Early Childhood Education

When federal officials inspected this city’s Head Start program five years ago, they found moldy classrooms, exposed wires, leaking sewage, a sagging roof and trash-strewn playgrounds littered with safety hazards. A teacher had jerked a student so hard she dislocated the girl’s shoulder.

To outsiders, Oklahoma may seem like an odd place to look for a shining example of public education policy.

This deep-red state has seen numerous cuts to public education funding over the last 30 years; stagnant teacher salaries over the past decade; and most recently a heated election cycle dominated by the aftermath of a massive statewide teacher strike. But Oklahoma also happens to lead the country in one particular public-education initiative: state-funded universal pre-Kindergarten.

Professor Heckman’s comprehensive new study, Early Childhood Education, addresses two important issues in the debate over early childhood education programs: are they effective and should they be subsidized by the government. Heckman and co-authors Sneha Elango, Jorge Luis García and Andrés Hojman, find that disadvantaged children benefit the most from a variety of early childhood interventions and society receives a higher return from targeted investments. As a result, policy makers would be wise to use means-testing rather than universal subsidies for all children. 

The 2015 factsheets for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia provide information for early childhood professionals and policymakers about the status of infants, toddlers, and families in their state. The State Baby Facts present infant and toddler data in the framework of good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences.

There’s little disagreement nationally about the importance of early-childhood education, but settling on the right approach to funding and policy approaches is a different matter

Across Virginia, about $23 million designated for preschool was left on the table because localities — citing limited resources, lack of classroom space and politics — did not contribute the required matching funds to take full advantage of the program. As a result, more than 6,000 disadvantaged children missed the opportunity to go to school before kindergarten.

Our report, Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West: Empowering Parents and Educators, shows that while many digital products claim to teach reading, the app marketplace currently puts a heavy emphasis on teaching letters, sounds and phonics. A snapshot of the iTunes App Store’s most popular paid literacy apps showed that 45 percent targeted letters and sounds and half targeted phonics, but only 5 percent targeted vocabulary. And none of the iTunes paid apps in the scan focused on comprehension, grammar and the ability to understand and tell stories

More than 20 states now require measures of student achievement to carry significant weight in teachers’ effectiveness ratings – even in the earliest grades, in which children do not participate in state standardized testing. 

State financing for preschool fell by more than $548 million, or close to 10 percent, in the 2011-12 school year, the largest annual drop in a decade, according to a report released Monday. 

But the $77 billion measure, to be funded by a 94-cent tax increase on a pack of cigarettes, is no sure bet. And even if Congress does pass the measure, it would not require states to actually expand preschool offerings. Rather, it would give incentives for them to do so, much like the Affordable Care Act. But the preschool incentive may be even less compelling to states than Obamacare, since Preschool for All doesn’t help governors fulfill a federal mandate.

The Perry Preschool Project is one of the most famous education experiments of the last 50 years. The study asked a question: Can preschool boost the IQ scores of poor African-American children and prevent them from failing in school? The surprising results are now challenging widely-held notions about what helps people succeed – in school, and in life.

A comprehensive study by the Pew Economic Mobility Project documents that in the U.S. today, few poor people become even upper middle class.

California embarked on an ambitious experiment in 1996 to improve its public schools by putting its youngest students in smaller classes. Nearly 17 years later, the goal of maintaining classrooms of no more than 20 pupils in the earliest grades has been all but discarded– a casualty of unproven results, dismal economic times and the sometimes-fleeting nature of education reform. To save money on teacher salaries amid drastic cutbacks in state funding, many school districts throughout the state have enlarged their first-, second- and third-grade classes to an average of 30 children.

Our report, Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West: Empowering Parents and Educators, shows that while many digital products claim to teach reading, the app marketplace currently puts a heavy emphasis on teaching letters, sounds and phonics. A snapshot of the iTunes App Store’s most popular paid literacy apps showed that 45 percent targeted letters and sounds and half targeted phonics, but only 5 percent targeted vocabulary. And none of the iTunes paid apps in the scan focused on comprehension, grammar and the ability to understand and tell stories.

