Early childhood education
The Road to High-Quality Early Learning: Lessons From the States
Marjorie Wechsler, David Kirp, Titilayo Tinubu Ali, Madelyn Gardner, Anna Maier, Hanna Melnick, Patrick M. Shields.Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAlthough there is considerable research on the elements of high-quality preschool and its many benefits, particularly for low-income children and English learners, little information is available to policymakers about how to convert their visions of good early education into on-the-ground… more →
Untangling the Evidence on Preschool Effectiveness: Insights for Policymakers
Topics: Student LearningResearch showing that high-quality preschool benefits children’s early learning and later life outcomes has led to increased state engagement in public preschool. However, mixed results from evaluations of two programs—Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K program and Head Start—have left many… more →
Breaking the Cycle? Intergenerational Effects of an Anti-Poverty Program in Early Childhood
Despite substantial evidence that resources and outcomes are transmitted across generations, there has been limited inquiry into the extent to which anti-poverty programs actually disrupt the cycle of bad outcomes. We explore how the effects of the United States’ largest early childhood program… more →
Trends in Children’s Academic Skills at School Entry: 2010 to 2017
Topics: Student LearningStudents’ level of academic skills at school entry are a strong predictor of later academic success, and focusing on improving these skills during the preschool years has been a priority during the past ten years. Evidence from two prior nationally representative studies indicated that incoming… more →
Keeping kids in care: What makes a difference in state CCDF policy?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceChild care subsidies play an important role in stabilizing parental employment and helping low- income families access care. With limited federal requirements under CCDBG, states developed divergent subsidy program policies.
Forced to Redshirt: Quasi-Experimental Impacts of Delayed Kindergarten Entry
We provide causal estimates of the effects of delayed kindergarten entry on achievement outcomes by exploiting a policy change in the birthdate enrollment cutoff in North Carolina that forced children born in a six-week window to redshirt. Using multiple peer group comparisons, we identify… more →
Complementarities between Early Educational Intervention and Later Educational Quality? A Systematic Review of the Sustaining Environments Hypothesis
Topics: Student LearningThe sustaining environments hypothesis refers to the popular idea, stemming from theories in developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology, that the long-term success of early educational interventions is contingent on the quality of the subsequent learning environment. Several studies… more →
Helping Parents Navigate the Early Childhood Enrollment Process: Experimental Evidence from New Orleans
Topics: School ChoiceThe early childhood enrollment process involves searching for programs, applying, verifying eligibility(for publicly funded seats), and enrolling. Many families do not complete the process. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess strategies for communicating with families as they… more →
Teachers, Schools, and Pre-K Effect Persistence: An Examination of the Sustaining Environment Hypothesis
Francis A. Pearman, II, Matthew G. Springer, Mark Lipsey, Mark Lachowicz, Dale Farran, Walker Swain.Topics: Student LearningThe sustaining environments thesis hypothesizes that PreK effects are more likely to persist into later grades if children experience high-quality learning environments in the years subsequent to PreK. This study tests this hypothesis using data from a statewide PreK randomized experiment in… more →
The Effects of Full-day Pre-kindergarten: Experimental Evidence of Impacts on Children’s School Readiness
This study is a randomized control trial of full- versus half-day pre-kindergarten in a school district near Denver, Colorado. Four-year-old children were randomly assigned an offer of half-day (four days/week) or full-day (five days/week) pre-k that increased class time by over 600 hours. The… more →
A Reanalysis of Impacts of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program
Topics: Student LearningWe present a reanalysis of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (TNVPK), a state-funded program designed to promote the school readiness of 4-year-olds from low-income families. Oversubscribed programs used a lottery to randomly assign prospective enrollees a chance to… more →
Elusive Longer-Run Impacts of Head Start: Replications Within and Across Cohorts
Topics: Student LearningUsing an additional decade of CNLSY data, this study replicated and extended Deming’s (2009) evaluation of Head Start’s life-cycle skill formation impacts in three ways. Extending the measurement interval for Deming’s adulthood outcomes, we found no statistically significant… more →