New Mexico is one of 44 U.S. states offering a public pre-K program for children at age 4. State models for pre-K vary in terms of availability, policies related to classroom quality, and populations of children served. In this study, we pool data from five successive cohorts of children (total N = 5218) using regression-discontinuity models to estimate the impacts of participating in New Mexico’s pre-K program on young children’s language, literacy, and math skills at kindergarten entry. Positive, statistically significant impacts of pre-K were found for each of these academic domains. Due to the high level of diversity in our sample, it was also possible to examine pre-K impacts separately for White, Hispanic, and Native American children. The largest impacts were found for White and Hispanic children, with less consistent and more modest impacts for Native American children. These findings suggest that while New Mexico’s pre-K program generated academic benefits for children, not all groups of children benefited equally, and further information is needed to understand the reasons for these differences.

新墨西哥州是美国的44个州之一，为4岁以下的孩子提供公共的K-PreK计划。K-K的州模型在可用性，与教室质量有关的政策以及所服务儿童的数量方面有所不同。在这项研究中，我们使用回归—不连续模型收集了来自五个连续队列儿童的数据（总N = 5218），以估计参加新墨西哥州的Pre-K计划对幼稚园入学时儿童的语言，读写能力和数学技能的影响。对于这些学术领域中的每一个，都发现pre-K具有积极的统计学意义。由于我们样本中的多样性很高，因此有可能单独检查白人，西班牙裔和美国原住民儿童的K值前影响。发现对白人和西班牙裔儿童的影响最大，对美国原住民儿童的影响不太一致，影响较小。这些发现表明，尽管新墨西哥州的学前班计划为孩子们带来了学业上的收益，但并非所有的孩子群体都能平等地受益，因此需要进一步的信息来了解造成这些差异的原因。