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Early childhood education
Heterogeneous Fadeout of Cognitive Gains: Evidence from Head Start Preschool
Topics: Student LearningFadeout is defined as the decline in an intervention's initial treatment effect in subsequent follow-up periods. This paper uses the Head Start Impact Study to examine heterogeneity in the fadeout of cognitive gains from access to Head Start preschool. I find that Black children experience… more →
Persisting Income-Based Preschool Enrollment Gap in the U.S., 2000 to 2023
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Early childhood education, EquityThis study aims to understand whether access to early childhood education (ECE) has become more equitable over a period of substantial growth in public pre-K investment. This study describes and statistically tests the differential trends across income groups in center-based ECE enrollment among… more →
Measures Still Matter: Replicating and Extending a Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Educational Apps on Children's Reading and Math Skills with Six Years of New Data
Topics: Student LearningThis study replicates and extends a meta-analysis of 36 studies of educational apps (Kim et al., 2021) with six years of new data. We synthesize 841 effect sizes from 141 studies evaluating the effectiveness of educational apps on reading and math skills of students ages 3-9. Replicating the… more →
Distinguishing Burdens from Benefits in Early Care and Education Policy
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceContemporary policy conversations discuss burdens imposed by regulations, describing when they render government functions ineffective and inefficient. But one can mislabel the core purposes and benefits of a policy’s existence as burdens. Applying the administrative burden framework to early… more →
A Systematic Review of Research Designs Used to Evaluate State and Locally Funded Pre-K Programs
Anamarie A. Whitaker, Cara L. Kelly, Tyler W. Watts, Mark Lipsey, Juan Camilo Cristancho, Jade M. Jenkins, Caroline M. Botvin, Drew H. Bailey, Greg J. Duncan, Tania Maria Cruz Cordero, Melissa Stoffers, Mindy Rosengarten.Topics: Student LearningExpansions of state and locally funded pre-k programs in recent decades have been promoted by advocates citing strong research support. However, questions have been raised about how supportive the research base actually is. We conducted a systematic review of pre-k evaluation studies (from 2000-… more →
23 Years of State Pre-K Expansion: How States Balance Investment, Access, and Quality in the Modern Era
Casey Moran, Mindy L. Rosengarten, Eunho Cha, Jade M. Jenkins, Kenneth A. Dodge, Allison Friedman-Kraus, W. Steven Barnett, Tyler W. Watts.Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe describe state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) expansion in the modern era from 2002 to 2024, documenting patterns of investment and reach. Although spending and enrollment increased substantially, states pursued widely varying expansion strategies. A 200% increase in pre-K enrollment did not… more →
The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education
Community colleges are more financially, academically, and geographically accessible than four-year colleges. Despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few transfer to a four-year institution and even fewer earn bachelor’s degrees, leading policymakers to… more →
The Maternal Labor Market Effects of State Pre-K Funding
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Early childhood education, PovertyPublic pre-kindergarten (pre-K) is primarily designed as an educational policy for young children but has attracted attention as a potential lever to support maternal employment. This study provides national evidence on the maternal labor market effects of state pre-K funding, exploiting… more →
Head Start Plus: The Case for Piloting a Cadillac Public ECE Program
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Early childhood education, PovertyThe long-term impacts of early childhood education (ECE) programs at scale are smaller than those produced by influential demonstration programs half a century ago. Several factors likely contribute, some of which are in the control of policymakers and the designers of ECE programs (e.g.,… more →
Hmong but not Asian, Sāmoan but not Pacific Islander: Tracing the ECLS-K Racial Data (Mis)Classification Journey
Topics: MethodsRace is a socially and politically charged concept that remains contested in the United States. We examine racial data (mis)classification in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS-K) dataset. Centering the racial data journey of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA… more →
The Static Nature of the Childcare Workforce, 1990 to 2025
Despite decades of policy attention aimed at strengthening the early childhood care and education workforce, concerns about low pay, high turnover, and limited economic security persist. This paper revisits whether the composition and economic conditions of the childcare workforce have… more →
Operational Funding and Early Educator Wage Growth: Evidence from Massachusetts
Early educators are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States, in part because most early care and education (ECE) programs operate within constrained business models. In Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) program distributes noncompetitive grants to licensed… more →
A randomized controlled trial of HighScope’s teacher professional learning on preschoolers' executive function skills
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeacher professional learning has been shown to promote children’s language, literacy, and social-emotional functioning - however, less is known about its impact on children’s executive function. In the present study, we employed a randomized controlled trial to understand whether HighScope’s… 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 →
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 skillsHow cognitive and social-emotional skills emerges in childhood is a central question in developmental psychology. Despite a proliferation of theory and empirical work, the field has struggled to establish causal effects. We employed a novel approach to test the stability and codevelopment of… more →
Does Fadeout Preclude Long-Run Adult Effects? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Educational Intervention Randomized Controlled Trials
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Early childhood education, Elementary schools, High schools, Human capital, Returns to education and skillsA perplexing pattern has been observed in the intervention literature: although impacts on children’s skills often fade, some interventions still produce long-run impacts on adult outcomes. Existing developmental theory does not provide a straightforward explanation. This “fadeoutemergence… 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 Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Workforce: Descriptive Evidence on Demographics and Turnover from Oregon
Early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) services for children with disabilities have expanded substantially across the U.S. over the past few decades, necessitating efforts to recruit and retain a qualified workforce to meet their needs. Despite widespread reports of… more →
Influence of Within-Class Age Differences on Adolescents’ Eating Behaviors
Topics: Student Well-BeingThis study examines within-class age differences as a novel determinant of adolescents’ dietary behaviors, isolating it from confounders such as absolute age, season of birth, and country-specific school entry rules. Using a multi-country dataset of over 600,000 European students, we find that… more →