Early childhood
Helping Parents Navigate the Early Childhood Enrollment Process: Experimental Evidence from New Orleans
The 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
The 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 →
When behavioral barriers are too high or low – How timing matters for parenting interventions
The time children spend with their parents affects their development. Parenting programs can help parents use that time more effectively. Text-messaged-based parenting curricula have proven an effective means of supporting positive parenting practices by providing easy and fun activities that… 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 →
Accountability-Driven School Reform: Are There Unintended Effects on Younger Children in Untested Grades?
Test-based accountability pressures have been shown to result in transferring less effective teachers into untested early grades and more effective teachers to tested grades. In this paper, we evaluate whether a state initiative to turnaround its lowest performing schools reproduced a similar… more →
A Reanalysis of Impacts of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program
We 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
Using 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 →
The Educational Gradient in Health among Children in Immigrant Families
Educational inequality in the health of U.S.
Why Who Marries Whom Matters: Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Infant Health in the U.S. 1969-1994
Educational assortative mating patterns in the U.S. have changed since the 1960s, but we know little about the effects of these patterns on children, particularly on infant health. Rising educational homogamy may alter prenatal contexts through parental stress and resources, with… more →
Too little or too much? Actionable Advice in an Early-Childhood Text Messaging Experiment
Text-message based parenting programs have proven successful in improving parental engagement and preschoolers’ literacy development. The tested programs have provided a combination of (a) general information about important literacy skills, (b) actionable advice (i.e., specific examples of such… more →