Georgia’s publicly funded pre-kindergarten programme for 4-year-olds has become the first in the US to meet all 10 of the National Institute for Early Education Research’s quality benchmarks, highlighting a rare balance of scale and quality amid nationwide growth and disparities.
Georgia’s publicly funded pre-kindergarten programme for 4-year-olds has been singled out by the National Institute for Early Education Research as the largest state-run preschool scheme in the United States to meet all 10 of the group’s quality benchmarks, making it the first universal programme to do so. The finding places Georgia at the centre of the institute’s 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook, which tracks funding, enrolment and quality across state-supported preschool systems nationwide.
According to NIEER, only five other states-Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi and Rhode Island-also met all 10 benchmarks in the latest report. The institute said Georgia stands apart because it combines scale with quality, something it argues is unusually difficult to achieve in early education. Steve Barnett, NIEER’s director, said the state showed that universal preschool can be expanded while still maintaining well-qualified teachers, small classes, pay parity with K-12 and systems aimed at continuous improvement.
The report also shows that state-funded preschool reached record levels in the 2024-25 school year, with nearly 1.8 million children enrolled nationwide. That amounted to 37% of the country’s 4-year-olds and 9% of 3-year-olds. Even so, growth slowed from the year before, and many states still have not recovered to pre-pandemic enrolment levels. California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Missouri accounted for most of the increase, adding more than 52,000 places between them.
Funding also climbed to record levels, with states spending nearly $14.4bn on preschool and total spending, including federal and local money, reaching almost $17.7bn. California spent $4.1bn, while New Jersey and New York each spent more than $1bn. Georgia’s own programme enrolled 70,572 children in 2024-25 and received $538.4m in state funding, up 15% after inflation, according to the institute’s state profile. NIEER said Georgia improved its teacher-to-child ratio to one to 10 and reduced maximum class sizes to 20, changes that helped it clear every benchmark.
Still, the national picture remains uneven. NIEER said 20 states enrolled fewer children than the previous year, and 17 spent less once inflation was taken into account. The institute’s lead author, Allison Friedman-Krauss, said access and quality continue to vary sharply by state, and argued that only high-quality early education produces lasting gains for children and long-term savings for taxpayers. That broader context helps explain why Georgia’s result has drawn attention: it is not just a strong showing, but a rare example of a large universal programme reaching the standard researchers say others should aim for.
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