Abstract

Though there is an expanding field of research on public prekindergarten, there is a relatively little comprehensive investigation into what public prekindergarten costs. We address some of the absences in the literature by analyzing public-sector expenditures for the city of Boston’s public prekindergarten program, a particularly high-quality program. We identify the different components of the Boston program and explore how they translate into costs. We also examine how costs change over time, how costs are distributed across different levels of the education system, and how costs can be adjusted in order to calculate nationally representative estimates. Our findings are relevant for localities interested in learning from existing prekindergarten programs. Our findings are relevant for localities interested in learning from existing prekindergarten programs and can also serve as an example of cost analysis in education research.

摘要

尽管对公共幼儿园的研究领域正在扩大，但对公共幼儿园的费用却缺乏相对全面的研究。我们通过分析波士顿市公共幼儿园计划的公共部门支出来解决文献中的一些缺失，该计划是一项特别高质量的计划。我们确定波士顿计划的不同组成部分，并探讨它们如何转化为成本。我们还研究了成本如何随时间变化，成本如何在教育系统的不同层次上分配以及如何调整成本以计算具有全国代表性的估算。我们的发现与有兴趣从现有的幼儿园计划中学习的地方有关。