Colorado has sunk closer to the bottom of the pack for state preschool funding, according to an annual report card released Thursday.
The state, which spends a paltry amount on preschool per pupil compared to top-scorers like Washington D.C., dropped from 35 to 41 in 2015. Only South Carolina and Mississippi spent less per child than Colorado. Eight other states with no publicly funded preschool programs weren’t ranked.
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On a measure of 4-year-old preschool access, Colorado’s ranking stayed the same: No. 22. That’s even with a small increase in 2015 in the number of 4-year-olds participating in the Colorado Preschool Program.
The state-by-state comparisons, put out by the National Institute for Early Education Research, also revealed that Colorado meets six of 10 benchmarks designed to judge preschool quality. That number—the same as neighboring Kansas and lower than Nebraska and New Mexico —is unchanged from the previous year.
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