Financing Early Childhood Education

The Foundation for Child Development Policy to Action Brief Series No. 1 Why do so many Americans believe that elementary schools are doing a fine job despite clear evidence to the contrary?

Issues in PreK-3rd Education; Number Two FirstSchool is part of a national PreK-3rd movement of schools, districts, educators and universities seeking to improve how children from ages 3 to 8 learn and develop in schools.

Education finance policy researchers, Lawrence O. Picus, Allan Odden, and Michael Goetz, apply their evidence-based approach to estimate the national and state-by-state costs of PreK-3rd approaches.

Foundation for Child Development Policy to Action Brief Series No. 2 In a time of great fiscal constraints, policymakers and educators are focusing not only on raising student achievement, but also on making more strategic use of the available funds.

Lawrence O. Picus and Associates review research on parent engagement programs at the PreK-3rd level, and identify programs with greater promise of academic success for children.

This report provides a first-time analysis of the nation’s current spending on PreKindergartners and Kindergartners by examining 2008 federal expenditures from more than 100 federal programs on children ages 3 through 5. Findings show that six programs accounted for approximately two-thirds of all federal expenditures on this age group in 2008: Head Start, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and three tax programs (the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and the dependent exemption). Programs that specifically focus on the care and education of children ages 3 through 5 represent 23 percent of total federal expenditures.

This report provides a first-time analysis of the nation’s current spending on elementary-age children by examining 2008 federal expenditures from more than 100 federal programs on children ages 6 through 11. Findings show that six programs account for 63 percent of the expenditures on elementary-age children.

How government spends money, and who benefits, reveals our priorities.