“Pennsylvania is home to nearly 300,000 3- and 4-year-olds. Last year, only about 1 in 6 of these young learners was enrolled in publicly funded, high-quality pre-k — a statistic that has been relatively unchanged in recent years. Even more troubling is that 70 percent of the approximately 175,000 preschool children at risk of school failure due to economic reasons missed out last year on this once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.

“We all pay for those missed opportunities, and Pennsylvania needs to do more to broaden access to high-quality pre-k, particularly for those children at greatest risk of academic failure. These are children living in households below 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($72,750 per year for a family of four), have disabilities that affect their learning, or for whom English is a second language.”

From the report “The Case for Pre-K in PA,” January, 2016