Chilean studies Since the 1990 s, Chile has substantially increased access to early childhood education for children from low-income families and,at the same time, has tried to improve the quality of those pro-grams (MINEDUC, 2002). The main goals of these efforts have been to reduce educational inequalities and to decrease the achievement gap between poor and wealthier children (Pacheco, Elacqua,& Brunner, 2005). Although early education coverage for children from the low-income group stood at 32.3% in 2009, up from 12.4% in 1990, there has been little research assessing the effects that these programs have had in improving academic outcomes (CEDEP, 2005,2007)