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

Abstract

The Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK) is statewide full-day program that gives priority to children from low-income families. We used a regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of 155 TN-VPK classrooms and 5,189 children participating across two pre-K cohorts.

Key Findings

We 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.

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