10 Years In, Tulsa’s Pre-K Investment Is Paying Off

NPR:

Researchers have been tracking Jose Arriaga since he was 4 years old, waiting for the day he would start ninth grade. This fall, Jose is a freshman at Booker T. Washington High School, a selective public school in north Tulsa, Okla. And no one is more proud of him than his mother, Veronica Arriaga.

“He’s been a straight-A student throughout middle school,” Mrs. Arriaga says in Spanish. “That’s why he’s here.”

…

“These children did show huge gains in early math and early literacy skills,” says Deborah Phillips, a developmental psychologist at Georgetown University who has been overseeing the study. “They were more likely to be engaged in school, less timid in the classroom and more attentive.”

Phillips says preschool gave them a good, strong boost into elementary school, Today, as eighth-graders, says Phillips, most of these kids are still doing really well.

Read the whole story: NPR