ATLANTA – Georgia’s lottery-funded pre-kindergarten program used to be the envy of the nation, offering high-quality schooling for free.
But the program peaked in 2019 as enrollment started to fall, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic.
“Ominously, some states that have been leaders in universal preschool continued a long-term decline in enrollment, including Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin,” the National Institute for Early Education Research said in a press release this week that sums up its latest annual report.
The quality of Georgia’s program, long a source of pride for state leaders, ranked below other states during the last school year, according to the institute’s just-released study, “The State of Preschool in 2024.”
The institution, based at Rutgers University, gave Georgia a score of eight out of 10 on its benchmarks for quality, dinging the state for relatively large class sizes.
The organization notes that its report doesn’t cover the current school year, when $97 million in new state funding took effect. That money is meant to boost pre-k teacher pay and reduce class sizes and student-teacher ratios. This presumably will result in a perfect score on the institute’s next report, said W. Steven Barnett, founder and senior director at the institute.
He suspects this year will mark a turning point for Georgia, with a return to national leadership in preschool excellence.
But enrollment will remain a challenge. Some states have maintained high enrollment rates, with four out of five eligible children attending public preschool, Barnett said. Georgia used to have over 60% enrollment, but that is down to 55%, according to the institute’s new report.
“Georgia is on its way back up, putting quality first, putting more money into the program,” he said. “But you’re still at 55% enrollment, and when you have states up over 80%, then that’s not a leading position.”
A host of studies have clarified the value of preschool, with children who attended quality pre-k programs finding an easier path to success in elementary school and after. Barnett said long-term studies have found the experience increases the odds of attending and graduating from college, tends to boost income and even correlates with better health and longevity.
Quality is key, and Barnett credited Georgia for its focus on that. The state has hit his institution’s eight benchmarks for good curriculum, teacher preparation, health screenings and use of data for program improvement. He noted a fundamental conundrum on the two benchmarks Georgia didn’t meet: by decreasing the number of students in each classroom to reduce class sizes and student-teacher ratios, the state will reduce capacity at each facility, which won’t help enrollment rates.
Amy Jacobs, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, acknowledged the shortage of seats but said the state is working on it. Lawmakers updated the state’s education funding formula to let schools count 4-year-olds in their enrollment numbers. Enrollment dictates how much money each school district gets, so that change will lead to capital funding to build more pre-k capacity in coming years, she said.
Jacobs said there remains a perplexing mismatch of supply and demand around the state, with some parents unable to find an open pre-k classroom for their child while seats in other areas go empty.
Enrollment used to hover around 80,000 but it’s dropped to around 70,000, she said, and it’s unclear why.
“We know the birth rate is down. It continues to be down in Georgia. I think that’s part of it,” Jacobs said. She added that the remote work and hybrid schedules that are a legacy of the pandemic have probably changed how parents approach child care and preschool.
Georgia is not alone on this. Although some states such as Iowa and West Virginia have maintained high enrollment rates, others have seen their numbers drop, Barnett said, especially in low-income neighborhoods. He thinks the de-emphasis on in-person attendance during the pandemic may have led some parents to devalue schooling in general. Maybe they’re dropping their kids off at the neighbor’s house where they’ll watch TV all day, he said, rather than driving their kids to pre-k.