• The percent of 3 and 4 year olds served by special education programs varied from 3.5% (California) to 13.1% (Pennsylvania). Nationwide the percent of classified school age students enrolled in public schools was 13.7% in 2003-04. 4
• In fifteen states the percentage of preschool children served was half or less the nation wide average of school age children who were classified. This implies that certain states' preschool special education programs were serving only some of the children that could and will be served when they become school age.

1 This information obtained from the U.S. Census bureau.

2 This number include 5 year old prekindergarten children hence the 5 year old population was included in the total population.

3 The total percent receiving services of the reporting states was obtained by dividing the number of total students served in all of the states listed by the total of the three and four year old populations of these states.

4 This total is from NCES and is the percent of children enrolled in public schools who are classified.  

5 This total includes 5 year olds in a prekindergarten program, hence the denominator for this would be 10,887.

7 Arkansas and Ohio both include information pertaining to five year old children as well as three and four year olds, in Arkansas’s case they report 1,103 five year old children in preschool programs and 2,538 five year old children receiving specialeducation services in kindergarten. Hence since the LEA’s are not involved with delivery of services to the 1,103 five year olds in the preschool program, the LEA’s do not provide funds for this program. In this state approximately 30% of all the five year olds receiving special education services are in a preschool special education program. 

Section Three: How the Various States have set up Programs for Delivery of services

The first question dealing with programmatic areas/administration asked if a state set tuition rates for their preschool children receiving services. In all case the answer was no (except for New York State). This meant that the three follow up questions were moot and not answered by the states. Other questions asked were if a state offers universal prekindergarten, if so were there state wide standards, if these standards were applicable for preschool special education programs? Were there alternate standards for children receiving services? Does the state have a standardized (uniform) method of identification, evaluation, and IEP development for all students 3 to 21? We also inquired as to what agency in the state is responsible for Early Intervention (children ages birth to their third birthday).

Table 4A: How did the state choose to set up delivery of services to their preschool population in need of services?

Note: for Table 4A above and 4B below some states did not answer all of these questions.

Table 4B: How did the state choose to set up delivery of services to their preschool population in need of services?

• Eleven out of twenty five states stated that they have universal prekindergarten (slightly less than one half of the responding states). All eleven of these states say that they have integrated preschool programs.  
• Fifteen states say that they have early childhood program standards; some of these don’t have universal prekindergarten. These states are South Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Hawaii, and Arkansas. 
• Only South Dakota says that they have alternate standards for children receiving services.
• Eighteen out of twenty five states do have a uniform system for evaluation, identification & IEP development for all students 3 to 21. 
• Sixteen out of twenty five states say that their Health Department or Human Services Department serves children from birth to third birthday. Six states have as there lead for early intervention (EI) their Education Department.

Section Four: quantitative measures of program delivery and outcomes.

As the title of this section above indicates, this section summarizes information dealing with such questions as settings of services and outcomes of preschool programs in the various states. The first of the five questions that are dealt with here are: where are services being provided to children receiving preschool special education (by entity, as an example: an LEA). The second question asked to the state to list by percentages  the settings where these children were receiving services (settings such as whether special education class half day or full day etc). The third question asked: ‘for those preschool students with disabilities who, based upon their IEP’s require integrated settings, where are those integrated settings located by percentage’. The fourth and fifth questions asked about Early Intervention transitions to preschool programs and preschool transitions to school age programs. 

As in the other sections above some states did not answer the questions above, in most cases this was due to the states not collecting this type of data. In several cases (one of these being Pennsylvania) they had data but this data was incompatible with the data that was requested by the survey. Those states where they could not answer the question were not included in the tables below. The information dealing with the five questions above along with their attendant analysis are broken down into two tables.

The first (Table 5 A) summarizes the results from the survey by grouping together three related questions, namely what entities provided preschool special education, and the settings in which these services were provided, and where were services provided for children who required integrated settings.

The second table (Table 5 B) summarizes the related two questions of what percentage of children where referred to preschool/school age services, determined to be eligible for preschool/school age services, receive preschool/school age services, and who is responsible for EI (early intervention) in that state. The question of whether the child was preschool or school age was determined by what program they were transitioning from, whether EI to preschool or preschool to school age.

Table 5 A: What Entities Were Providing Preschool Special Education and Where.

8 As noted previously Arkansas and Ohio’s data pertains to three, four and some portion of the five year old children attending school programs, most other states would consider these children school age.
9 North Carolina’s data is incomplete, their total percentages sums to 92%. 

           
The table above contains a great deal of data that can be confusing, but by picking out a few salient facts we can begin to see certain patterns.

• The entities that provide preschool education services/instruction are 100% or nearly 100% LEA’s, with two exceptions Arkansas and New York, one of which, Arkansas chose to provide services through other unspecified public entities.    
• New York State’s system of having private providers for preschool education is without precedent or analogy in the states that have responded to our survey. This further explains why none of the states that responded to our survey has a rate setting function since, unlike New York, preschool special education is almost entirely provided by public entities such as LEA’s.
• The reader will notice that: California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania provide these services entirely or almost entirely through their LEA’s yet do not have universal Pre Kindergarten (Table 4 A column one).  This could conceivably have a bearing upon the ability of some of these states to provide integrated settings for children for whose IEP calls for such (refer to the above table for settings where services were being provided). 
• Further by looking at Table 5A and recalling the information in Table 3 (revenue sources for preschool special education), we can discern several trends. Of those states where instruction was provided entirely or almost entirely by LEA’s, and who provided information regarding the origins of revenues for these programs (eleven states), eight received the majority of their funds from the state (California, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania). Of the remaining three, one received the majority of their funds from local revenues (Wisconsin), one (Florida), had a nearly even split of providers of funds between the state and LEA, and one, Nebraska received the majority of their funds from the federal government.     

Table 5 B: Transitions, Early Intervention to Preschool and Preschool to School age.

Summary

Twenty four states responded to the survey we sent out via the web. These states varied from large states with a mix of urban school districts, suburban and rural districts (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), to others who are very rural (North and South Dakota). The methods of funding preschool special education ranged from a great reliance upon federal IDEA funds (Nebraska), 100 percent reliance upon state funds (Hawaii), or 100 percent reliance upon local revenues (Wisconsin) and every possible combination between these extremes.  

About half of the respondents had universal pre kindergarten, and those who did indicated that children with disabilities are integrated into their programs. About half of the states had program standards for general education preschool programs set up (fourteen), though some of those did not have universal prekindergarten. All but one of the states who had general preschool education standards said that these program standards were applicable to preschool special education programs. Only one state said that they have alternative standards for some preschool special education programs (South Dakota). Most states said they had a uniform system of identification, evaluation and IEP development.

The agency that most states used for E.I. was the states health department (more than half). In five states their education department provided E.I. services, and this was the second most popular choice in this survey. New York State’s program was the most unique in that services were provided through private not for profit and for profit entities and not the LEA’s.