Program Effectiveness
Executive Summary
State of Pre-K Yearbook 2022
Date
March 19, 2023
The 20th State of Preschool finds reasons for both optimism and concern. After the COVID-19 pandemic erased a decade of enrollment progress in state-funded preschool, enrollment in most states is on the rebound. Several states are newly working towards universal preschool. Nevertheless, most states remain far from offering high-quality, full-day preschool to even half of 3- and 4-year-olds. This report finds uneven progress nationally and state-by-state over the past year, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and over the past two decades.
The Authors
Allison Friedman-Krauss is an Assistant Research Professor at NIEER where she is also the Associate Director for Policy Research and Director of the Infant and Toddler Policy Research Center.
W. Steven (Steve) Barnett is a Board of Governors Professor and the founder and Senior Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. Dr. Barnett’s work primarily focuses on public policies regarding early childhood education, child care, and child development.
Kate is an Early Childhood Education Policy Specialist at NIEER, where she primarily focuses on state and national policy analysis. Her current work includes collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data for the annual State of Preschool Yearbook report, providing technical assistance to New Jersey school districts and private providers applying for and implementing the state-funded preschool program, among other projects.
Karin Garver is an Early Childhood Education Policy Specialist at NIEER. Her research interests are in national and state early education policy trends, inclusive opportunities for preschool children with disabilities, data systems, systems integration, and public program finance.
GG Weisenfeld is a Senior ECE Policy Specialist at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University, Graduate School of Education.
Beth Gardiner is an Early Childhood Education Technical Assistance Specialist at NIEER, working on various projects, with a primary focus on supporting New Jersey state preschool expansion and high-quality program implementation.
Tracy Merriman Jost is an Early Childhood Education Policy Specialist at the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. In that capacity, Ms. Jost works on State and City PreK expansion, costs, and quality benchmark analysis.
About NIEER
The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, conducts and disseminates independent research and analysis to inform early childhood education policy.
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