Taking a Giant Step

Taking a Giant Step: A Case Study of New York City's Efforts To Implement Universal Pre-Kindergarten Services

Mayor Edward I. Koch first announced his ambitious goal of providing universal early education services to all four year-olds in New York City in 1985. While interest in universally-available, publicly-funded preschool services was growing at the time, no one at any level of government had taken the bold step of introducing so comprehensive an initiative. The initiative, known as Project Giant Step, was designed to build upon the strengths of the three-pronged (albeit fragmented) delivery system that was in place at the time - child care, Head Start and public education preschool programs. Giant Step forced collaboration between two large public agencies: the Human Resource Administration's (HRAs) Agency for Child Development (ACD) and the Board of Education (BOE). The initiative was complicated by the differences in the institutional structures, funding sources and service delivery systems for each of the three early childhood programs.

Giant Step sought to meet the cognitive, social, emotional and physical development of children through a well-developed half-day curriculum, state of the art equipment, the use of family workers to maximize parental involvement and the provision of support services to families. Cognizant of the professional and institutional rivalries between ACD and BOE, the Mayor acted upon the recommendations of the Early Childhood Commission he had established and created a new mayoral office to oversee the administration of Giant Step at both agencies.

In its first two years of implementation, Giant Step confronted challenges from within city government related to the price tag of universal provision, ongoing competition among city agencies regarding the authority of the newly created mayoral office, and difficulties locating and developing classrooms in many communities. Despite these obstacles, evaluations of Project Giant Step during the first two years of its operation documented the strong success it had in achieving cognitive, social and emotional gains among participating children. Less than four years after its inception, however, the Project was dismantled.

This paper seeks to better understand why a well-received policy initiative was discontinued after overcoming many of the challenges it faced. The paper explores the reasons universal pre-kindergarten was introduced, the goals of the Mayor's initiative, and the process by which it was implemented. Years later, the success or failure of the Mayor's initiative is not clear. The dissolution of Giant Step can be viewed as sufficient evidence of its failure. Giant Step can also be seen as an important step in the evolution of the universal pre-kindergarten services in New York State. Today, universal pre-kindergarten has been enacted in three states and funding for universal pre-kindergarten services has multiplied several times over in most states since the mid-1980s. Better understanding the evolution of universal prekindergarten services in New York City and its implementation can perhaps help other localities that have interest in implementing universal preschool services. The experience of Project Giant Step points to the vulnerability of well-designed and well-received early childhood programs as they become implemented. It reminds us that sound policies and planning do not always make for viable practices.