Title I Preschool Education

During the 1999-2000 school year, an estimated 17 percent of the school districts that received Title I funds spent $407 million on preschool services. These school districts used this money to serve an estimated 313,000 preschool children; almost all the children were between the ages of 3 and 5 and received other federal, state, and local funding. The remaining 83 percent that did not use their funds cited a greater need to use Title I funds for older children. Currently, the Department of Education lacks the information needed to measure the effectiveness of Title I, and GAO recommends that the agency explore the feasibility of isolating and measuring Title I's effectiveness on school readiness.

GAO noted that: (1) during the 1999-2000 school year, an estimated 17 percent of the school districts that received title I funds spent an estimated $407 million on preschool services, making title I second only to Head Start in its level of federal preschool education funding; (2) the remaining 83 percent that did not use their funds to support preschool education services cited, among other things, a greater need to use title I funds for older children; (3) school districts used their funds to serve an estimated 313,000 preschool children--equal to about 8 percent of the children who will eventually enter kindergarten; (4) almost all of these children were between the ages of 3 and 5, and they received a variety of services funded with title I as well as other federal, state, and local funding; (5) children were served in every state, with Texas serving the largest number of children; and (6) the Department of Education lacks the information to measure title I's effect on children's school readiness, but it may be able to structure its design of a planned title I preschool study to collect such information.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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