Georgia’s Loses Ground as Pre-K Leader

By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/9/2008

Georgia, the first state to offer universal pre-K for low-income kids, has fallen behind other states in educational programs for four-year-olds, according to a new report from the nonprofit Southern Education Foundation (SEF).

In recent years, Georgia has started to fall behind other states and is losing its national leadership for its exemplary pre-K program. “Today there are other states with larger rates of pre-K enrollment, faster rates of growth, more comprehensive programs, stronger standards for high-quality, and larger per child investments,” says “Time to Lead Again: the Promise of Georgia Pre-K.” In short, “Georgia’s pre-K program is in danger of being out-distanced by the early learning movement it started.”

Back in 1993, Georgia Governor Zell Miller established a voluntary pre-K program for four-year- old children from low income families, making it the first state to fund pre-kindergarten with lottery revenues.

After Miller and the state legislature expanded pre-K eligibility in 1995, Georgia became the first state in the nation to promise a universal, voluntary program to all four-year-old children whose parents wanted it, says the report by SEF, which seeks to improve the quality of education in the south. Soon, the state became a leader in pre-K growth and enrollment and eventually became a model that other states followed.

Unfortunately, current pre-K enrollment across Georgia is little more than 50 percent of the state’s four-year-olds. And in recent years, “meaningful gaps have emerged in the program design and quality that may undermine Georgia pre-K’s long-term impact,” the report says. “Primarily, Georgia pre-K needs to understand and better implement ways to improve the learning skills of low income students.”

Part of the reason is because over the last 10 years, Georgia pre-K has not kept up with the cost of delivering a high-quality program to each student. After adjustments for inflation, pre-K resources for each child in Georgia have actually declined

since 1999, from $4,478 in 1998 and only $4,010 in 2007. “This trend endangers the capacity of pre-K providers to deliver on the promise of high-quality pre-K,” the report says.