Boston Public Pre-K Program

Summary

The Boston pre-K evaluation stands out in the early childhood literature for producing some of the largest school readiness effects ever documented in a US public program. The key design features — structured curriculum, intensive teacher coaching, and full-day programming — distinguished Boston's program from lower-intensity alternatives evaluated in Head Start and state pre-K studies. The executive function gains (0.45 SD) were particularly notable because executive function (the ability to regulate attention, inhibit impulses, and shift between tasks) predicts later academic success more strongly than early academic skills alone. The study also contributed to an important methodological debate: regression discontinuity designs around age cutoffs can recover causal estimates of pre-K effects without random assignment, allowing natural experiments where lottery-based RCTs are politically or logistically infeasible.

Research question

"Does a high-quality urban public pre-K program with a structured curriculum and coaching produce gains in school readiness, and do those gains persist into kindergarten?"

Methodology

Result

Positive

Language composite: +0.32 SD; mathematics: +0.33 SD; executive function: +0.45 SD — among the largest pre-K effects documented in the US literature; gains more than doubled those found in typical Head Start evaluations

Evidence strength

Moderate

Quasi-experimental design with replication support.

Replication status

Replicated