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Holiday Greetings from NIEER

December 19, 2011

With 2012 right around the corner, I wanted to take some time to share NIEER’s work during the past year and give you a heads up on what we have planned for the New Year.

In April, we released The State of Preschool 2010 in Washington, D.C., joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Marci Young of Pre-K Now. The report, which found unprecedented decreases in both per-child and total state spending on state-funded pre-K programs helped jump start the national conversation on early childhood as a priority in difficult times. We are now working on the 10th year of data for our State Preschool Yearbook and are looking forward to sharing the results with you sometime in the spring.

In August, Science magazine published a special issue, “Investing in Early Education,” which explored a range of issues in the field from experts. I argued that recent findings on Head Start—a program that came under significant public scrutiny this year—called for mending a program that can help the very poorest of children, rather than ending it.

We continue to conduct research in a growing number of states here at home. Stay tuned for results from our randomized trials comparing full-day and half-day programs and on the effects of pre-K for all, which will be released early in the New Year. Also to be released early in the year are findings from our national survey of preschool teachers. In addition, we are continuing an effort we first told you about in October 2010 to study pre-K programs in Colombia, and our researchers are engaged in ongoing basis with evaluations of city and state pre-K programs. The picture we featured above captures the dedication of our Colombian team as they visited families despite the devastating floods that hit last year.

The NIEER offices will be closed from December 24 through January 2, but we’ll be back in the new year continuing on with these and other projects. We hope you’ll stayed tuned for all we have to offer.

Happy holidays from all of us here at NIEER.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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The Empty Space on the Carpet: Absenteeism in the Early Years

September 19, 2011

While the Perfect Attendance award may be a coveted prize for some, young students are missing an alarming number of school days. According to the national nonprofit Attendance Works, about 1 in 10 kindergarteners and first-graders are chronically absent—that is, missing 18 or more days of the school year, or about 10 percent of class days. Most research on attendance does not start until kindergarten, but a new analysis in Chicago makes clear the issue persists even earlier. During the 2009-2010 school year, 62 percent of preschoolers in the city’s state-funded Preschool for All program were chronically absent. In more than a quarter of program settings, the rate of chronic absenteeism reached 80 percent. From preschool to grade 3, 15 percent of all students missed 18 days or more of school. Attendance problems were especially seen at schools in low-income areas.

Absenteeism is a serious obstacle to getting the most out of school, even starting in early elementary school. Chronic absenteeism in kindergarten and first grade is linked with a decline in test scores and can cancel out a degree of school readiness. As one principal noted in the Catalyst Chicago article, “We have an excellent, excellent Head Start teacher, but she worries she’s not as effective because the students simply aren’t there.” A study by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) also found that children who were chronically absent in kindergarten were likely to continue this pattern in first grade, though the study did not address preschool attendance. If half the battle is showing up, these young students are not making the cut.

So why are so many young learners not making it to circle time?

The Preschool for All coordinator for Chicago Public Schools cites the lack of support staff—having only two social workers for over 400 classrooms leaves teachers in the lurch in fighting the absentee battle. Beyond just Chicago, parents may think consistent attendance isn’t important until “real” school starts in first grade.

Part-day programs may also play a role—parents with inflexible schedules need to arrange alternate child care after the school day ends, as well as transportation to a second site. This hassle may be enough to just forego the pre-K classroom for the whole day if another setting is easier. As shown in Table 1, in the 2009-2010 school year, only 12 of the 54 state-funded programs profiled in NIEER’s Yearbook required all children to have full- or school-day schedules (minimum of 5.5 hours per day). Many other programs allow for local flexibility or may combine two part-time slots to create a full day, but these strategies may still leave parents without the opportunity for full-day classes for their preschool-age children.

Table 1: State-Funded Programs Requiring School- or Full-Day Schedules, 2009-2010

State	Hours of operation per day
Alabama	Full day, 6.5 hours/day
Arkansas	Full day, 7 hours/day
Georgia	Full day, 6.5 instructional hours/day
Louisiana 8(g)	School day, 6 instructional hours/day
Louisiana LA4	Full day, 10 hours/day; School day, 6 hours/day
Louisiana NSECD	Full day, 10 hours/day
New Jersey Abbott	School day, 6 hours/day
North Carolina	School day, 6-6.5 hours/day
Rhode Island	Full day, 6 hours/day
South Carolina CDEPP	Full day, 6.5 hours/day
Tennessee	Full day, 5.5 hours/day
District of Columbia PEEP	School day, 6.5 hours/day

Some state-funded programs provided extended-day services using program funding, though others require that it be paid for out of a separate funding source. These wrap-around services may be limited to children whose families receive child care subsidies or meet other requirements set by a state human services department, leaving working poor or middle-income families without extended-day services. As Table 2 shows, only 47.3 percent of children in Head Start programs in 2009-2010 were in a full-day, 5 days-per-week setting; another 4.5 percent attended full-day classrooms but only four days per week.

