Kindergarten registration data shows preschool access gaps for lower-income families, collaboration reports

The Collaboration for Early Childhood presented preliminary kindergarten registration data Feb. 26, showing disparities in preschool participation among incoming kindergartners.

The group said roughly one-third of children entering District 97 kindergarten last year attended preschool programs classified in the collaboration’s data as "high-quality" (benchmarked to NAEYC or state quality ratings). A top band of parents — 7.2% — reported no preschool history prior to kindergarten. The collaboration reported that children eligible for free and reduced-price lunch both over-indexed in the high-quality category and, more prominently, in the group with no reported preschool history.

The findings come from a new kindergarten registration portal that opened Feb. 19; the collaboration said families use the portal to report preschool history as part of the registration flow. As of the Feb. 26 meeting the presenters said 39 students were currently approved in the system and more than 70 had registered in the days prior to the meeting. The collaboration also said it will link this registration data with other administrative data over time to track cohorts as they move into District 200 and beyond.

Committee members and staff emphasized limits in the early dataset. Presenters cautioned that year-to-year shifts can reflect changes in the size and composition of the incoming cohort as well as pandemic recovery effects; the collaboration noted that the percentage of children with no preschool rose after COVID and that recovery to pre-pandemic levels has been slow, particularly for lower-income families.

The collaboration said it plans a family survey (birth-to-5) to collect additional information about barriers — including cost and scheduling — and trusted sources of information for families. Staff also described outreach to broaden the capture of nontraditional early learning opportunities (for example, library story times and family/friend/neighbor care) so those informal settings can be considered when planning supports.

Members asked for further disaggregation (by race/ethnicity, gender and other demographics) and for clearer denominators so year-to-year changes can be interpreted. The committee said it will continue to develop the analytic approach and invited the collaboration’s data partner to produce more detailed cross-tabulations for committee review.

Presenters described the data as preliminary and actionable: the collaboration expects to use registration data plus the family survey to identify access barriers (cost, hours, wait lists) and to design outreach and programming that reaches children who are not in formal preschool settings.