other public pre-K programs and those who didn’t participate in public pre-K. Students who didn’t enroll in public pre-K could have gone to a private or parochial preschool or may not have participated in pre-K at all. Altogether, Villarreal looked at STAAR results, attendance rates, and special-education identifications of roughly 10,000 students.
When examining STAAR math scores, Villarreal found that compared to students who didn’t participate in public pre-K, Pre-K 4 SA increased the share of students who met or exceeded the state average by 15.4 percentage points. In comparison to students who attended other public pre-K programs, Pre-K 4 SA increased the share of students who met or exceeded the state average by 5.6 percentage points.
Reading scores also showed a net gain in Pre-K 4 SA students who met or exceeded the state average. In comparison to those who did not participate in public pre-K, Pre-K 4 SA increased the share of students who met or exceeded the state average by 11.6 percentage points. Compared to students who attended public pre-K programs, Pre-K 4 SA increased the share of students who met or exceeded the state average by 3.4 percent. While the 3.4 number was not statistically significant, Villarreal said, it suggested a pattern.
Examining absenteeism, Villarreal looked at attendance rates for students from kindergarten through third grade and found that on average, Pre-K 4 SA students attended an average of 33.3 more days than their peers who didn’t attend public pre-K. The gulf shrinks when compared to other students who attended public pre-K. Pre-K 4 SA students attended 5.5 more days than students in this group.
“Every day of instruction matters,” Pre-K 4 SA CEO Sarah Baray said. “This is especially true in the early years, as brain research tells us those years are the most critical for long-term success.”
Board members said they were particularly impressed with how much additional money increased attendance yielded for school districts. In Texas, where funding is based on average daily attendance, the more students in seats each day means more money. Local schools received approximately $23.2 million more in funding because of increased attendance, both by Pre-K 4 SA students and other students who started enrolling in public pre-K programs after Pre-K 4 SA started.
Finally, Villarreal looked at the impact of Pre-K 4 SA on other public pre-K programs. In 2012, voters passed a measure that funded the public pre-kindergarten program. The first group of students entered the schools in the 2013-14 school year, and Villarreal found that after 2014, Bexar County’s enrollment in other public pre-K programs spiked by about 9 percent.
Villarreal hypothesized that there may have been an increase in enrollment because money spent on the Pre-K 4 SA campaign raised awareness about early education.
Baray and other board members emphasized that Pre-K 4 SA’s mission is not just to improve outcomes for the 2,000 students who attend one of the program’s four centers each year, but also to improve outcomes for Bexar County as a whole and increase the number of students enrolling in high-quality public pre-K programs.
The full study will not be released for 30 days, a Pre-K 4 SA spokeswoman said. Pre-K 4 SA and the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation, which invested $2 million in UTSA’s Urban Education Institute, funded the study.
Villarreal plans to continue following cohorts of Pre-K 4 SA students in the coming years.
Wonderful news. Was part of this endeavor at it’s conception/design/implementation. The last project in which I was involved prior to moving from San Antonio. Congrats to the staff and board for delivering results !!
Not to say that Pre-K 4 SA is a bad program (it’s not and it provides a badly needed service) but couldn’t it be said that the type of parents that make sure their kids sign up to be part of the program are the type of parents that are involved to help ensure their child’s academic success?
Agree with Dewey. Also, can’t ignore the huge per student expenditure in the PreK 4 SA program. It’s staggering.
You know what’s even better? If ALL the kids qualify for free.
When an outcome of an intervention such as the impact that PreK 4 SA has on increasing test scores, isn’t statically significant, it means the opposite of “having a pattern.”
It literally means that the PreK 4 SA intervention has no impact on the measured outcome, being STAAR Scores, which is the opposite of your headline.
While I can understand Mr. Villarreal’s cheerleading for the project that he is personally vested in, I don’t understand your cheerleading as you’re supposed to be an unbiased source of reporting.
Anyone with a modicum of science in their background would catch this result.
I believe a large group of public school teachers (not admininistrators) representing schools of all economic level students, would provide an accurate assessment of the value of pre-school kindergarten.
Interesting that this hasn’t been implemented. No doubt, in my opinion, results would indicate that free school district pre kindergarten would indicate the great value of the program.
I would tend to agree with Dewey and Gil. Since participation in Pre-K4SA is self-selected, the key comparison group is those children who entered the lottery but did not gets a Pre-K4SA seat.
Both of those groups would have parents equally vested in the educational value of Pre-K, as opposed to the child-care value. The test that needs to be made is to see if those parents who value education get the same results from other Pre-K delivery systems.
If so, that would tell us that the critical investment needs to be made earlier – as was found in the Harlem Children’s Zone – in parenting education.
WHat’s going on with the body language of Baray? Arms crossed? Was the meeting room cold? Or is there some kind of behind-the-scenes tension at PreK4SA? The public wants to know!
There have been studies that have shown the opposite. I assume you get the results you want from the data you chose.