Research « Preschool Matters… Today!

Missed Opportunities: Pre-K Lags for Hispanic Children

April 30, 2012

Hispanic children and families have been hit particularly hard due to recent funding cuts in state-funded pre-K. While the State Preschool Yearbook does not break down data by ethnicity, our data on state efforts combined with other sources paints a troubling picture for Hispanic preschoolers, especially those growing up in a household where English is not the primary language. A survey of Hispanic families shows that Hispanic parents are very likely to enroll their children when voluntary preschool education is available to them, but only 25 percent of Hispanic children at age 3 attend public or private preschool, compared to 43 percent of non-Hispanic children. State pre-K—which serves primarily 4-year-olds—has been important in increasing Hispanic enrollment at age 4, but Hispanic children still lag in access with 64 percent in a public or private program compared to 70 percent for non-Hispanic children.

Twenty-one percent of 3- and 4-year-olds nationwide live in an immigrant family with at least one foreign-born parent. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 6.1 million Hispanic children were living in poverty in 2010, representing 37.3 percent of all poor children. As can be seen in the graph below, the number of Hispanic children living in poverty accelerated sharply during the recession, due in large part to the 11.1 percent unemployment rank seen among Hispanic workers in 2011. The combined impact of being from a low-income family and having limited English proficiency can put these students at a serious risk of school failure, especially if they lack access to a quality preschool program.

Original graphic from the Pew Hispanic Center can be viewed here.

More than half of the nation’s Hispanic population resides in just three states: California, Florida, and Texas. Unfortunately, preschool programs in these states may not give Hispanic students the boost they need. Florida and Texas have high enrollment levels but low quality standards, which means that thousands of children are enrolled in programs that may not meet their needs. They both have per-child spending levels under the national average of $4,151, which further threatens quality. California’s program has grown rapidly due to including the state’s child care programs under the same umbrella, but per-child spending levels and policy standards are low there, as well. While many programs may exceed minimum standards, particularly when public schools are the providers, two aspects of these programs are particularly worrisome—class sizes and funding. Texas limits neither class size nor ratio and Florida has been increasing class size. California does somewhat better since it limits teacher-child ratio to a reasonable level even though it does not limit class size. All three states decreased funding per child in recent years, and in Florida it barely exceeds $2,400 per child, a figure too low to sustain quality under any reasonable definition.

State	4-year-old Enrollment Percent	State Spending Per Child	Quality Standards
California	19%	$4,986	3
Florida	76%	$2,422	3
Texas	52%	$3,761	4

Additionally, there are five other states with Hispanic populations above one million: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, as can be seen from this interactive map from the Pew Hispanic Center. Arizona totally eliminated its state pre-K program in recent years, though First Things First stepped up to provide some services to preschoolers there. Illinois and New Jersey are bright spots ranking among the top 15 in the country for program quality standards and both ranking in the top 3 for enrollment of 3-year-olds. However, both New York and Colorado reduced per child funding when the recession squeezed state finances.

The video below shows the change in enrollment in these states with large Hispanic populations over the last decade. While enrollments have increased tremendously, due in large part to the Florida program’s creation in the 2005-2006 year, we know that funding has not kept pace with the needs of so many more students. You can look at other trends in spending, quality, and access for these eight states in this interactive data set.

As was noted last year by Celia Ayala, Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Universal Preschool, “[w]hile ELLs can come from any linguistic background and therefore include children of any race and ethnicity, Hispanic children merit particular attention as their population grows, but many continue to suffer from an achievement gap.” At least 140,000 ELL students are served in state-funded pre-K programs; this number is likely to be significantly higher as many states with large Hispanic populations could not report ELLs specifically. Less than half of state pre-K programs report limited English proficiency as a factor that may make students eligible for pre-K. The majority of pre-K initiatives require at least one support service for ELLs and their families, with support services ranging from administering a home language survey to providing translators to offering monolingual non-English classes in pre-K.

Recent research on the benefits of bilingualism can bring renewed attention to this important issue. Research has pinpointed significant benefits to bilingualism including increased language and print awareness, classification and reasoning skills, concept formation, visual-spatial skills, and creativity. Bilingual children maintain strong connections to parents, grandparents and extended family leading to improved academic outcomes. Students also benefit from being secure with their home language. There has also been important research in the last few years indicating that attending a high-quality preschool program improves outcomes for Hispanic children, and that dual language practices can enhance outcomes in both English- and Spanish-speaking children. Pre-K attendance can improve early literacy and mathematic skills, and at least this one study found that gains were improved by being in a classroom with a Spanish-speaking teacher.

