HISD Must Expand Pre-K Offerings to Reduce Opportunity Gap

Despite recently making it a major target area, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) has so far failed to meet its goal of significantly reducing the reading and math performance gap between economically and non-economically disadvantaged students (Lathan 2019). Universal HISD pre-K provides a potential solution to this opportunity gap. Indeed, a comprehensive review of pre-K programs found that all students benefit from pre-K, but these benefits are most pronounced for poor and disadvantaged students (Phillips et al. 2017).

Although the opportunity gap is a pervasive problem across grades, the root of this issue begins in pre-K. A recent Economic Policy Institute report concluded that “skill and performance gaps take root before children enter kindergarten and do not go away” (Garcia and Weiss 2017). The skills and knowledge gained through schooling build on each other from year to year; consequently, any gaps in readiness entering kindergarten tend to snowball. Pre-K, unsurprisingly, presents a chance to diminish this disparity by standardizing the preparation students get for kindergarten.

HISD currently has a pre-K program which offers free full-day pre-K to disadvantaged or English learner students. This program shows signs of success, with a recent study finding that students who attended one or two years of HISD pre-K are significantly more likely to be prepared than their peers who have zero years of HISD pre-K (Baumgartner 2017). While this program is a good start, it is nevertheless not without problems.

Of the HISD kindergarten population, an estimated 66.3% attend HISD pre-K. Of those students that do not, approximately two-thirds likely would’ve qualified. This equates to 22.5% of the HISD kindergarten population being eligible for free pre-K but not attending it—an amount far too substantial given the benefits that pre-K provides (Baumgartner and Thrash 2020). This gap in enrollment is caused by several factors, chief among them a lack of resources.

HISD offers free pre-K to eligible four- and three-year-olds, and non-eligible students can pay tuition if there are available seats. Enrollment priority is given first to eligible four-year-olds, followed by tuition paying four-year-olds, and finally eligible three-year-olds. As a result of the method HISD uses to fill pre-K seats, eligible three-year-olds are not guaranteed a spot even if they apply. In a sample of 31,460 HISD students who were enrolled in kindergarten in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, just 7.2% of students had two years of HISD pre-K (Baumgartner 2017). A failure to guarantee enrollment for all students who want it leaves valuable learning opportunities on the table. As HISD explains on its website, the district began providing pre-K precisely because the “best education requires beginning the learning process as early as possible” (“Eligibility and How to Apply” n.d.)

Proximity to a pre-K program is another key driver of whether a student enrolls, as difficulty accessing a program could prove a sufficient deterrent to parents enrolling their children. This is a particularly potent issue for HISD pre-K as it is not mandated, and families are less likely to travel longer distances to school (or permit their children to) if their children are younger (Urban Institute 2018). HISD pre-K does not have zones, and not every elementary school zone is home to a pre-K program. Similarly, 40.7% of HISD kindergartners live farther than a mile away from a pre-K program (Baumgartner et al. 2019). Again, insufficient supply ensures that the full benefits of pre-K in Houston are unrealized.

The optimal solution to this under-enrollment is guaranteeing pre-K for all three- and four-year-olds who want it. While this would carry greater startup costs, San Antonio is a comparable example of a city that expanded pre-K with a net local economic benefit when factoring in return on investment (McNeel 2018).

Furthermore, making pre-K universal would not only improve accessibility for the targeted disadvantaged populations, but it would increase the quality of education they received. As the aforementioned report from Phillips et al. discovered, “part of what might render a pre-K classroom advantageous for an economically disadvantaged child or [an English learner student], as well as their more advantaged and English speaking peers, is the value of being immersed among a diverse array of classmates with whom to learn, for example, language skills and socially inclusive attitudes” (Phillips et al. 2017). While targeting pre-K at disadvantaged students is a noble goal, stopping short of creating a universal program could unintentionally lead to heavily segregated classrooms. Given the importance of diversity in learning, opening HISD pre-K to everyone would improve the quality of available education.

The opportunity gap, or the difference in academic achievement between students based on their socioeconomic status, has remained a frustratingly consistent problem in education (Hanushek et al. 2019). From the time that they start kindergarten, disadvantaged or English learner students must play catch-up with their peers who had greater resources at their disposal. While this issue has no silver bullet, universal pre-K serves to level the playing field before the problem can begin to compound. In HISD, a pre-K program aims to do just that, but failing to universalize pre-k for Houstonians leaves the full potential of such a policy unrealized.

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