April 18 – The results are in: New Mexico is nearing the top quarter among U.S. states in access to state-funded preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds and has likely seen record enrollment numbers.
The National Institute for Early Education Research on Thursday released its annual State of Preschool 2023 Yearbook, a comprehensive overview of the access, financing and quality of early childhood education in the US.
The report ranks New Mexico 13th in the nation when it comes to both access to preschool services and government spending per child — higher than national averages and far from the state’s usual spot at or near the bottom of the rankings. national ranking of education and child welfare in primary and secondary education. .
About 660 more children attended kindergarten in the 2022-2023 school year than the year before, the report said.
“It’s good to see us up there in the top 15,” said Elizabeth Groginsky, cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Department of Early Childhood Education and Care.
She expects to enroll another 1,300 children in 2024-2025, she said in an interview Thursday.
Yet neither New Mexico nor the U.S. has fully solved the challenges of early childhood education.
New Mexico’s accessibility rankings for 3-year-olds fell from 10th to 13th in the nation between the organization’s 2022 and 2023 Yearbooks, while the rating for 4-year-olds stagnated. And after adjusting for inflation, state spending per child on preschool fell between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the report found.
Steven W. Barnett, senior co-director and founder of the institute, summed it up this way at a press conference: “The nation is still far from providing quality early childhood education to every child by the age of four, let alone at the age of four years. 3.”
For the most part, the Yearbook tells a sunny story about New Mexico’s early childhood landscape, which comes after years of push by advocates and lawmakers for an increase in investment. They argued that high-quality early learning would provide the state’s children with a boost that would help improve educational achievement, graduation rates and college readiness.
The efforts led to the creation of the Early Childhood Education and Care Fund and a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2022 that aims to direct more than $150 million annually to early childhood programs from the multibillion-dollar Land Grant New Mexico Permanent Fund.
Across the state, 45% of 4-year-olds and 11% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in pre-K in 2022-23 — numbers that exceed national averages of 35% and 7%, respectively, the study found. report .
These enrollment numbers represent the highest level in two decades, indicating improvement within the state and recovery from declines in preschool attendance during the pandemic.
“We’re coming out of a time where the pandemic really hit preschools, causing a huge drop in enrollment and a drop in attendance of children enrolled,” Barnett said. “The good news is that as a nation we have largely recovered from that.”
New Mexico met nine of the Yearbook’s 10 benchmarks for quality preschool programs, which consider components such as class size and student-teacher ratios to assess the quality of care provided to each state’s youngest residents.
The one criterion New Mexico lacked, the report said, is a requirement that all teachers have a bachelor’s degree or be working toward one.
Groginsky said New Mexico implemented the requirement for pre-K teachers this year. Assistant teachers must have an associate degree.
“Quality matters,” Allison Friedman-Krauss, lead author of the report, said at a news conference. “Studies have shown that not all state-funded programs impact children’s learning and development outcomes, likely because these programs do not have adequate quality standards.”
The one area where New Mexico isn’t doing quite well: state funding per child. During the 2022-2023 school year, New Mexico offered $8,008 per pre-K student. Twelve state programs spend more than that per student, with the District of Columbia topping the list by spending more than $22,000 per child on pre-K.
Adjusted for pandemic-era inflation, spending per child in New Mexico fell by $816 between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the report said.
That’s not unique to New Mexico, Barnett noted.
“Adjusted for inflation, spending is…about the same level as 20 years ago,” he said. “There are very few things you can say that about in education. We still have a long way to go.”
Still, the report notes that New Mexico’s future may see more growth in early childhood education. Although based primarily on 2022-2023 data, the report announces the investment of nearly $100 million in early childhood programs during the 2023 legislative session and new child care assistance rules promulgated in July , which increases expenditure per child.
Groginsky also noted the recent increase in spending on young children. “We’re excited because we’re maintaining the investment and we’re continuing to increase the amount we pay for pre-K so that those salaries can be competitive and we can ensure that our children are supported in a high-quality environment,” she says. said.
Now is the time for all states to continue pursuing accessible, quality, and adequately funded early childhood education for all, Friedman-Krauss said.
“As states have largely recovered from the challenges of the pandemic at this point, they can refocus on addressing long-standing challenges to early childhood education,” she said.
