Colorado’s universal preschool rollout has hit a few bumps, but this is the best model

Colorado’s groundbreaking new universal preschool program began implementation last month, and the uptake has been unprecedented. In just its first year, the program will serve 60%–– over 40,000––of Colorado four-year-olds and their families. The demand for quality preschool services shows just how great a need universal pre-k is serving in the state, even as the brand-new program gets its legs under it.

It also demonstrates the successes and challenges of designing a program with parent choice at the forefront — provided through a mixed delivery system. Mixed delivery was a core value and a driving force in designing Colorado’s program, and many of the implementation challenges arose from accommodating it. That said, it must be preserved.

Through the legislation that passed last year, families are experiencing the state’s move to provide up to 15 free hours of high-quality preschool per week for four-year-olds. This mixed delivery program just launched, and already funding wars have erupted.

At issue is the ability of families to select programs that best meet their preschool and childcare needs. A mixed delivery system offers families such flexibility. Mixed delivery is a system that distributes funding across multiple providers of early childhood education, including licensed center-and family-based childcare programs, Head Start, Early Head Start, public schools, and community-based organizations to ensure access to high-quality, affordable care and learning options for children through age five and their families.

Requiring families to secure services exclusively from a school district, as a recent school district lawsuit would enable, does not allow families the flexibility to select a provider who can meet their children’s needs for year-round stability.

This mixed delivery system acknowledges that parents need preschool to fit within the system of care that allows them to work. Community providers are designed to meet the needs of working parents making it imperative that they’re included. Over 64% of parents of four-year-olds in the state are working parents. Their needs must be considered in any universal preschool program the state developed.

For working parents, child care and preschool are inextricably linked. Childcare ensures that children receive care, attention, food, and safety while their parents are at work. This can be done through a network of friends, family or neighbors, or a licensed childcare provider. Preschool, or pre-kindergarten, is the early childhood education that experts recommend for children aged three and four to learn important skills that set up children for success in school and result in more positive outcomes. Often, childcare and preschool are one and the same for the majority of parents who need full-day, full-week care for their children while they work.

Colorado’s new universal pre-k system was specifically designed to help meet this need for working families. By providing mixed delivery, Colorado families get the benefit of the choice of provider that works best for them. Research has shown that a well-funded mixed-delivery system avoids disruptions to children and families and better facilitates a quality birth-to-five system of early care and learning.

Colorado chose this more complicated system because it achieves the goal of meeting the needs of families, and government is adapting to that challenge.

Many other states that offer publicly funded preschool traditionally deliver it in public school settings for 10 to 12 hours per week.  Separating preschool from the early care and education needs of young children is detrimental to their wellbeing, as well as impossibly challenging for working parents.

Without mixed delivery, states like California, where preschool is only offered through the public education system, see their private childcare options skyrocket in costs or close altogether. In California, the number of home-based providers decreased by almost 30% from 2008 to 2016 when universal pre-k was implemented through school districts alone.

There’s no denying that Colorado’s decision to build a mixed delivery universal pre-k system has resulted in some bumps for families and providers alike through its initial implementation. It’s an enormous program designed to impact tens of thousands of families statewide. We knew that adjustments must be made to a program of this size as implementation continues. Prior to this year, only 20,928 children aged three and four were served by preschool programs.