• State-funded pre-k programs currently serve just 22 percent of four year olds and 3 percent of three year olds in the U.S.
• Nationally, about 70 percent of children in state-funded pre-k are served in a school setting. For- and non-profit childcare centers, Head Start centers, and faith-based providers serve the other 30 percent.
• Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma are the only states that currently make pre-k available to all four year olds.
• New York, Illinois, Iowa, and West Virginia have multi-year plans to implement pre-k for all four year olds. (Illinois' plan includes three year olds as well.)
• Twelve states with state-funded pre-k do not offer their programs to three year olds.
• Twelve states have no state-funded pre-k program at all.

View our state-by-state map on pre-k program access

• States' spending on pre-k programs varies widely, from $1,600 per pre-k child in South Carolina to more than $10,000 per child in New Jersey.
• Nationwide, state spending on each pre-k child averages about $3,600, or less than one-third of the average dollars spent on each public-school student in K-12.
• Twelve states - Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin - and the District of Columbia include pre-k as part of their school funding formulas (as of FY2008). This means that at least a portion of pre-k spending is tied to the same funding increases and decreases as K-12 education, though some of these states place limits on the total funding amount available through the formula.

• Seventeen states currently meet eight or more of the ten quality-checklist criteria for its pre-k program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).
• Ten states currently meet five or fewer of NIEER's quality-checklist criteria.
• Two states - Alabama and North Carolina - currently meet all ten of NIEER's quality benchmarks.

View our state-by-state map on pre-k program quality

• About 73 percent of pre-k teachers in state-funded programs report that they have a bachelor's degree (or higher degree).
• About 56 percent of pre-k teachers report that they hold a teaching certificate from their state designed to include teaching children younger than five years.
• Twenty-one states do not require all of their state-funded pre-k teachers to have a four-year college degree. Eight of these states do not require any state pre-k teachers to have a bachelor's degree.
• The average pre-k teacher earns less than half of what the average elementary school teacher earns. About 70 percent of pre-k teachers report earning a salary below 200% of federal poverty guidelines.
• Pre-k teachers are, to a great extent, reflective of the children they serve. For instance, 71 percent of classrooms where a majority of the children are African American have pre-k teachers who are also African American, and 46 percent of pre-k classrooms with a majority of Latino children have Latino teachers.