How to fix policies that unintentionally promote preschool segregation

In the nearly 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark anti-segregation ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, America’s K-12 and higher education settings have become more richly diverse. However, the same is not always true of American preschool classrooms. 

In fact, a 2019 report from The Urban Institute found that American preschool classrooms are more than twice as likely as their kindergarten and first-grade counterparts to be nearly 100 percent Black or Hispanic in their student composition.

What is behind this unexpected segregation? The answers are complex, but one key driver is public policy. Ironically, state and federal preschool investments — often enacted in the name of improving equitable outcomes — may be inadvertently contributing to increased segregation through enrollment prioritization, not only by race and ethnicity but across socio-economic and other key demographics.  

In collaboration with Education Trust, Century Foundation and Educational Alliance’s Manny Cantor Center, our team at The Hunt Institute has been hard at work in recent months exploring both the values of diversity and inclusion in preschool and the ways that policymakers can better support the robust integration of early childhood settings. 

Research has found that diverse and inclusive settings positively impact children’s development across multiple domains, including their social, emotional and cognitive development. When children are exposed to diversity from an early age, they acquire stronger social and emotional skills and increase their awareness and understanding of diverse perspectives and cultures. Inclusive settings can encourage greater acceptance of others and help prepare children to navigate and succeed in an increasingly diverse world.

Economically diverse classrooms help bridge achievement gaps and stimulate cognitive and social growth for all children in the classroom. In economically integrated classrooms, preschool children with both lower and higher socioeconomic statuses gain greater language skills. Research conducted with school-aged children has found that when children are in integrated and diverse settings, they show growth in test scores, are more likely to enroll in college and are more creative and innovative in their thinking.   

Diverse educational settings also have economic and societal benefits. Studies have shown children in diverse classrooms are prepared to be global citizens and succeed in a global economy, have access to more equitable resources and are likely to earn more as adults and have an improved quality of life.  

With a wealth of evidence suggesting the benefits of classroom diversity, what can policymakers do to better support such classrooms? A key first step may involve taking a cue from the oath sworn by physicians: “First, do no harm.”

The nation’s preschool investments, from Head Start and childcare subsidies, to state-funded prekindergarten, are almost exclusively targeted toward low-income children — resulting in a greater prevalence of racially, ethnically and socioeconomically homogeneous settings, especially in geographic areas where these populations may already be significant. While universal programs open to all children would almost certainly eliminate some of these concerns, so too may less costly public policy approaches designed to address them thoughtfully and proactively.

The intentional use of mixed delivery approaches through which income-eligible children are funded to participate in both public and private preschool classrooms alongside tuition-based and otherwise ineligible peers is an idea gaining traction in prekindergarten programs across the nation.

Likewise, state and federal policymakers must be mindful not to create such rigid program and funding criteria that their expectations can only be met in stand-alone classroom settings. Instead, agency leaders should be undertaking the hard work of aligning and (as necessary) deconstructing program requirements to allow preschool providers maximum flexibility to integrate classrooms through the blending and braiding of multiple revenue sources. 

These are just a few of the recommendations included in a new report, “Strong Foundations: Promoting Diverse and Inclusive Preschool Settings,” released this month by our coalition of partner organizations, with support from Trust for Learning. We invite you to read the full report and share it with the policymakers and early education leaders within your networks.

With deliberate and proactive approaches, policymakers can extend the benefits of diversity and inclusion to all preschool students. The time to do so is now.

 Javaid Siddiqi, Ph.D., is president & CEO of The Hunt Institute, an education policy resource to the nation’s governors, state lawmakers and senior state elected leaders based in Cary, NC.