PETAL — Preschoolers kneel on a kaleidoscope rug, their clumsy hands reaching for wooden blocks, little socked feet tucked underneath.

Block by block, they build a tower that only teeters a little, and for a moment, stands tall. The kids grin proudly. And when it tumbles to the ground a few seconds later, the classroom corner is filled with the sound of giggles.

A bystander might think this is just play. But the teacher watching nearby knows they’re learning essential fine-motor skills. They’re also learning social skills by sharing with their classmates. 

Thanks to a statewide investment in early education more than a decade ago, about one in six Mississippi children is learning these integral skills within the first few years of life at “early learning collaboratives” throughout the state. Experts agree the program is directly connected to the state’s reading gains that have garnered national attention. 

So when lawmakers created another state-funded pre-K program in 2022, some wondered: Why do we need both? One legislative leader who helped create the collaboratives is concerned the new program might siphon away resources, or recreate some of the problems the state faced for decades with early learning.

Early learning collaboratives, a state and taxpayer funded pre-K program established by the Legislature in 2013, created education partnerships in communities across Mississippi. The program has high academic standards, and it brings together child-care centers, nonprofit organizations, school districts and Head Start agencies. It compensates the groups for partnering.

In 2021, just 18 collaboratives were serving about 3,000 4-year-olds throughout the state, but the program still landed Mississippi top marks for early education from a national research group. 

Four years later, that count has more than doubled. Now, 40 collaboratives across Mississippi have more than 6,000 kids enrolled. 

But a new program, called the state-invested pre-K program, or SIP, doesn’t require collaboration with Head Start centers, which provide a myriad of services beyond education for some of the state’s neediest children. Additionally, because of the way the program is set up, there’s less red tape.

For those reasons, it may be a more appealing option for underfunded districts looking to make their dollars go further. It’s frustrating for Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, who championed the original program that required collaboration among pre-K partners, instead of fighting over students and the money that follows them.

“As I understand it, the SIP program has its roots in something that has always plagued early education in Mississippi,” he said. “Competition.”

‘Skin in the game’

There was an old saying among the police officers and prosecutors in Jackson County, Wiggins remembers from his time working in the district attorney’s office. 

“They said they determined the amount of prison beds by how well kids performed in the third and fourth grade,” he recalled, in his office at the state Capitol in June. “That resonated.”

When he was elected to the state Senate, those kids were fresh on his mind.

Wiggins spent 2012, his first year at the Capitol, advocating for early childhood education and began working up a plan to reshape the state’s system with policy researcher Rachel Canter. They partnered with then-Republican Rep. Toby Barker, who is now an independent and serves as mayor of Hattiesburg. By the time the next year rolled around — 2013, a seminal year for education in Mississippi — Wiggins thought he had something good. 

As lawmakers were working up what would become the literacy act that fundamentally changed reading education in Mississippi, leaders in the Legislature were signing off on Wiggins’ early education plan. It addressed the “patchwork of pre-kindergarten entities” in Mississippi and the lack of coordination between them. When students enroll in different pre-K programs, money follows — tuition at private day-care facilities or federal funding at Head Start are two examples. The collaboratives had a goal of eliminating the infighting that happens in communities over 4-year-olds by giving stakeholders a financial incentive to work together.

The bill passed by a vast bipartisan majority in 2013 and lawmakers appropriated $3 million for it. The Mississippi Department of Education selected 11 communities to host the first collaboratives.

In a collaborative, there’s a lead partner — usually the local school district, but it can be a nonprofit organization — that has local responsibility over the program. They’re in charge of disbursing funds, facilitating professional development and ensuring everyone is adhering to standards. 

Those standards are rigorous. The bill requires collaboratives to use a curriculum that aligns with benchmarks from the National Institute of Early Education Research. This includes having teachers with bachelor’s degrees and at least 15 hours of professional development a year.

