Wednesday,  May 5, 2010 2:54 AM

By Catherine Candisky

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Ohio taxpayers are spending more per pupil than those of most other states on early-childhood education yet are serving a smaller percentage of kids.

Of 38 states with state-funded preschool programs, Ohio ranked 30th for the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled and 10th for the percentage of 3-year-olds, according to a report released yesterday by the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Taxpayers spent an average of $6,904 per student, the fifth-highest rate in the nation.

"Although state funding appeared adequate, Ohio does not require highly qualified teachers or assistant teachers, and permits class sizes far in excess of what most other states would allow and early childhood experts consider acceptable," said W. Steven Barnett, author of the report and director of the institute, based at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

The report noted that Ohio's public preschool program does not require teachers to have a bachelor's degree and allows class sizes of up to 28 in 4-year-old classrooms and up to 24 in 3-year-old classrooms.

Here's the really bad news: The state's early-childhood system is in worse shape than the report suggests.

The findings were based on data from the 2008-09 school year and do not take into account $281 million in cuts included in the state budget approved by lawmakers last summer.

For example, Ohio's rankings are based on an enrollment of 21,963 children in the Early Learning Initiative and public preschool programs. But more than half of those kids were in the higher caliber Early Learning Initiative, which was abolished at the urging of Gov. Ted Strickland.

Barnett cautioned that the full impact of the economic recession has yet to be seen.

"The immediate future of pre-K seems much more perilous than past trends might suggest," he said. "State budgets will more fully bear the brunt of the recession in 2010 and 2011."

Nationwide, 1.2 million children attended state-funded preschool programs last year, an increase of nearly 82,000 from the year before. Average per-pupil spending also increased slightly, to $4,143 a year.

Ohio served a slightly smaller percentage of children last year than it did in 2002, the report found. Per-pupil spending during that time increased $58.

Katie Kelly, director of Ohio Groundwork Campaign, an early-learning advocacy group based in Cleveland, noted that the report does not reflect "the significant number of children being served in high-quality child care centers across Ohio, many of which maintain the same level of quality that the Early Learning Initiative offered."

Still, she said, the report underscores that "Ohio has a long way to go to improve quality and access to early education if we are going to be competitive with states like Texas, Florida and Georgia, who are providing quality early education to as many as 70 percent of their preschool children."

ccandisky@dispatch.com

Click Here for PDF