Washington makes gains in pre-K funding and enrollment

Many 3- and 4-year olds across the nation still lack access to high-quality preschool education despite modest gains in enrollment, quality, and funding, according to an annual report by the nonpartisan National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University.

In Washington, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) enrolled 10,091 children, up 1350 in 2014-2015, serving eight percent of the state’s 4-year-olds. Washington maintained consistent progress in terms of quality standards– meeting nine of NIEER’s minimum quality standards benchmarks. As of 2014-2015, ECEAP was required to participate in the state’s quality rating and improvement system, called Early Achievers. In 2014-2015, the state invested a total of $83 million in ECEAP, with approximately $76 million of these funds coming from state dollars from the state general fund and the “opportunity pathways account,” which is derived from lottery revenue.

The report finds that total state spending on pre-K programs for the nation as a whole increased by 10 percent, or $553 million, since the previous year, bringing state spending in 2014-2015 to over $6.2 billion. The number of children served by state-funded pre-K served increased by 37,167 in 2014-2015, bringing the total to almost 1.4 million children – the largest number of children ever served by state-funded pre-K. With an average rate of $4,489, states also made one of the most significant increases in spending per child in recent history.