This year two major education-related levies expire and will likely be put up for renewal: the Families and Education Levy, and the Seattle Preschool Levy. The preschool levy was passed in 2014 to fund a four-year “demonstration program” to offer preschool to 3 and 4 year old children in Seattle, hopefully proving its viability and discovering what it would take to scale it up.

This morning, the City Council started its process of looking at the two levies in anticipation of crafting renewals for the fall ballots. It may choose to combine them into a single levy, or opt to keep them separate if there is a risk that one would drag the other down — or if the complexities of trying to split the funds between City Hall-run programs and the politically separate Seattle Public School District become overwhelming. City Hall runs the Seattle Preschool Program through its Department of Education and Early Learning, independent of the school district (though in some cases utilizing classrooms at public schools).

Earlier this week, KUOW published an article raising questions about the quality of the Seattle Preschool Program, based on the second annual outside evaluation of the program. The article reports that the program is seeing “mixed results.”  Let’s dive into the study report and see what it says.

Continue reading How is the Seattle Preschool Program doing? →