Table 2: Head Start Enrollment by Schedule, 2009-2010

Enrollment Option	Percentage of Children
Center-based Full Day (5 days per week)	47.3%
Center-based Part Day (5 days per week)	17.9%
Center-based Full Day (4 days per week)	4.5%
Center-based Part Day (4 days per week)	25.8%
Home-based Program	2.5%
Combination Option Program	1.2%
Family Child Care Option	0.2%
Locally Designed Option	0.6%

Note: These figures do not include the Migrant or American Indiana Alaskan Native programs.

Source: 2009-2010 Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) Enrollment Statistics Reports – National Level

The Office of Head Start provides some support in converting part-day slots to full-day slots, though they are still a long way from providing this to all students. In addition to being more convenient for working families, full-day prekindergarten and kindergarten programs have been found to have a greater impact on children’s learning than half-day programs.

How can preschool programs combat the problem of chronic absenteeism? Catalyst Chicago reports that some programs are requiring parents to sign contracts regarding attendance expectations. Some districts may be able to drop students once they have missed a certain number of days, while others use the contracts as a means of communicating expectations, albeit without teeth. Others suggest that improving outreach, as both Chicago and Detroit have done with older grades, and conveying the importance of consistent attendance in pre-K is a less punitive approach. Mandating full-day programs and making it easier to provide extended-day services on site could relieve burdens for parents and improve attendance rates; even requiring a school-day schedule would simplify pick-up for parents with students also in older grades.

State-funded pre-K programs have made tremendous progress in the past decade, increasing enrollment, beefing up standards, and expanding program options. But all of these efforts are undermined if programs cannot get kids into the story corner.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Words around the World: Celebrating International Literacy Day

September 8, 2011

Since 1967, September 8 has been celebrated as International Literacy Day, with the goal of focusing attention on the need to improve literacy worldwide. As students, parents, and teachers settle into their back to school routines, it is worth looking at the status of literacy both at home and around the world.

NIEER Director Steve Barnett and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan read to preschoolers at the State of Preschool 2008 release.

According to the fact sheets from the International Reading Association, an estimated 860 million of the world’s adults do not know how to read or write—more than twice the entire United States population. More than 100 million children globally lack access to education. Illiteracy plays a role in a damaging cycle of poverty, poor health, and a lack of mobility. In countries with a literacy rate below 55 percent, the average per capita income is $600. Geography plays a huge role in this cycle: 98 percent of non-literates live in a developing country. About 52 percent of non-literates live in India and China, and the continent of Africa has a literacy rate of under 60 percent. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNSECO) also provides compelling information on the extent of this problem globally.

Either out of naiveté or a desire to believe the problem hasn’t reached our shores, it is easy to think of illiteracy as a problem “over there.” In reality, though, Americans whose literacy skills are never fully developed lag behind fully literate peers in a number of ways. Research from ProLiteracy Worldwide finds that one half of all adults in federal and state correctional institutions in America cannot read or write at all, and reading problems are seen in 85 percent of juvenile offenders. Health costs for individuals with low literacy skills are four times higher than those with individuals with high level literacy skills. Students with poor literacy skills may struggle in a number of subjects and some will eventually drop out before high school completion, a grim outcome when the income gap between those with a bachelor’s degree and those without is ever growing.

Starting children early on the road to literacy is an important step in helping develop these skills. Recognizing this importance, NIEER has several recommended resources on developing early literacy skills in the early years, including:

A policy brief, “Early Literacy: Policy and Practice in the Preschool Years,” by Dorothy Strickland and Shannon Ayers.
“Hooked on Literacy: Why Dorothy Strickland Sees Language as Job One,” a Preschool Matters interview with Dorothy Strickland.
“What Leads to Literacy?,” a feature story from Preschool Matters on some of the factors most likely to indicate later literacy achievement.
A book review of Literacy Leadership in Early Childhood: An Essential Guide.
The volume Handbook of Early Literacy Research edited by Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson.

