By eighth grade, New York’s black, Latino and low-income students are more than two grade levels behind their white and more affluent peers in math and reading. But these gaps don’t magically appear in middle school. Low-income students and students of color are already that closing achievement gaps requires early intervention.
As this issue brief shows, research consistently demonstrates that high-quality pre-K programs narrow achievement gaps and push low- income children into the middle class, with big returns on dollars invested.
One promising opportunity to expand high-quality pre-K for low-income New York children and children of color is to allow our public charter schools with proven track records to offer pre-K services and access newly created funding streams to support their programs.
