Partnering for Preschool Revisited: A Focus Group Study of Child Care Leaders Working in New Jersey’s Mixed Service Delivery Program

NIEER’s new report, funded by the Maher Charitable Foundation, examines the perspectives of child care and Head Start directors in New Jersey who contract with school districts to provide public preschool. New Jersey has a long history as a leader in providing public preschool through a mixed delivery system where policymakers, advocates, and researchers have often worked together to address implementation issues. However, efforts to expand the availability of public preschool along with changes in state policy that no longer mandate partnering with community child care and Head Start providers have raised implementation concerns.

Findings from the focus groups in this study suggests two key issues that have implications for policy and practice at the state and local levels: a) partnership relationships varied depending on who was leading the preschool program in the LEA (local education agency), and b) interpretation and implementation of preschool policy at the local level impacted the extent to which providers felt supported as partners in the state preschool program.

Findings from this study suggest that a system as complex and consequential as public preschool cannot be sustained through informal relationships or localized decision making alone. Instead, it requires durable, statewide structures that persist across leadership transitions and political cycles while remaining responsive to local context and the other sectors of the early care and education system serving children birth through age five.