False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers (Critical Perspectives on Youth)

Winner, 2024 Bourdieu Best Book Award, given by the Sociology of Education Section of the American Sociological AssociationHonorable Mention, Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award, given by the Children and Youth Section of the American Sociological AssociationAn inside look at the racial and class divides between Head Start and private pre-K classrooms for children and their familiesThe benefits of preschool have been part of our national conversation since the 1960s, when Head Start, a publicly funded preschool program for low-income children, began.In the past two decades, forty-four states have expanded access to preschool, often citing preschool as an anti-poverty policy.Yet, as Casey Stockstill shows, two-thirds of American preschools are segregated-concentrating primarily poor children of color or affluent white children in separate schools.Stockstill argues that, as a result, segregated preschools entrench rather than disrupt inequality. Stockstill spent two years observing