A new national report ranks Oklahoma fifth in preschool access for 4-year-olds, but researchers say public awareness needs to be heightened to help restore the program’s reach to prepandemic levels.
The National Institute for Early Education Research’s 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook presents a critical snapshot of funding, enrollment and quality benchmarks for public preschool education in the 45 states that fund it.
Because Oklahoma pioneered free, universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds in 1998, its percentage of children enrolled still ranks fifth in the U.S., trailing only the District of Columbia, Vermont, Colorado, and West Virginia.
But NIEER identified Oklahoma as falling behind in that category because that reach, as well as its overall count of enrolled 4-year-olds, continues to decline.
By 2013-14, Oklahoma enrolled 76% of its 4-year-olds in public prekindergarten classes, and that level was maintained through the 2018-19 academic year. In 2024-2025 Oklahoma public pre-K programs reached 65% of all 4-year-olds.
Steve Barnett, the organization’s senior director and founder, said Oklahoma needs to do more to ensure parents are aware that high-quality pre-K is both available here and important for children’s future success.
“There are other factors. K-12 enrollment is down also, more parents are opting for homeschooling, and I do think there is a declining trust,” Barnett said. “But if you can get the parents that have those experiences with public pre-K to share about them, that’s a great message to get out.”
Overall, public school enrollment in Oklahoma has been in a downward trend since the pandemic. The state’s most recent official student count of 686,718, taken on Oct. 1, was almost 17,000 students fewer than on Oct. 1, 2019.
According to NIEER and data collected annually by the Oklahoma State Department of Education, there were 32,794 students enrolled in 4-year-old programs in 2024-25, compared to 39,767 in 2019-20.
Oklahoma ranks 27th in the U.S. in percentage of 3-year-olds enrolled in public preschool, at 3%. In terms of students, 1,370 were enrolled in in 2024-25, compared to 2,111 in 2019-20.
Nationally, preschool enrollment surged by 44,000 students last year, as other states, including California and Michigan, expanded their programs.
Oklahoma’s other rankings in this new national report are 30th overall in state spending per child, at $5,749, and 10th when all sources of spending, including federal and local, are accounted for, at $12,433.
Oklahoma continued to meet nine of NIEER’s 10 benchmarks for high-quality public preschool programs. ‘
It has yet to mandate that assistant teachers in preschool classes earn a Child Development Associate credential, the most widely recognized national certification for early childhood educators.
Georgia, the only state to offer universal pre-K longer than Oklahoma, has met all 10 of NIEER’s quality benchmarks for the first time.
Local Outreach Efforts Increasing
Residents in the Tulsa area are seeing neighborhood canvassing by parent advocates and public pleas by mayors and city managers, as school districts and public education advocacy groups seek to combat lower student enrollment in 4-year-old programs.
“I just literally emailed my city and county contacts about recording messages to educate parents,” said Tara Thompson, interim communications adviser at the state Department of Education and the chief of communications at Broken Arrow Public Schools. “For the last three years, we have not been able to fill our pre-K programs. As of about two weeks ago, we still had 180 slots to fill.”
Broken Arrow has used its social media channels to share messages about available preschool slots in neighboring Union Public Schools, and posted notices in public libraries about BA’s virtual school program, which is open to children as young as four.
“We all know the importance of education in those early childhood years, so we don’t know the cause of this,” Thompson said. “We want our homeschool families to know you can still have that homeschool vibe and keep your child home with these amazing curriculum resources through BA’s virtual program.”
One nonprofit organization that relies on data to identify challenges and track solutions for children across the Tulsa area has resorted to paying parents whose children have completed public preschool to knock on doors and spread the word.
For the past year, 15 to 20 parent advocates have been targeting homes in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of children younger than five, or whose neighborhood schools have unfilled seats in pre-K classrooms.
Ana Barros, director of collaboration and partnerships at ImpactTulsa, said their parent advocates are equipped with a whole lot of information from their personal experiences and the ability to help parents enroll their children on the spot.
Through its work, ImpactTulsa has identified four main barriers to preschool participation:
- Misinformation or low information because pre-K in Oklahoma is free to all but not required.
- Enrollment challenges, as the process, dates, and even required documents differ from district to district.
- Concerns about school safety and each child’s readiness.
- Children remaining in childcare centers through ages 4 and even 5.
“We have to make more people aware of national and local studies showing that students who start academic learning at age four have better reading and math outcomes and are much more likely to reach a living wage. It’s not early – it’s on time. Their brains are ready,” said Barros. “The message from our parent advocates is also that it’s very play-based, class sizes are smaller than the typical public school size, pre-K teachers are all certified, and there is no information related to a student’s immigration status collected.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
