Oklahoma remains a national leader in preschool education, but it’s starting to slip.
A National Institute for Early Education Research annual report says state spending on pre-K has dropped more than 25 percent from its 2010 peak.
"Oklahomans need to be concerned that the year-after-year decline in spending per child that affects education not just in preschool but when they enter kindergarten and beyond will eventually erode the quality, and people won't get the results they expect," said NIEER Director Steve Barnett.
Oklahoma ranks 28th in state spending and 12th in total funding for preschool.
Oklahoma is among just 10 states spending extra money to help preschoolers whose families don’t speak English at home. Nearly 3,000 4-year-olds enrolled in Oklahoma pre-K are dual language learners. Most of them come from Spanish-speaking families.
Barnett said investing in them is a good move.
"If we help them learn both their home language and English well — and there's no trade-off there, it's actually usually reinforcing — they not only do better in language and literacy, but they do better overall," Barnett said.
This year was the first edition of NIEER's state of preschool report with data on dual-language learners.
Aside from stable funding, one improvement Oklahoma could make is establishing in-service requirements for pre-K teachers.
"Having continuous coaching and self-assessment of teachers in their classrooms, that's really a key to making continued gains for the program to move from good to excellent," Barnett said.
Barnett said another area Oklahoma falls short is not requiring teaching assistants to have at least a child development associate credential.
