Miami-Dade's Public School Pre-K Beat Every Other Option in an 18-Year Study of 27,814 Students
Children who attended public school pre-K at age 4 in Miami-Dade posted the strongest third-grade reading and math scores and GPAs of any group — and were 35% less likely to be held back — in FIU researchers' 18-year tracking of five cohorts through the county's public schools.
The longest look anyone has taken at Miami-Dade preschool is in, and the county's own classrooms won it. In research published Monday by Florida International University, an 18-year study tracked 27,814 students who attended different types of prekindergarten in Miami and then moved through Miami-Dade County Public Schools from kindergarten to high school. Children who attended taxpayer-funded public school pre-K at age 4 achieved the strongest third-grade outcomes — standardized reading and math scores and GPA — ahead of children who attended center-based care, who in turn generally performed better than children in family childcare. The public pre-K group was 35% less likely to be held back in third grade than the other groups.
The study followed five cohorts of roughly 10,000 students a year, enrolled between 2002 and 2007, in a partnership among the researchers, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, childcare providers across the county and the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade; the last cohort finished 12th grade in the spring of 2020. Attending a higher-quality elementary school afterward helped every group, but it did not erase the differences between pre-K types — except in reading, where center-based children who landed in higher-quality schools had caught up to the public pre-K group by third grade. The researchers say the long-term benefits of public pre-K appear to extend through eighth grade, while noting plainly that that conclusion is still in peer review and has not yet been published.
Why the gap? The researchers point to the machinery of a system. Miami-Dade is the fourth-largest public school system in the country, and its pre-K teachers were required to hold at least a bachelor's degree and a teaching credential — certified to teach from pre-K through third grade — while the other settings required less education at the time. The public programs used a developmentally appropriate, standardized curriculum aligned with kindergarten, and because the district is countywide, a child's records and curriculum traveled with them when families moved schools. The study is not an indictment of the alternatives: children in all three settings made strong school-readiness gains at age 4, and the authors say early education quality in Miami-Dade — more accredited centers, better-educated teachers — has never been better than it is today. Their bottom line is narrower: for most children and families, the cohesive public system remains the gold standard they measured.