For the literate, we cannot remember what it was like before letters automatically formed into words and words into sentences. We cannot turn off our ability to read and cannot imagine being unable to read our homework, a grocery list, or even street signs. For millions, though, this is their reality. Ensuring high levels of literacy attainment, beginning with the earliest years, both at home and abroad pays dividends in promoting educational attainment and creating a more capable workforce. Improving literacy rates is a massive goal which requires more than one day of activism, but today is be a good time to start. And what better place to start than with early interventions?

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Head Start: Mend It, Don’t End It

August 19, 2011

One of the most neglected questions in the ECE policy arena is “How should we respond to the failure to find lasting effects for Head Start and Early Head Start after investing years and many millions in nationwide randomized trials of those important programs?” I say neglected because there is far less awareness of what the research says than one might expect given the importance of the high-quality research effort that represents our best shot at unbiased estimates of program impacts. For instance, I find that few people even know that Early Head Start’s long-term effects have been evaluated through fifth grade. I addressed this long-simmering question in an article published today in the journal Science. At the outset, I wish to make clear that the evidence does not lead me to the conclusion that we should end these programs, but that they need major reform. Let’s start by quickly reviewing the evidence.

One randomized trial evaluated the impacts of a year of Head Start by following 4,667 children and their families from entry in Head Start through kindergarten and first grade. After one year of Head Start cognitive effects were positive, but fairly small, and the broader the domain the smaller the effects. In follow-up the effects were even smaller. No cognitive or school progress effects were found in kindergarten or first grade, though one might argue that there is a persistent effect on IQ of about 1/10^th of a standard deviation. This would close about 10 percent of the gap between Head Start children and the average child on IQ. No effects were found on any teacher-reported measure of social-emotional development or behavior.

Upward adjustments can be made to the findings because not every child followed the random assignment (some assigned to Head Start did not attend, some assigned to the control group found their way into Head Start). Yet even after such adjustments, follow-up results remain weak. Additional adjustments could be made for participation in other programs, but these would make little difference, particularly at age 3 when high-quality alternatives are scarce.

A randomized trial of Early Head Start with more than 3,000 infants and toddlers produced results similar to those for Head Start even though most children and families participated two or more years. Effects at ages 2 and 3 were quite small for cognition and social-emotional measures including aggression. By age 5 no effects were found for cognition and only one small socio-emotional effect was found. In the grade 5 follow-up no effects were found on any of 49 measures and the estimated effects were near zero for both cognitive and social-emotional development.

For some in the early childhood field the reaction to these long-term findings has been denial. One claim is that bad public schools offset Head Start’s positive effects. The national Head Start study finds, to the contrary, that gains in literacy and math accelerate for both Head Start and control groups after they enter kindergarten. Any wash-out in Head Start effects from the public schools occurs because control children quickly make up the small advantage from attending Head Start. Others claim that non-experimental studies consistently find long-term effects despite a lack of short-term gains in achievement. However, the non-experimental studies are not really consistent among one another in either their short- or long-term patterns of effects. Their positive long-term results likely result from chance variation and methodological failings rather than real effects. If effects are not evident at fifth grade, they won’t be later.

Once we accept these disappointing findings, why not just end the programs as Joe Klein recently argued in Time magazine? I offer two reasons. First, America cannot afford to let so many children fail academically and socially because they are poorly prepared. Second, some other preschool programs have succeeded to a much greater extent, and Head Start can be reshaped to be similarly effective.

Table 1 compares the initial impacts of Head Start and some other large-scale programs. Pre-K programs with above average standards and funding are found to produce larger effects than Head Start in rigorous studies including a recent randomized trial. The Chicago Child Parent Centers, which are similar in key respects to the state pre-K programs in Table 1, have been found to produce effects on achievement and social development into adulthood as well. Reshaping Head Start to more closely resemble these programs would enhance its effectiveness. A quantitative summary of research on early educational intervention over the past 50 years adds weight to this argument as the Head Start and Early Head Start comprehensive services approach is associated with weaker effects, possibly because it reduces the educational focus.

