Pre-K Enrollment and Early Elementary Outcomes

Since 2018, two major changes have occurred in Texas that have affected public prekindergarten (pre-K) enrollment and attendance: the passage of Texas House Bill 3 (HB3) in 2019, which mandated that early childhood education programs provide full-day pre-K to all eligible 4-year-olds, and the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the influence of both, the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium examined the experience of pre-K students in school districts in the Houston region from 2018 to 2023.

A second brief looks at how participation in public pre-K programs is associated with early elementary outcomes such as kindergarten readiness, chronic absenteeism and English proficiency, particularly for emergent bilingual students.