South Carolina preschoolers who attend a full-day, state-funded 4K program are better prepared for kindergarten according to a report by the SC Education Oversight Committee.

The EOC’s annual evaluation of South Carolina's Child Early Reading and Development Education Program (CERDEP) found that pupils in poverty who participated in CERDEP were more likely to demonstrate readiness on the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) than pupils in poverty who did not.

Students in kindergarten are given the KRA in the first 45 days of a school year; the assessment measures the readiness levels of language/literacy, mathematics, and physical well-being. In school year 2024-25, 39 percent of kindergarten students in SC public schools demonstrated readiness on the KRA. Thirty-five percent of pupils in poverty who participated in CERDEP demonstrated readiness, while 25 percent of pupils in poverty who did not participate in CERDEP met the same standard.

Pupils in poverty are students from a household that participates in one of the following federal programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Foster, Migrant, or Homeless. CERDEP prioritizes these students.

“We see again that pupils in poverty who participated in full-day, state-funded four-year-old programs are ready for kindergarten at a higher rate than their peers who did not participate,” said EOC Executive Director Dana Yow. “The challenge before us now is to serve more eligible students in the state, improving the access to, quality and impact of CERDEP.” The report found there were approximately 18,000 children potentially eligible for CERDEP who did not participate in the program, as well as 400 children currently on a waitlist to attend a state-funded 4K program.

While the current waitlist process is compliant with state law, “there are potential solutions which can be deployed to increase efficiency of enrolling all eligible children in CERDEP programming,” the report states.

The EOC will be releasing a report on CERDEP waitlists in April 2025. One of the proposed solutions in the current report is to establish 4K Navigators. 

“4K Navigators would be knowledgeable about all early childhood programming and able to support a family across CERDEP 4K, First Steps 4K, Head Start, EIA or Title 1 funded 4K, and SC Child Care Scholarships – which provides for more options to best meet the needs of the family and child,” the report states. 

The entire report on state-funded, full day 4K can be accessed at the EOC’s website in the early childhood section.