Table 1. Achievement Gains from Pre-K

My prescription for improving Head Start includes increasing the percentage of funds spent inside the classroom, building a stronger connection to public education, and eliminating much federal oversight and related paper work. Early Head Start needs the same freedom from regulation, but should adopt home-based models that have a strong evidence base (Olds’ Nurse Family Partnership) as well as strengthen center-based options. Give programs a set amount of money, audit the books, and assess teaching and learning. Teaching should be highly intentional and include direct instruction one-on-one and in small groups. A new continuous improvement process should be put in place for learning and teaching. The Obama administration’s plans for re-competition of low-performing Head Start agencies should be implemented as soon as possible based on both measures of teaching and broad measures of child progress. Early Head Start should be regarded as an experimental program and subject to large-scale research for at least the next five years.

No doubt, these recommendations will be as controversial as is my longstanding recommendation to increase the amount and quality of education required of Head Start teachers and to increase their compensation accordingly. Head Start teachers should be given the opportunity to return to school with tuition and fees paid by government loans that would be forgiven if they remain in Head Start five years later. The quality and content of the programs they attend should be subject to an approval process to be eligible for these forgivable loans.

Even if they were not controversial, it would be foolhardy to reform Head Start based entirely on my recommendations given the limitations of current knowledge. The evidence is just not that strong given what is at stake. Fortunately, we have a better alternative. Allow Head Start and Early Head Start agencies to innovate, experiment, and find their own way to strong results. A systematic program of research should be launched in which Head Start and Early Head Start agencies propose new approaches to be tested in randomized trials. Experimental programs should be given a blanket waiver from Head Start and Early Head Start performance standards and most nonfinancial reporting requirements as long as they adhere to their own proposed plans (which will be monitored as part of the randomized trial). This systematic program of research would provide much better guidance for early educational intervention than is now available. In relatively short order Head Start and Early Head Start could fulfill their promise.

– Steve Barnett, Director, National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)

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Early Childhood Education Featured in Principal Magazine

August 10, 2011

NIEER co-directors Ellen Frede and Steve Barnett discuss the critical role pre-K plays in closing the achievement gap in the May/June issue of NAESP’s Principal magazine. Drs. Frede and Barnett note that the availability of preschool is a strong predictor of differences in scores in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparison of educational achievement across 65 countries. They also point to research findings that show national achievement test scores rise with the level of public spending on and quality of preschool education. Frede and Barnett maintain that a commitment to an effective, quality preschool program could reduce the achievement gap in the United States by 20 percent. The article from NIEER co-directors also offers principals and other school leaders 10 research-based, practice-tested steps they can take to increase the availability of quality pre-K whether or not they currently offer pre-K in their school.

Also included in the May/June 2011 issue of Principal magazine: Jacqueline Jones, senior adviser for early learning at the U.S. Department of Education, writes about assessment in early childhood education. First Five Years Fund director Harriet Dichter writes about pre-K to grade 3 education in Pennsylvania. University of North Carolina assistant professors Rebecca Shore and Pamela Shue and former principal Marion Bish report on a professional development program in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, designed to prepare elementary principals for preschool.

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Human Capital Development: Why Pre-K Needs to be a Capitol Concern

August 5, 2011

It would be difficult to find a more timely report than Attracting, Developing, and Maintaining Human Capital: A New Model for Economic Development, from the Partnership for America’s Economic Success (a project of the Pew Center on the States). At the same time American families fret over the continued economic doldrums and begin to worry about back-to-school shopping for their kids, the report connects high-quality early education to long-term economic success, pulling from the new book by economist Timothy Bartik.

Bartik’s research makes a strong case for both the short- and long-term benefits of quality early education programs for students, parents, employers, and taxpayers. Short-term, investing public dollars in early education can:

Help attract skilled workers with young children, who prefer areas with high-quality education programs to those with low-quality or inaccessible programs;
Provide peace of mind to local employees, allowing them to be more productive and fully present on the job; and
Increase the demand for highly qualified teachers, who are likely to move to the area as well as spend their earnings locally.

These are essentially the same reasons parents are drawn to areas with good elementary and secondary schools. Businesses want to be in areas rich with highly qualified, happy employees, reflected in years of research showing that public services, including education systems, play more of a role in locating a company than does the business tax rate. Offering peace of mind to parents regarding the arrangements for their young learners has become more important throughout this economic downturn. A 2010 report from the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) found that 51 percent of families with child under age 5 had their child care affected in some way by the recession, even as 57 percent of these families reported child care as an economic necessity. Investing in high-quality early education could not only go beyond the needs of “just” child care but also alleviate the stress families feel regarding both the quality and cost of this care.

Some may ask, “What about the taxpayer?,” echoing the rallying cry of this age of austerity. As noted above, quality early education can improve the environments for both families and businesses, improving local tax revenues and quality of life. Bartik notes that the short- and long-term effects of pre-K include higher test scores. Looking further down the line, quality early learning experiences can reduce special education placements by up to 50 percent through second grade and reduce grade retention by up to 33 percent through eighth grade, both of which significantly reduce the cost of public education. All told, school systems can save up to $3,700 per child over the K-12 years, to say nothing of the crime-related savings of between $2 and $11 per each dollar invested in early education.

Bartik also calls up an interesting statistic in this age of globalization: 60 percent of American workers, including 45 percent of those with a college degree, continue to live and work in the state in which they were raised. Thus, the investments states make during early childhood to prepare children for school and, eventually, work pay off in benefits to taxpayers of those same states later in life. As any real estate agent can attest, parents are attracted to areas with good schools. Bartik’s research find the testing score improvements attributed to pre-K can improve property values by $13 for every dollar invested. Creating attracting education systems can also working parents to stay local, benefitting businesses and local tax bases.

Early childhood education does not need to be limited to state efforts. Bartik’s data indicates that as an economic development strategy, half-day pre-K for all 4-year-olds more than holds its own against business tax incentives. At the state level, pre-K benefits $2.78 for each dollar spent, not far behind the $3.14 benefitted by business incentives. At the national level, however, the $3.79 per dollar benefitted by pre-K far outstrips the $0.65 benefit-cost ratio of business tax incentives. Tax incentives encourage businesses to play musical chairs throughout the country, seeking to cut overhead without necessarily producing more. High-quality early education, though, starts children on an improved educational and social path that benefits workforce quality into the future. It is not difficult to understand, then, the federal government’s current Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge that seeks to develop these early learning programs.

As government at all levels continues its belt-tightening, there are those who claim pre-K is an unaffordable luxury, when in reality it is an astonishingly good investment for both the short- and long-term benefit of the nation. While pre-K has not traditionally been considered in the elementary education system supported by taxpayers, using public funds to provide such programs can actually spur current economic growth while preparing America for a prosperous future. A recent NIEER brief examines current public financing of early learning as well as how the system can be improved. Advocates of publicly-funded pre-K support early learning not only because it is the right thing for children, but also because it can mitigate some of the long-term deficit ills so recently brought to the national light.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Latest Yearbook Findings: A Wake-Up Call?

April 26, 2011

When NIEER’s research team analyzed the 2009–2010 data for this year’s State Preschool Yearbook, it was not without some trepidation. News coming from the states has been anything but encouraging and we knew the previous year’s data had not captured the full impact of the recession. In many respects, the 2009-2010 data does present a fuller appreciation of the economic stresses affecting the states. For the first time since we began tracking state pre-K, total spending for the country fell in real (inflation adjusted) dollars. So did per-child spending, which now sits $700 below what states, on average, spent in the 2001–2002 school year.

Beyond the national averages, however, there’s a very mixed picture — some of it good, some bad and some downright ugly. First, the good: Enrollment increased nationally with nearly 1.3 million children attending state-funded preschool education. While the enrollment increase was not large, it does stand as testimony to the value many state leaders grappling with tough economies place on preschool education. Alaska and Rhode Island started programs for the first time – the first new states to provide pre-K in many years.

But there was plenty of bad news. After adjusting for inflation, state funding per child declined in 19 of 40 states with programs. Many of these were relatively large states. Nine state (Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Carolina) cut per-child spending by more than 10 percent. While four states (Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia) improved on NIEER’s Quality Standards Checklist, two states (Ohio and Nebraska) lost ground. And, despite increased enrollment at age 4, enrollment of 3-year-olds decreased across the country with nine states (Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Washington) cutting enrollment at age 3 by 10 percent or more.

In talking with members of the early education community as we prepared to release the report, it sounded like more bad news is in the offing in states like North Carolina, New York, and Illinois. These are states that have made good progress in state pre-K in recent years – progress which is now being threatened by the proposed cuts and changes in governance. Barbara Bowman, a NIEER scientific advisory board member who runs Chicago’s pre-K program, describes the funding situation in Illinois as “dire” and points out that if the federal stimulus money she used this year to support public pre-K in Chicago isn’t replaced she will have to cut the number of kids they serve next year.

