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Child development
Teacher-student relationships and adult outcomes: Developmental cascades via childhood executive function and behavioral dysregulation
Longitudinal data were examined to test associations between teacher-student relationships and adult outcomes, as well as mechanisms underlying these associations. Results from the NICHD-SECCYD (N=1364; 52% male; 76% White; 13% Black; 6% Hispanic; 5% other; data collection took place in the U.S… more →
A Dynamic Model of the Economic Returns to Adolescent Social Skills
Topics: Families and CommunitiesSocial-skill formation during adolescence depends on peer environments, but those environments are equilibrium outcomes shaped by individual choices. To account for this endogeneity, we develop and estimate a dynamic model in which parents invest in adolescents, adolescents choose whether to… more →
Beyond the Shutdown: Tracking Language Growth in Early Head Start Children Before, During, and After COVID-19
Topics: Student LearningUnderstanding early language outcomes for low-income children in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is an important concern for researchers, policymakers, and educators. We examined language environments and language development among infants and toddlers in Early Head Start from pre-COVID,… more →
Why Fadeout is (Probably) Worse Than We Think: Adjusting for Correlated Sampling Error in Meta-Analyses of Behavioral Interventions
Topics: MethodsThe extent to which intervention effects persist or fade over time is an important question in the behavioral sciences. In meta-analysis, persistence is typically assessed by meta-regressing effect sizes at followup on effect sizes at endline. While common, the standard meta-regression does not… more →
The Economics of Age at School Entry: Insights from Evidence and Methods
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis article reviews the growing literature on age at school entry and its effects across the life course. Age at school entry affects a broad range of outcomes, including education, labor-market performance, health, social relationships, and family formation. We synthesize the evidence using a… more →
Using experimental variation to examine the (co-)development of cognitive and social-emotional skills in early childhood
Topics: MethodsTags: Child development, Early childhood education, Elementary schools, Returns to education and skillsQuestions about the stability of psychological constructs, skill generalization, and transfer have long motivated psychological research. Despite a proliferation of theory, the field has rarely established causal effects. We employed a novel approach to test the stability and codevelopment of… more →
How General is Educational Intervention Fadeout? A Meta-Analysis of Educational RCTs with Follow-Up
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceResearchers and policymakers pursue educational interventions with the goal of altering children’s long-term trajectories. However, many effects fade quickly after interventions end. Researchers have sought to address the fadeout problem by identifying characteristics of interventions that lead… more →
Predicting Persistence and Fadeout Across Multi-Site RCTs of an Early Childhood Mathematics Curriculum Intervention
Tyler W. Watts, Caroline M. Botvin, Drew H. Bailey, Emma R. Hart, Shira Mattera, Douglas H. Clements, Julie Sarama, Dale Farran, Mark Lipsey.Topics: Student LearningThis study examined predictors of persistence and fadeout across multiple cluster RCTs that evaluated a preschool mathematics curriculum. We used meta-analytic methods to explore how impacts on student mathematics achievement faded between post-test (i.e., endline) and one-year follow-up. We… more →
The West Texas Measles Outbreak and Student Absences
Topics: Student Well-BeingDeclining child-vaccination rates are driving a measles resurgence in the US, yet little evidence documents how these outbreaks may disrupt schooling. Using daily absence data from a school district at the center of the West Texas outbreak, this preregistered analysis finds absences increased 41… more →
Leveraging IEPs to Understand Special Education Services at Scale
7.5 million (15%) U.S. public school students have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) that guide $14 billion in special education services. However, the content of IEPs remains unexplored, primarily because they have been historically inaccessible to researchers at scale. In this study, we… more →
Impacts of Michigan Transitional Kindergarten Through Third Grade
Topics: Student LearningTransitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively new model of early childhood education, with little evidence on whether and how it affects children’s development. This study provides new evidence using data from Michigan, which has the nation’s second-largest TK program. Using survey data (N=171… more →
Teaching Practices and the Persistence of School-Entry Age Effects
Topics: Student LearningWe consider the effect of teaching practices on the persistence of school-entry age effects caused by rigid cutoff dates for school eligibility in Spain. We document significant school-entry age effects for the same cohort of students when they were in elementary and secondary school. Then, we… more →
School-based language, math, and reading interventions for executive functions in children and adolescents: A systematic review
Jens Dietrichson, Julie Kaas Seerup, Sofie Elgaard Iisager Jensen, Johan Klejs, Elizabeth Bengtsen, Martin Williams Strandby, Morten Kjær Thomsen.Topics: Student LearningExecutive functions are a set of cognitive skills and processes used when directing behaviour towards the attainment of a certain goal. A large literature has documented positive associations between executive functions and a variety of desirable outcomes throughout life, including academic… more →
Impacts of Oversubscribed Boston Pre-K Programs through Middle School
Christina Weiland, Tiffany Wu, Rebecca Unterman, Anna Shapiro, Shekinah Lightner, Thomas Staines, Annie Taylor.Topics: Student LearningIn this pre-registered study, we explored the impacts of Boston Pre-K on children’s educational trajectories, school progress/engagement, and academic achievement in late elementary and middle school using lotteries for oversubscribed schools in 2007-2011 (N=3,092 students; 24% of all applicants… more →
Creating Short Forms of Early Childhood Development Measures: A Framework for Quantifying Statistical, Conceptual, and Practical Tradeoffs in Direct Assessment
Direct assessments of early childhood development (ECD) are a cornerstone of research in developmental psychology and are increasingly used to evaluate programs and policies in lower- and middle-income countries. Despite strong psychometric properties, these assessments are too expensive and… more →
Does Early Childhood Education mitigate the birthdate effect? A regression discontinuity analysis of administrative data
Pablo Araya Cortés, Cristian Macías Domínguez, Luis Pires Jiménez, Rosa Santero Sánchez, Ismael Sanz Labrador.Topics: Student Well-BeingThis article examines the impact of within-class age differences on educational outcomes, using students' birth months in Madrid's primary schools as a natural experiment. Employing a regression discontinuity design, we analyze third-grade students to investigate these age-related effects.… more →
Early Childhood Education and Maltreated Children’s Behavioral and Cognitive Outcomes: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the National Survey of Childhood and Adolescent Well-Being II
Topics: Student Well-BeingPrior evidence shows that early childhood education (ECE) can serve as a protective factor that boosts maltreated children’s school readiness outcomes. Yet, less is known about ECE’s relationship to other developmental domains critical to their wellbeing including their adaptive behaviors and… more →
A Quantitative Study of Mathematical Language in Upper Elementary Classrooms
Topics: MethodsThis study provides the first large-scale quantitative exploration of mathematical language use in upper elementary U.S. classrooms. Our approach employs natural language processing techniques to describe variation in teachers’ and students’ use of mathematical language in 1,657 fourth and fifth… more →
The Effects of Public Pre-K for 3-year-olds on Early Elementary School Outcomes: Evidence from the DC Centralized Lottery
Topics: Student LearningThis study examines the effects of universal public pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds (Pre-K3) on later public education outcomes, including enrollment, school mobility, special education status, and in-grade retention from kindergarten through second grade. While universal pre-kindergarten… more →
The Causal Effect of Parenting Style on Early Child Development
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Child development, ParentingThis paper presents causal evidence on the impact of parenting practices on early child development. We exploit exogenous changes in nurturing care induced by a parent training intervention to estimate the impact of nurturing parenting practices on child outcomes. We find a large and significant… more →