Impact of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Literacy, Language, and Mathematics Skills: Results From a Regression-Discontinuity Design

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

AERA Open article evaluates the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (TN-VPK), a statewide full-day initiative prioritizing children from low-income families. Using a regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of 155 TN-VPK classrooms and 5,189 children across two pre-K cohorts, the study reports positive effects at kindergarten entry. Literacy shows the largest gains, while language skills show the smallest. Findings support the generalizability of related regression-discontinuity evidence and benchmark TN-VPK effect sizes against other public pre-K studies.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Impact of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program

Program background and policy context

Research challenge: short- and long-term effects

Regression-discontinuity approach and sample

The Tennessee Pre-K Study: RCT and ISS components

Key findings and implications

AERA Open January-December 2021, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1–23 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584211041353 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2021. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Impact of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Literacy, Language, and Mathematics Skills: Results From a Regression-Discontinuity Design Georgine M. Pion Mark W. Lipsey Vanderbilt University The Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK) is statewide full-day program that gives priority to children from lowincome families. A regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of 155 TN-VPK classrooms and 5,189 children participating across two pre-K cohorts found positive effects at kindergarten entry with the largest effects for literacy skills and the smallest for language skills. The results contribute to the growing body of regression-discontinuity studies of state and local pre-K programs and affirm the statewide generalizability of analogous prior findings from a more specialized subsample in the parent Tennessee Pre-K Study. Furthermore, the respective effect sizes compared favorably with those found in other regression-discontinuity studies of public pre-K on the same outcome measures, providing one index of the quality of the TN-VPK program. Keywords: prekindergarten, pre-K, preschool, early childhood education, school readiness, Tennessee Prior to 1980, only two states funded pre-K programs; currently 44 states and the District of Columbia do so (FriedmanKrauss et al., 2020) . The objectives of the advocacy groups and state legislatures promoting this expansion vary, but a common theme is enhancing the school readiness of children prior to kindergarten entry, especially children from economically disadvantaged families. Alongside that short-term goal, however, is an expectation that pre-K will have longer term effects on cognitive and academic skills that will help close the achievement gap between children from lowincome families and their more advantaged counterparts (Phillips et al., 2017) . Unfortunately, questions about both short-and long-term educational effects are difficult to address in a methodologically rigorous way for contemporary state-funded pre-K programs. A randomized study would require assembling a sample of pre-K eligible children before the beginning of the school year whose parents consented to having them randomly assigned to attend the state pre-K or not. Few families would allow researchers to make that decision for their children as they consider the available range of options, for example, Head Start, private preschool, and home-based care in addition to state pre-K. As a result, most studies of the immediate effects of state pre-K programs, and all but one study of their longer term effects, have used nonrandomized designs despite the inherent parental discretion involved and the associated potential for selection bias (Farran & Lipsey, 2016) . One notable circumstance amenable to a randomized design, however, is when a number of pre-K sites receive more applicants than they are able to serve, and thus of necessity must turn some away. Randomization in this situation provides an equitable and transparent way to allocate the available seats. This approach was used in the Head Start Impact Study (Puma et al., 2012) and in the Tennessee Pre-K Study that is the topic of this article. The Tennessee Pre-K Study The Tennessee Pre-K Study is an evaluation of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (TN-VPK) designed to assess effects on cognitive skills and academic performance at the end of the pre-K year, and the extent to which those effects are sustained after the pre-K year. This study had several components, the primary one being a randomized control trial (RCT) in which nearly 3,000 applicants to ov

FAQs

How does the study evaluate the TN-VPK program’s effects?

It uses a regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of TN-VPK classrooms and participating children across two pre-K cohorts.

What were the strongest and weakest outcomes at kindergarten entry?

The largest effects were for literacy skills, while the smallest effects were for language skills.

Do the benefits persist after the pre-K year?

The positive effects favoring pre-K participants diminish after the pre-K year, with no significant differences on measured outcomes by the end of kindergarten for the ISS sample.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam