Policy Feedback and Preschool Funding in the American States

The early childhood education policy community has been described as a “divided constituency” in which groups with the same underlying goals sometimes work at cross purposes. This article examines how this internal division affects the contemporary funding of preschool education. It finds that states with a relatively large Head Start community are significantly more likely not to fund preschool education and significantly less likely to dedicate preschool funding exclusively to a freestanding state program. These results suggest that the creation and political solidification of Head Start generated policy feedback. They contributed to an ongoing tension within the early education community as Head Start beneficiaries viewed the creation of a freestanding preschool program as a political threat. This political dynamic illustrates the more general way in which the existence of a public policy can alter the dynamics of future political action.