Mississippi needs the help: It has the highest rate of child poverty in the nation and some of the lowest standardized test scores. Licensing and oversight of small, family child care homes in Mississippi rank dead last in the country. And it’s the only state in the South that doesn’t fund pre-kindergarten.

The share of kindergartners whose parents opted out of state immunization requirements more than doubled in the decade that ended in 2008, peaking at 7.6 percent in the 2008-9 school year, according to the state’s Health Department, raising alarm among public health experts. But last year, the Legislature adopted a law that makes it harder for parents to avoid getting their children vaccinated, by requiring them to get a doctor’s signature if they wish to do so. Since then, the opt-out rate has fallen fast, by a quarter, setting an example for other states with easy policies.

To make friends, it turns out, children need to be able to carry out sophisticated social maneuvers, screening potential pals for certain positive qualities and making careful assessments about how much common ground they share. And in order to be a good friend—the kind that inspires loyalty and dedication—even a very young child must be not only fun to spend time with, but capable of being emotionally mature in ways that can be difficult even for grown-ups.

A project of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, this study ran from 1991 through 2009. Analysis of the data, however, continues. The large team of researchers from multiple universities followed more than 1,300 children from their earliest years in various forms of child care into preschool and K-12 classrooms. The study’s findings—which included connections between children’s behavior problems and long time spent in center-based child care—sparked considerable controversy.

Some commentators used the results to argue that mothers’ work outside the home hinders their children’s development. Others, however, have focused on the positive aspects of center-based care, which can include stronger cognitive skills, and have said such findings show that policymakers should focus on improving center quality.

Finding access to quality preschool is a problem for both low-income and middle-class parents. This piece describes the lengths that some families in New York go to when they can’t find spaces for their children in public school programs and can’t afford high-priced private preschools.

This is an ongoing study of Oklahoma’s state-funded “universal” preschool program in the Tulsa Public Schools. Led by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center for Research on Children in the United States, the project found that the pre-K program has led to significant academic gains for participants. Gains among Hispanic and African-American children, and those from poor families were the greatest. As with the Child Parent Centers in Chicago, preschool advocates have argued that the results show that quality doesn’t have to suffer when preschool is offered on a wide scale.

Those in favor of targeting preschool to the most disadvantaged children focus on the results showing higher gains among children with low-socioeconomic status.

This feature looked at the history of the federally funded Head Start preschool program and examined the ever-present questions over whether the program is effective.

This 2006 paper from University of Chicago economist James Heckman summarizes the research on the effects of early environments on child, adolescent and adult achievement—reinforcing the finding that “investing” early in life brings the greatest returns. Heckman’s ongoing research has fueled advocates’ efforts to convince policymakers that spending money on high-quality early learning and child development programs is wiser than many other economic development strategies.

This article features the Nurse-Family Partnership, an effective intervention program developed by psychologist David Olds, which aims to improve outcomes among very poor mothers with young children. Home-visiting programs are one model used to support development of infants and toddlers, and many states spend money on home visiting, so it’s important for reporters to have an understanding of the research in this area.

This 2000 report outlined the elements of well-designed preschool programs, including instruction in the four core content areas, and recommended bachelor’s degrees for teachers. It emphasized that young children are far more capable learners that previously thought.

A federally funded investigation of Chicago’s Child Parent Centers, which provide educational and family support services to children from preschool to 3rd grade. The centers are funded by Title I and have operated in the Chicago Public Schools since 1967. The study began in 1986 to investigate the effects of government-funded early-childhood education programs for 1,539 children in the Chicago Public Schools.

Led by University of Minnesota researcher Arthur Reynolds, the study has found that those who participated in the program beginning at age 3 showed higher levels of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, job skills, and health insurance coverage as well as lower rates of substance abuse, felony arrest, and incarceration than those who received the usual early childhood services. Many preschool advocates have said the results show it’s possible for public schools—not just small demonstration programs—to deliver early learning services that have lasting benefits.