Early Childhood Education
Critical Needs for Critical years
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Louisiana’s LA 4 Pre-Kindergarten program began in eleven pilot parishes with the passage of Senate Bill 776 during the 2001 Legislative session. LA 4 is available in participating school districts to all children – at no cost to children eligible for free or reduced lunch services (FRL) and through tuition or local funding for families above this income level. Currently, LA 4 serves approximately 18,000 of the 40,000 “at-risk” children in Louisiana.
IThe Louisiana LA 4 Pre-Kindergarten initiative has consistently demonstrated high-quality results each year of the existence of the program. High-quality standards such as certified teachers and paraprofessionals, small classroom size, full-day program, research-based curriculum, and high-quality evaluation have resulted in children being more prepared for elementary school.
For accountability purposes, students in this program are administered the Developing Skills Checklist (DSC) – a test given at the beginning and end of the school year to measure progress in language, print and math. The scores of students participating in LA 4 improve from around the 10th national percentile in the pre-test to 50th percentile in the post-test in language and to nearly the 60th percentile in print. In mathematics, students improve from near the 5th percentile nationally to above the 50th percentile after participating in LA 4. This progress in LA 4 exceeds nearly all states.
Research shows that children enrolled in Louisiana’s LA 4 program experience continual academic success as they progress through later grades. Kindergarten retention and special education participation rates are lower in the LA 4 group. At this point, there is data on the first three groups of LA 4 students. Follow-up of these first three groups of students on the 4th grade LEAP test shows significant improvement in performance over students who did not participate. This is true despite a higher poverty level in children participating in the early childhood program.
In addition to LA 4, the federally funded Head Start program provides comprehensive early childhood education to over 20,000 “at-risk” three and four year old children in Louisiana. This program combines Pre-K education with a comprehensive health and family education component.
The positive study results of Louisiana’s LA 4 and high quality programs in other states prove that high quality Pre-K helps all children prepare for school – especially children at-risk because of poverty. This has led to much discussion about expanding opportunities to more children – including dialogue about increased funding and the development of diverse delivery systems.