This state of affairs is not lost on U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who joined me in Washington to present the yearbook findings. Duncan remarked that educational inequality is the civil rights issue of our time and increased access to quality pre-K and other early learning opportunities is the way to begin addressing disparities.

– Steve Barnett
Co-director, NIEER

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Will New Jersey Gut Its Abbott Preschool Program? Or, How to Ruin Absolutely Everything

February 4, 2011

New Jersey Republicans are floating a proposal to cut the state’s highly effective Abbott Preschool Program from a full day of services to half a day. This, they say, would free up about $300 million in school funding that could be “more equitably” disbursed statewide. As is so often the case with such figures, the math is wrong—the plan might free up $150 million, but that is the least of the proposal’s problems.

They justify their proposal on the basis that the Abbott v. Burke V court decision did not specifically require the state to provide a full day of pre-K in order to provide a thorough and efficient education. Indeed, the justices wrote in 1998 that half a day of pre-K for kids in the state’s disadvantaged districts could represent an “initial reform.” (Emphasis added on the latter.)

It should go without saying that in the intervening years we have learned critical lessons about what it takes to provide disadvantaged kids with the kinds of experiences that enable them to acquire the skills necessary to narrow the achievement gap and enter school ready to learn. Chief among them is that more is better. NIEER conducted a randomized trial in the Abbott districts comparing extended-day, extended-year pre-K to the old half-day, school-year model. The longer day and year had larger effects on test scores than a half-day and these gains persisted. By first grade, effects of duration were apparent on more complex measures such as reading comprehension and calculation and not just on simple tasks like letter and number recognition. Other studies show that full-day Abbott preschool delivers high-quality education that significantly raises test scores and reduces school failure.

The Republican proposal would take money from disadvantaged children in the Abbott districts to address problems in New Jersey’s school funding scheme that are not without merit. Districts with a high percentage of senior citizens would get some of the money. So would those that transport children over longer distances or have demonstrated cost efficiencies. However, the state should address these issues without gutting the Abbott Preschool Program to do it. One suggestion: forgo the $1 billion dollar voucher bill that would bail out private schools hurt by the recession, but do little to raise test scores.

Backers of the pre-K cut proclaim its virtues based on three principles — equity, efficiency and accountability. It passes none of those tests. The Abbott program was developed to remedy the gap in equity between disadvantaged kids and their more affluent peers. Gutting one of its major components is hardly equitable. Neither does it pass the efficiency test. When kids receive high-quality pre-K such as the Abbott program, the subsequent costs of educating them go down, and the longer term benefits include lower crime rates and a more productive workforce. Sprinkling the funds freed-up around the rest of the state can’t be shown to produce any comparable returns for the taxpayer — who knows how the funds will be used? And that brings us to accountability. One must simply ask, “What accountability?”

I subtitled this essay “How to Ruin Absolutely Everything” because it illustrates the kind of state policy making that ruins public education. Hard evidence on what works and what doesn’t is ignored in favor of wishful thinking, ideology, and special interests. No studies are conducted to test out new proposals before they are widely implemented. Financial estimates are put forward that have no basis in reality.

It is a cruel irony that at the same time the proposal to gut the Abbott program surfaced the legislature is rushing to pass a voucher bill that research shows has no hope of significantly improving academic achievement and Governor Christie’s administration has announced a plan for the state to spend as much as $200 million to jump start a stalled Atlantic City casino project from which Morgan Stanley, in its wisdom, bailed out. The governor should insist that his advisors conduct cost/benefit analyses of both the voucher bill and the boardwalk empire plan. While they are at it they should also run the numbers on the costs and benefits of the state’s investment in the Abbott Preschool Program. If he does, he’ll find the current pre-K program provides a rich return to the public while the other proposals are, as they say, under water.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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Suffer the Children: An Alarming Confluence of Events

January 14, 2011

While investors are celebrating brighter prospects, the news from the hinterlands continues in a much darker vein. The Wall Street Journal reports that wages for a broad swath of the labor force have taken a “sharp and swift” fall to an extent rarely seen since the Great Depression. Between 2007 and 2009 more than half of workers who lost jobs and then found new ones reported wage declines, with more than a third of them reporting declines of 20 percent or more. Experts say it will be years, if ever, before their wages return to pre-recession levels.