The collaborative’s lead partner is required to work with other local pre-kindergarten providers such as child care and Head Start centers to be eligible for the collaborative and its funding, which was originally $2,150 per student (That amount has since increased to $5,000). But the costs quickly add up. The $3 million from the Legislature got them started The state agreed to pay half of each student’s education costs. The rest had to come from the communities. 

Enter the part that Wiggins is most proud of: To make up the other half, the Legislature created a tax-credit program. That means businesses and individuals can donate to their local collaborative and receive a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes. 

“That created some skin in the game,” he said. 

Setting students up for success

Deanna Hathorn holds open a book at the front of the classroom, and every face is turned toward her. 

“‘Justin dreamt that he could fly,’” she reads in a lilting voice. 

Then Hathorn directs her students: “Hold one finger up if you have dreams!”

Immediately, tiny index fingers fly into the air.

Petal, a suburb of Hattiesburg, was one of the first communities to opt into the early learning collaborative program. 

Prior to the program, it was relatively common for Petal students to enter kindergarten without any classroom education because options were limited to Head Start and a handful of Christian-based schools, similar to many other Mississippi towns, according Jana Perry. Perry is Petal’s former primary school assistant principal and the current director of the district’s Coleman Center for Children and Families, the lead partner for the Petal Early Learning Collaborative.

That’s because pre-kindergarten was not funded by the state before 2013. 

“The act was a game-changer,” she said. “If we didn’t have this, we would be so far behind. Why we are doing so well as a state is because of early childhood education.” 

Wiggins said Petal is one of the state’s most successful early learning collaboratives, in its reach and academic achievement. About 300 kids in Petal enter the district’s kindergarten program every year. Most will have gone through the collaborative, which currently has 179 students across 10 classrooms at five sites. 

The difference between the students who have had a year in the collaborative and the ones who haven’t is stark, Perry said.

Mississippi Department of Education data shows that collaborative students outperform their peers on the statewide kindergarten readiness assessment. That’s because the collaborative students enter kindergarten more familiar with classroom structure and the curriculum. Plus, some potential barriers to learning may have already been identified, Perry said. For example, collaborative teachers can intervene if a child has a speech impediment, potentially making a year’s worth of progress by the time that student enters kindergarten. 

“We can go ahead and get them set up to succeed once they walk in the door,” she said. “And they know how to do school. Kids who haven’t been through pre-K really struggle in their first year in kindergarten.”

The impact of early education echoes throughout a child’s life, said Steven Barnett, founder of the National Institute for Early Education Research. 

“The first thing you’ll notice is that the students do better when they get to kindergarten, and then they do better on those early grade exams,” Barnett said. “But the next thing you’ll notice is they’re less likely to fail and have to repeat. They’re less likely to need special education, and they’re going to be more likely to graduate from high school and go on to higher education. 

“That’s the big payoff, because that’s where you get better health outcomes, better employment, better incomes.”

Petal superintendent Matt Dillon said the first cohort of early learning collaborative students are now in high school, and the impact of the program is tangible — in test scores, expected graduation rates and school environment. 

“This is a community that really recognized the importance of early education,” he said. “And fast forward to today, we’re reaping the benefits.”

That success of early learning collaboratives is why, when Wiggins heard about the new state-funded pre-kindergarten program created in 2022, he was confused — and, honestly, a little agitated. 

“Nobody asked me about it,” Wiggins said. “And if they had, I would have said, ‘No.’”

New program may fit smaller communities

Union, a tiny town in piney central Mississippi anchored by a couple of four-way stops, is home to about 2,000 people. Most of the town’s 4-year-olds are in three classrooms at the Union Elementary School’s campus, thanks to funding from the new SIP program. 

On the whole, it’s not dissimilar from early learning collaborative classrooms in Petal. In rainbow-decorated rooms, children take care of baby dolls, listen to stories read aloud and match letters on worksheets.

But policy differences set the two programs apart.

