Preschool is for real: funding is up, as is enrollment, as states continue to invest in high-quality early childhood education to help kids succeed.

• Author: Poppe, Julie
• Position: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION - Cover story

Imagine yourself as a preschooler. Everything's an adventure, from pretending you're a superhero to chasing a butterfly to painting a self-portrait. There is so much to explore, discover and learn at preschool, and it all feels like play--hours and hours of play.

But behind all the fun and games, preschool teachers have one very serious goal: To prepare children for kindergarten and future academic success. To achieve that, they have the daunting task of helping young children learn specific social, emotional, physical, linguistic, cognitive, literacy and math skills, which are defined in state learning guidelines or standards. All this sounds very much like school, although preschool teachers make it all feel like play.

"There's always a push to make preschool look more like school," says Shari Funkhouser, a preschool teacher with 18 years of experience from Asheboro, North Carolina. "With that comes a push for more data," she says, "which leads to more assessments. But no test can really measure all the important growth that occurs in preschool."

Preschool programs are sprouting up as statewide or pilot initiatives, and public funding is increasing. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have funded voluntary preschool. Whether it's half-day or year-long, preschool is now available to more than 1.3 million kids, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. States spent $6.3 billion on preschool last year, compared with $2.8 billion in 2005.

Nationally, the percentage of children eligible for preschool who actually enrolled rose to 29 percent in 2013, up from 14 percent in 2002.

That still leaves many kids without the benefits of preschool. And an estimated 52 percent of low-income kids and 25 percent of moderate- or high-income kids arrive on the first day of kindergarten unprepared, lacking in many of the skills considered essential to learning.

For those children who don't receive what they need at home, many believe preschool can help.

Why Preschool?

One reason for the recent focus on preschool comes from brain researchers and developmental psychologists who are discovering how critical the early years are for developing healthy brains. That's when the most rapid proliferation of new neural connections occur. These connections provide a foundation on which to learn and grow, and to be physically and mentally healthy.

The most frequently cited reason for the renewed interest in preschool, however, is concern over the widening achievement gap between rich and poor children. The statistics are telling. By age 3, an 18-month gap opens up in language skills between low-income children and their wealthier peers.

Significant differences exist in how parents and children interact based on their socio-economic backgrounds, according to Betty Hart and Todd Risley at the University of Kansas, who conducted a groundbreaking study in 2003. These differences have an impact on children's language and vocabulary. Researchers calculated that by age 4 the wealthier children had heard 30 million more words spoken than their lower-income peers.

Starting school behind sends most children on a scholastic trajectory that limits their educational choices and affects their future academic and workforce success. Researchers with the Institute of Education Sciences, after studying 22,000 children through fifth grade, concluded that children who begin...