By Moriah Balingit / Associated Press

The number of 4-year-olds attending state-funded preschools reached record highs last school year, driven by states embracing universal access and an unprecedented $14.4 billion in spending. 

State-funded preschool enrollment in the U.S. rose to 1.8 million kids, reaching 37 percent of 4-year-olds and about 10 percent of 3-year-olds, according to an annual report published Wednesday by the National Institute of Early Education Research. In total, states added 44,000 students to their preschool enrollment. 

But the report's authors noted that the gains were smaller than the year prior and said preschool access remains wildly uneven from state to state. Some states even lost ground.

Nevada enrollment was lower than national benchmarks. During the 2024-25 school year, 10 percent of Nevada's 4-year-olds and 2 percent of 3-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded pre-K. 

More than 4,000 children were enrolled in the state's pre-K program, about 700 more than last year, as the state's investment increased after the 2023 legislative session. But Nevada still ranks in the bottom five in the report's ranking for access for 4-year-olds among the 44 states and Washington, D.C., that fund pre-K. 

"If providing high-quality preschool education to all 3- and 4-year-olds were a race," the authors wrote, "some states are nearing the finish line, others have stumbled and fallen behind, and a few have yet to leave the starting line."

Free preschool has expanded in California

More than half the nation's public preschool enrollment gain — some 25,000 students — came in California, which this year made every 4-year-old eligible for its "transitional kindergarten" program, or "TK." The rapid rollout of the program has had its tradeoffs. The national institute outlines 10 quality benchmarks for preschools, related to teacher training, class size and curriculum. California met just two of them last school year. And private preschool owners say the rush of 4-year-olds joining public schools threatens to cripple their businesses. 

"Universal TK ... is a real win, but it's also just the start of the work and not the end of it," said Jessica Sawko of Children Now, which advocates on early childhood issues in California. She noted that the state will hit two more quality benchmarks in next year's report, by lowering its student-teacher ratio to 10-to-1 and by requiring lead teachers to have early education training. 

The report illustrates some of the difficult tradeoffs states must make when they are trying to scale up their programs quickly or have limited funding. To the west, Hawaii is one of six states that meet all the institute's benchmarks. Its state preschool program also only serves 10 percent of 4-year-olds. 

Evidence is mounting that the impact of high-quality preschool can follow children into adulthood, making them better prepared for kindergarten, more likely to graduate high school and more likely to find work. And it is increasingly seen as essential for success in kindergarten and beyond. Educators now also expect youngsters to start their first year of school already equipped with the basics that help them navigate kindergarten. 

"We have a lot of kids who still do not fulfill their potential," said Steven Barnett, founder and director of the early education institute. "We have evidence — very strong evidence — that preschool programs substantially improved the foundation for later success."

During the last legislative session, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) had initially pushed for legislation to fund universal pre-K in Nevada but scaled back that proposal because of state budget woes. 

According to the report, Nevada spent more than $37 million for its pre-K program during the 2024-25 school year and allocated more than $2 million in federal recovery funds to the program. It was 11 percent more funding than the previous year (adjusted for inflation). But state spending per pupil went down slightly — it was about $9,000 for the 2024-25 school year, more than $600 less (adjusted for inflation) than the previous school year. 

Preschool means confident kindergartners

Heather Sifuentes witnessed the impact of preschool when she was principal of Parkview Elementary in Chico, California, as it began its transitional kindergarten program. She said students who attended the program, which has a play-based curriculum and runs the length of a workday, arrived with more confidence and often volunteered to be class leaders.

"They're well prepared to transition into that big elementary school setting," said Sifuentes, now director of elementary education for Chico Unified School District. Chico has more than doubled the number of TK seats it offers since 2022. 

Marisol Márquez, a secretary who works for the state, sends her daughter to transitional kindergarten at 1st Street Elementary in Los Angeles. She had been sending her for free to a learning center underwritten by COVID-19 relief funding. 

But she would have had to start paying tuition this year, and she's not sure how she and her husband, a UPS driver, would have made it work. She was elated to hear 1st Street Elementary was offering free transitional kindergarten.

Educators there quickly discovered her daughter was bright and began sending her to kindergarten for math and reading lessons.

"If it hadn't been for this program, we would have never found that out," Márquez said. 

In some states, preschool is expensive. In others, it's free

Despite the raised expectations for 5-year-olds, no state mandates that children attend preschool, and only some cities and states make it accessible to every 4-year-old. 

Preschool offerings differ vastly. A family living in Wyoming, which has no state-funded preschool, could move across the border to Colorado, where every parent can send their 4-year-old to part-time preschool without paying a dime in tuition. In the District of Columbia, even affluent families have access to two full years of prekindergarten, while neighboring Virginia has a far less robust program.

The uneven access from state to state can exacerbate disparities. Wealthier families can often afford private preschool tuition, regardless of what their state offers. In 2024, private child care centers, which often use preschool curriculum, averaged annual tuition of more than $12,00 for 4-year-olds, according to Child Care Aware of America.

For families that can't afford preschool tuition, the options in many states are limited. State-funded preschool programs often have waitlists. 

If a family's earnings are low enough, they can qualify for programs such as Head Start, which provides early education for the neediest Americans. But the number of children in Head Start is falling, in part due to staff shortages. Lower-income families may also qualify for state or federal child care subsidies that can help them with private preschool, but those have growing waitlists, too. 

Trump says states should pay

Federal support for expanding early education funding is sparse and shrinking. Recently, President Donald Trump said the federal government couldn't afford to support child care while it was waging a war with Iran.

"We're fighting wars. We can't take care of day care," Trump said. States, he added, "should pay for it. ... They'll have to raise their taxes."

The map of states that offer the highest-quality public preschool programs would surprise some partisans. Republican-led states have pioneered universal prekindergarten, with Oklahoma introducing it in the late 1990s. Alabama and West Virginia also have preschool-for-all programs that receive top marks. Wealthier, Democratic-led states have lagged behind, even as many blue-leaning cities have moved ahead with their own initiatives. New York state lost enrollment last school year, even as New York City, which already has universal prekindergarten, is charging ahead with a plan to make all child care free for younger children. 

And Georgia, another state with Republican leadership, is the first to have a universal preschool program that meets all quality benchmarks set by the National Institute of Early Education Research. 

Rebecca Ellis's son John Patrick, 5, attends the private Capitol Hill Child Enrichment Center in Atlanta free of charge, thanks to the state's preschool-for-all program. She said it saved her family a huge amount of money, and she is impressed by how much her son has grown up in the program, especially socially and emotionally.

"They focus so much on just helping kids learn how to calm down, to make friends, to regulate their feelings, to solve problems," Ellis said. 

John Patrick and her older son, who attended the same preschool, have even given their parents advice. When they become agitated, the children urge them to take deep breaths.

Nevada Independent reporter Rocío Hernández contributed to this story.  

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