Early childhood
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
Teacher 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 →
Who Leaves? How Job and Teacher Characteristics Relate to Turnover in Child Care Settings
Early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings rely on teachers to support children’s development and families’ workforce participation. Yet ECCE teachers turn over at high rates, often twice as often as teachers in K-12 settings. Because large-scale ECCE workforce data are rare, little is… more →
Beyond the Shutdown: Tracking Language Growth in Early Head Start Children Before, During, and After COVID-19
Understanding 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
This 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 →
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 →
Teaching Computational Thinking to Children in Head Start Classrooms: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial
Despite efforts to broaden participation in computer science and its related fields, there exist stark disparities in participation in computer related fields by gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status. One approach to combat these disparities is to expose children to computing… more →
Impacts of Michigan Transitional Kindergarten Through Third Grade
Transitional 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 →
Impacts of Oversubscribed Boston Pre-K Programs through Middle School
In 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 →
Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Tutoring Format and Tutors: Findings from an Early Literacy Tutoring Program
This study presents the first within-program, within-tutor experimental evidence comparing the impact of in-person versus remote tutoring. Based on results from an early literacy tutoring initiative delivered by university students over Summer 2023, we find no statistically significant… more →
SEEDS of Early Learning: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Early Literacy Teacher Professional Development Program
NORC at the University of Chicago designed and implemented an impact evaluation of the SEEDS of Learning (SEEDS) professional development (PD) program on behalf of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, in collaboration with Kidango. SEEDS of Learning is an evidence-based PD program that prepares early… more →
Count Me In? Identifying Factors That Predict Centers’ Application to Boston’s Mixed-Delivery Universal Pre-K Program
Universal prekindergarten (UPK) programs often expand through mixed-delivery systems by offering seats in public schools and community-based centers (CBOs). Although this approach aims to meet varied family needs, little is known about potential systematic differences between CBOs that apply to… 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 →
Variations in Pre-Primary Education Infrastructure Within and Across Administrative Sectors in Rwanda
This study examines disparities in structural quality across Rwanda’s pre-primary modalities—centre-based, community-based, and home-based—operating under a single policy framework. Using data from 4,875 settings across 91 administrative sectors in seven districts, we applied multilevel models… more →
Does Early Childhood Education mitigate the birthdate effect? A regression discontinuity analysis of administrative data
This 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
Prior 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 →
Policy Impacts of Reimbursement Rate Reform: Evidence from the Child Care and Development Fund
The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) subsidizes child care costs for families with low-incomes. Reimbursements for cost-subsidized care are paid to child care providers but are extremely low compared with market rates and actual cost of care. We examine how the 2014 congressional… more →
Leveraging Modern Machine Learning to Improve Early Warning Systems and Reduce Chronic Absenteeism in Early Childhood
This study focuses on improving the predictive power of early warning systems (EWSs) to decrease chronic absenteeism in early childhood. Using a demographically diverse sample of students followed from PreK to third grade in Boston Public Schools (N=6,698), we demonstrate how and why two modern… more →
Human Capital at Home: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in the Philippines
Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human… more →