Supporting America's Future: Addressing Policy Choice in State Investment for Early Childhood Education Resources

Abstract

The structure of this thesis introduces the significance of investments in early childhood education resources, specifically at the state level. It includes background information regarding national and state investment policies and how they vary over time, as well as their short and long-term impacts on society. Focusing on state investments, the paper establishes hypotheses as to why policymakers may or may not choose to fund early childhood education. These hypotheses include up-front costs of programs, political partisanship, income range and tax burden, age of population, and ethnic diversity. The hypotheses are carried out in case studies with six different states across the country. When comparing hypotheses, the case studies are controlled for the distribution of a state’s population and the spread of residents living in rural and urban areas. The states that are being compared are high and low spenders of early childhood education in urban, median, and rural states, respectively. The conclusion of the thesis provides results of the case studies and revisits the hypotheses in conjunction with the scholarly literature and provides policy implications for future investments.