The SIP program, which was funded in 2022, paid schools $100,000 for each early education classroom, and an extra $25,000 each if the school partnered with its local Head Start. However, that partnership is not required. This policy was slightly changed for the newest batch of participating schools — now, if they do not partner with the local Head Start, the district receives a fraction of that money.

Additionally, while the early learning collaboratives are enshrined in and regulated by state law, the SIP program is simply a line item in the annual education appropriation bill. That means its existence is subject to the whims of legislative approval each year.

The Mississippi Department of Education works hard to make sure all participating schools are in compliance — the SIP program meets all 10 of NIEER’s quality early education benchmarks, as does the collaborative program — but the agency doesn’t have to. 

Jill Dent, the agency’s early childhood director, said in an emailed statement that the department advocates equally for both programs. 

“Our goal is to support districts in choosing the model that best fits their local needs and capacity,” she wrote. 

It’s not unusual, Barnett said, for states to have more than one early education program. But it does beg the question: Who does the SIP program serve? 

“Sometimes, one program doesn’t fit everybody,” he said. “But sometimes, it’s just politics.” 

The politics didn’t matter to longtime Union Superintendent Tyler Hansford. He just didn’t see a collaborative working for his community. It’s small, doesn’t have many child care centers and the closest Head Start — which Union does work with — is a 30-minute drive. And he’s happy with the decision he’s made, already able to see the positive impact the program is having in Union.

“We’re able to reach more students and get them in early,” he said. “What we’ve seen is that there’s tremendous benefit in that.”

Hansford saw more bang for his buck with the SIP program, along with 32 other communities across Mississippi. Perry and Barnett said they both understand why those districts have made the decision to opt into the SIP program over the collaborative program.

Some districts might not want to partner with as many entities as the collaboratives require because they’re happy with the way they do things. Others, such as Union, might not have as many resources or options in their community to support a collaborative. 

But some places that are short on money have made the collaborative structure work, such as Tallahatchie County, a tiny community in the Delta with a median household income of $23,000. 

Tallahatchie hosts one of the state’s original early learning collaboratives. The lead partner, nonprofit Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance, brings together local Head Starts and East Tallahatchie School District and has served more than 1,000 students since the local program began in 2014. 

There were no publicly funded pre-K classrooms prior to the collaborative and only a handful of child-care centers. Only two served low-income children and they had long waitlists, said Cheryl Swoopes, director of community engagement for SonEdna, which launched Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance. 

“With limited resources, it’s a process, but we’ve stayed the course,” she said. “We’ve had teachers and administrators tell us that they wouldn’t know what to do if TELA wasn’t here.”

Today, the Tallahatchie collaborative is the only coordinated, fully funded pre-K effort in the county, and in Wiggins’ view, if Tallahatchie can do it, anyone can. 

“The ELC, it is work,” said Perry, from Petal. “There’s a lot of work. But it’s very worth it.”

Looking ahead

Despite stagnant state test scores this year, Mississippi continues to revel in the glow of its national academic achievements, particularly in literacy and early education.

Wiggins believes those achievements are in no small part due to the collaboratives. He hopes to see the program expand to include younger students and more communities in the next 10 years.

Access is still low, with enrollment rates of 17.7% of all Mississippi 4-year-olds. The SIP program reaches about 900 kids, or about 2.4% of 4-year-olds.  A recent report from Barnett’s organization noted that neighboring Alabama serves twice as many four-year-olds.

Neither of Mississippi’s pre-K programs serve 3-year-olds.

Since early learning collaboratives were established, funding has steadily increased. The original $3 million allotment is now up to $29 million, plus $3.25 million for the program’s coaches. 

The SIP program received $13 million in the most recent appropriations bill. 

“Our scores in kindergarten readiness continue to go up, and the nation understands what we’ve done,” Wiggins said. “But we’ve got to continue to do things. 

“We’ve got to reduce the friction in the early education world in Mississippi because it should be about the kids. We have something that works. We need to continue to support that.”