New Mexico climbing up national rankings for preschool access: but does it matter?

New Mexico is climbing up the national rankings for preschool access, according to a new report from the National Institute for Early Education Research. New Mexico ranks seventh for access for 3-year-olds and 11th for 4-year-olds during the 2024-25 school year. The state also ranks fifth for state spending, at $13,761 per kid in 2024-25.

Prior to the recent debate over “free” childcare New Mexico had already set up “free” universal pre-K. But, we all know none of this is free. According to the report New Mexico spent $226,084,608 on pre-K, up $9,246,573 from the previous year (that’s a . In all, 16,429 children are enrolled.

We are told of all the positives associated with pre-K, but quite frankly haven’t seen them show up in the data. Although it only became “universal” in the past few years New Mexico has had the program since 2005 and we haven’t seen any good random selection double blind studies showing that pre-K has done much to improve outcomes for New Mexico children.