The Office of Early Childhood and its public/private partnership, Invest in Children, operate the County’s UPK program. The UPK program provides funding to existing high-quality preschools in Cuyahoga County with the aim of helping them create a gold standard preschool experience and increase access by providing scholarships to families. In addition, the UPK program offers technical assistance and coaching for teachers to improve the quality of classroom instruction. Scholarships are also offered to families in need, ranging from 25% to 50% off the preschool fee for families at or below 400% of the federal poverty level.

Preschool enrollment varies across the year, with higher numbers toward the middle of the academic year (Q1 and Q4) and lower enrollment in the summer months (Q2 and Q3). The number of preschool seats available may also shift over time, for example as sites increase the number of classrooms or consolidate with another site. For this reason, enrollment is reported as both the number of children enrolled in UPK preschools and the percentage of UPK seats enrolled. The latter measure is more comparable over time. The Office of Early Childhood sets a benchmark that at least 85% of UPK seats are enrolled. At the close of this quarter, in June 2019, enrollment was lower than usual at 1,711 children enrolled; however, this is because many of the UPK sites were closed for the summer in June. Among only the sites that were open in June, enrollment was at 82.9%. This does not quite meet the benchmark, which is attributed to typical lower enrollment at the beginning of the summer. The previous two quarters saw enrollment at or close to 90% of capacity.

The UPK children's kindergarten readiness metric shows that about three-quarters of UPK children were prepared for kindergarten-level instruction. In the 2017-18 school year, 77.1% of children who attended UPK for six months or more were kindergarten ready; this is on par with the statewide average of 77.7%. Here we are defining kindergarten readiness as scoring in the top two categories of the Ohio Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (the approaching readiness and demonstrating readiness categories). These categories reflect readiness on four dimensions: language and literacy, mathematics, social foundations, and physical well-being and motor development. 

In 2018, the Office of Early Childhood worked with researchers at Case Western Reserve University on a rigorous evaluation of UPK. Results showed that,  compared to children who get 18 months of high quality preschool in non-UPK sites, children in UPK sites are more likely to be on track to read at grade level, and show a stronger social foundation for learning in kindergarten. When followed over time, UPK children were also found to perform significantly better on the third grade reading proficiency assessment.