Now that voters by a wide margin have rejected Proposition 82, the universal preschool initiative, the question is: What's an alternative? Instead of one costly strategy, the state could boost student achievement by investing in a number of less-expensive early education strategies.

One is to subsidize more and earlier preschool for the 20 percent of the state's children living in poverty. Research shows that preschool has greater impact for students who attend for more than one year. Subsidizing early preschool for the most disadvantaged children would double their achievement gains compared to a single year of preschool proposed by Proposition 82. And it would cost only about half of the $2.4 billion price of the proposition.

A second strategy is to increase the entry age for kindergarten. A recent Rand Corp. study found that states with later kindergarten entry ages had higher achievement than states like California with early entry ages. According to the study, pushing back the kindergarten cutoff date in California by three months -- from Dec. 2 to Sept. 1 -- would increase overall student achievement by 30 percent, or more than seven times the gain from universal preschool.

The benefit would be even greater if this strategy were coupled with additional preschool support for poor children. Subsidizing an additional three months of preschool for 27,000 of the state's poorest students would further boost their school-readiness and cost $162 million. Even if subsidies were provided for another 27,000 low-income students, the total costs would amount to a relatively modest $324 million. Targeting the poorest students in the state would further close the achievement gap.

A third strategy is converting California's half-day kindergartens to full-day kindergartens. A recent federal study found that kindergartners in public schools who attended full-day classes had 19 percent higher reading gains and 14 percent higher math gains than similar students attending half-day classes.

These gains can be attributed, in part, to the full-day kindergartners' spending about two hours more in school than half-day kindergartners.

If 20 percent of California's 23,000 kindergarten classrooms with the highest concentration of poor students were converted to full-day classes, the additional costs for teacher salaries would be about $90 million. Converting all kindergartens in the state to full-day classes would cost less than $450 million. Of course, some schools and districts have insufficient space to offer full-day classes, but the population of kindergartners in the state is declining even in large urban districts like Los Angeles Unified, so space should be less of an issue in the future.

Implementing all three strategies together -- early preschool for poor children, delayed kindergarten combined with additional preschool subsidies for the poor, and full-day kindergarten -- would cost less than universal preschool provided by Proposition 82 and could boost the achievement of California students by 40 percent or more. And targeting more of the funds to California's neediest children would go a long way to reducing the large achievement gap in the state.

The governor's proposal to target $145 million for preschool in communities with low-achieving schools is a step in the right direction, but it falls short of what is needed. It also would limit preschool programs to public schools, curtailing the use of public schools for full-day kindergarten.

Californians recognize the need to invest in our state's children -- our future depends on it. Yet tax revenues available for such investment are scarce. So it is imperative that those revenues be invested so they provide the greatest educational benefits for our tax dollars. Instead of investing in universal preschool, the state would yield greater educational benefits by investing in other early education initiatives.