The mixed-delivery pre-k opportunity gap? Differences in demographics, quality, and children's gains in community-based versus public school programs across five large-scale systems

Mixed-delivery prekindergarten (Pre-K) systems with slots in both public schools and community-based organization (CBO) settings are common in the U.S. Historically, policies and investments in many of these systems have placed CBOs and, by extension the children who attend them, at a disadvantage relative to public school programs and peers. In this descriptive study, we used secondary data to explore setting inequities in five large-scale Pre-K mixed-delivery systems (Boston, New York City, Seattle, New Jersey, and West Virginia), all of which had taken explicit steps to improve equity across settings. Our public school sample included 2,247 children in 367 classrooms in 146 schools and our CBO sample consisted of 1,700 children in 220 classrooms in 109 centers. We found evidence of substantial sorting of children and teachers by setting. Where we found differences in quality and children's gains, these tended to favor public schools. However, localities with fewer policy differences by setting showed fewer such setting differences. Findings suggest that advancing the goals of equitable, high-quality Pre-K access and narrowing opportunity gaps before kindergarten entry may require more research and policy attention to mixed-delivery setting policy equity.