The effect of publicly provided pre-Kindergarten community approach programs on Wisconsin district-level test scores

Abstract

Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a significant increase in the number of Wisconsin school districts offering pre-kindergarten programs. Among these programs, districts either employ the traditional or the community approach. However, there is very little literature documenting the potential impact of these programs on future educational outcomes. This paper examines the community approach and the traditional approach to pre-kindergarten programs relative to districts with no publicly funded pre-k. I use panel data over the early expansion of these pre-k programs across Wisconsin school districts in conjunction with OLS, fixed effects, and multinomial logit estimations. I find that when time invariant unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for in a fixed effects model, the community and traditional approach programs do not significantly impact math or reading test scores compared to districts with no publicly funded pre-kindergarten in the fixed effects.