Excerpts from the report:
The expansion in preschool education has occurred alongside growing concern over the achievement gap that persists between America's disadvantaged and more advantaged children, unacceptably high rates of grade repetition and school drop-out across the student population and worries that today's youngsters will find it difficult to compete in the global economy.
As school reform programs address these issues in K-12 education, more attention is paid to school readiness and the question inevitably arises, "Does it make fiscal sense for states to invest in large-scale (voluntary) preschool programs?" This report summarizes three studies projecting the economic consequences of expanding preschool programs toward universal enrollment in three states &emdash; Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin.