Universal Preschool: Policy Change, Stability, and the Pew Charitable Trusts

The spectacular recent success of state-funded preschool education is revealed and explained in this absorbing study. A quiet revolution has been underway in American education policy since 1995, with forty-one states and the District of Columbia creating some form of state-funded preschool learning. Brenda K. Bushouse tells why it became politically advantageous for state legislators to support universal access to preschool programs and how political and budgetary stability was achieved to spur this initiative. In 2001, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced an ambitious new giving program aimed at creating universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds. Bushouse reveals Pew's unorthodox giving program and complex strategy for advancing universal preschool policy change.