This — and the fact that real unemployment in the U.S. continues well above 10 percent — should be setting of alarm bells for anyone worried about the nation’s future. Research shows that children whose parents lose jobs and eventually find new ones at lower wages suffer from lower wages themselves. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) tracked the progress of people who, as children, lived through the post-war recessions that began in 1973 and 1980. Kids whose parents suffered layoffs end up with lower earnings when they became adults. The impact was concentrated in kids from lower-income families, presumably because parental unemployment posed a larger threat to things that were critical to family sustenance. It was especially pronounce for children who were the youngest during the recessions. The researchers conclude that:

“… children who fall into poverty during a recession will fare far worse along a range of variables than will their peers who did not fall into poverty. They will live in households with lower incomes, they will earn less themselves and they have a greater chance at living in or near poverty as adults. They will achieve lower levels of education, and they will be less likely to be gainfully employed. Children who experience recession-induced poverty will even have poorer health than their peers who stayed out of poverty during the childhood recession.”

We already know that poverty has been rising in the U.S. for decades. The latest Census Bureau data show the gap between rich and poor to be the widest on record. The ratio of earnings between the top and bottom is about double what it was when the Census Bureau began tracking it in 1967.

Confronting this threat to the nation’s future well-being with investments in high-quality early childhood education would help secure their future. Yet early education is not a high priority among the policy solutions we see being put forth to address our long-term rise in poverty. It’s encouraging to hear some suggest federal aid to the states. A portion of this should be dedicated to competitive federal grants to the states for high-quality early education.

Children are not able to vote and households with children are a declining percentage of American households. Yet they represent 100 percent of the nation’s future well-being. As we view our policy solutions, we should apply the cold calculus any successful business uses in making economic decisions. If we do that — and take even a rudimentary look at the returns to be had by investing in early childhood education — it should rise to the top of the policy priority list.

Steve Barnett

Co-director, NIEER

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Early Education Seen in a Human Capital Framework

December 23, 2010

The idea that education leads to the accumulation of capital in the form of more productive workers and that this returns a profit to those who invest in it goes all the way back to Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, the man considered the father of capitalism and whose The Wealth of Nations is considered the first modern work of economics. It is ironic that in this day and age, the human capital rationale for investing in more and better early education continues to receive short shrift in this most capital-oriented of countries while China and other rising powers forge ahead of us on this front. Could it be that our policymakers are not sufficiently persuaded?

If so, Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life: A Human Capital Integration, recently published by Cambridge University Press, provides all the evidence even the skeptics among our political leadership will need in a single volume. In it, leading scholars in human development and early childhood education discuss the effects and cost effectiveness of the most thoroughly studied model early childhood programs as well as state and federal programs. Head Start, Early Head Start, the WIC nutrition program, the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, the Nurse-Family Partnership, the Perry Preschool Program, and state pre-K are among them. Also discussed are various school reform strategies.

The book applies a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding and improving programs, practices, and policies with a goal of fostering increased human capital. This is reflected in the editors chosen for the assignment: Arthur J. Reynolds is a professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota and director of the Chicago Longitudinal Study. Arthur J. Rolnick is senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and associate economist with the Federal Open Market Committee. Michelle M. Englund is a research associate and affiliate member of the Graduate Faculty in Child Psychology at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Judy A. Temple is an associate professor at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota.

State-funded early childhood education is well represented in the book. Georgetown University’s William T. Gormley who has studied Oklahoma’s universal pre-K program extensively provides his analysis of the impressive gains made by that program in Tulsa. Our NIEER team, including co-director Ellen Frede and fellow NIEER researchers Kwanghee Jung, Cynthia Esposito Lamy (now at Robin Hood Foundation), and Alexandra Figueras, contributes a chapter on the long-term effects of New Jersey’s well-regarded Abbott Preschool Program. Robert G. Lynch, Washington College, provides a state-level synthesis of the cost effectiveness of public investment in high-quality pre-K.

In addition to Arthur Reynolds, other NIEER affiliated authors in this book include Clive Belfield (Queens College, City University of New York), Henry Levin (Columbia University), Robert C. Pianta (University of Virginia), Lawrence J. Schweinhart (HighScope Educational Research Foundation), and Edward Zigler (Yale University).

Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life: A Human Capital Integration emanates from a conference by the same name held by the Human Capital Research Collaborative. That’s the organization sponsored by the University of Minnesota and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis that explores links between human capital and economic development, public health, education, and other connections. With this effort, they have gone a long way toward accomplishing their mission.

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