Title I preschool education: More children served, but gauging effect on school readiness difficult

During the 1999-2000 school year, an estimated 17 percent of the school districts that received title I funds spent an estimated $407 million on preschool services, making title I second only to Head Start in its level of federal preschool education funding. The remaining 83 percent that did not use their funds to support preschool education services cited, among other things, a greater need to use title I funds for older children. School districts used their funds to serve an estimated 313,000 preschool children—equal to about 8 percent of the children who will eventually enter kindergarten. Almost all of these children were between the ages of 3 and 5, and they received a variety of services funded with title I as well as other federal, state, and local funding. Children were served in every state, with Texas serving the largest number of children.

Currently, education lacks the information to measure title I’s effect on children’s school readiness, but it may be able to structure its design of a planned title I preschool study to collect such information. Recognizing that isolating title I’s effect from the effect of other funding that supports preschool children may be difficult, the U.S. General Accounting Office is recommending that Education, as part of its planned title I preschool study, explore the feasibility of isolating and measuring title I’s effect on school readiness.