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Super complex issue. But the shortage could just as well be an information deficit as anything else. It's still not clear to me whether the problem is that parents can't get into *a* program, or whether parents can't get into one of the programs they want to get into. There's a big difference.

When our kid was 3, we were still a bit leery about sending her to DCPS pre-school even though we had slots open in our excellent in-boundary school, but if we weren't, we would have played the lottery for one of the well-regarded out-of-boundary schools. Of course, we wouldn't have been able to get into any of them because of the sheer number of in boundary kids and OOB applicants.

So the choice would've been between sending her to "whatever school has open slots" or biting the bullet and sent her to private pre-school for another two years. We would have chosen the latter, and would've provided "anecdotal evidence" that universal pre-school doesn't exist in DC.

Of course, if there was an open slot somewhere in a struggling school in Ward 8 that we could've sent our kid to, but opted not to, one could make a very good argument that universal ps/pk was available, but we chose not to use it.

Either way, the PK/PS process could definitely be improved.

by oboe on Jun 19, 2012 12:06 pm • link • report