As the Hispanic student population grows and extends into rural and suburban areas, schools must provide additional supports for those students growing up in a dual-language household. A recent report from the New America Foundation focuses on bilingual education efforts in state-funded pre-K in Illinois and offers sound advice for all pre-K programs as they work to ensure ELLs receive high-quality services:

• ensure that pre-K providers receive financial support from their local districts for resources they spend on English language learners, and that there is an adequate bilingual/ESL budget to cover eligible children;

• track student outcomes for ELL students over time to determine where investment is most (and least) effective; and

• continue to align the ELL experience in pre-K, kindergarten, and the early grades and enable shared professional development opportunities in ELL instruction for teachers and school leaders across the pre-K to third grade span.

Additional recommendations on supporting dual language instruction at both the policy and classroom level can be found in the NIEER presentation “Enhancing Policy and Practice for Young Dual Language Learners: What Is the Research Base?”

There is significant support within the Hispanic community to increase access to quality preschool programs. The National Council of La Raza advocates for supportive programs for both students and families, and international music star and early education advocate Shakira, a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, recently spoke at the Summit of the Americas on the need for quality early learning.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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Widening Gap in Pre-K Access: Haves and Have Nots

April 17, 2012

Mountains of evidence over years of study have shown that high-quality preschool education helps put kids on the right track for future success in school and beyond, especially those children from low-income families or facing other challenges that put them at a disadvantage. It could not be clearer, though, from our 2011 State Preschool Yearbook that the disparities in state-funded pre-K are so great as to exacerbate lifelong inequalities among children.

As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explained at the Yearbook 2011 release, “High-quality early learning is what we want for our own children—which means that it must be what we want for all children.” Despite the impressive enrollment growth in state-funded preschool—nearly doubling to 1.3 million children in a decade—recession-driven funding cuts have made it difficult to give this opportunity to all children.

Using data from the 2011 Yearbook, GOVERNING Magazine created a map that highlights these disparities. States are shaded based on the percent of their 3- and 4-year-old population served in state-funded pre-K. Eleven states offered no state-funded pre-K in the 2010-2011 school year, including Arizona, which became the first state to completely remove it state-funded pre-K program. Of the 39 states that do provide these programs, an additional 15 did not enroll 3-year-olds, which drives down their percentage served compared to the measure of 4-year-olds served. For example, Florida is ranked number 1 in enrollment for reaching 76 percent of its 4-year-olds, a percentage that is slashed in half to 38 percent when combined with 3-year-olds.

Map from GOVERNING magazine. Click here to use it interactively.

This map is a great tool for some quick looks at regional trends—you can quickly see the “hot spots” for enrollment, including the Wisconsin-Illinois-Iowa trio in the Midwest; the “not so hot spots,” such as the Midwest duo of Michigan and Ohio; and the cold spots, including seven Western states that do not offer programs at all. Additional details on enrollment and spending can be found by clicking on the individual state.

Enrollment, however, only tells part of the story: programs of high-quality are necessary to guarantee long-term gains, but quality varies startlingly from state to state. During the 2010-2011 year, only five states met all 10 of our quality standards benchmarks (Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island), while at the other end of the spectrum, Ohio met only 2. California and Florida met only 3 benchmarks each, which is particularly concerning given that these programs serve each serve more than 100,000 children, including large populations of Hispanic children.

How many preschoolers a program can enroll and what program standards it can effectively meet (i.e., not just on paper) are inherently linked to the funding available. Disparities in resources across states have persisted, contributing to the “haves” and “have nots” in state-funded pre-K. In the report’s executive summary, we say, “Disparities among the states in funding per child are substantial and persistent. In 2001, the difference in spending per child from the highest spending state to the lowest was nearly $9,000. Today, the range is more than $10,000. Massachusetts and Ohio had erratic changes in spending from one year to the next over the decade, but both states ended the period with decreases in pre-K spending of more than $3,000. By contrast, Arkansas and Maryland increased per-child spending over the decade by more than $2,000 each.” Quality, enrollment, and resources do not exist in a vacuum—each factor influences the others in ways that differ by state, but it is clear that too many states are not providing enough per-child funding to ensure quality for the children enrolled in their pre-K programs.

In order to explore these trends more fully, we’ve created a Google Motion chart of interactive Yearbook data. We encourage you to use this animated tool to explore pre-loaded variables on quality, access, and resources across states; you can select a particular state of interest to track its progress relative to other states.

Using our interactive data set via Google Motion Charts, the video above demonstrates the relationship between quality standards met by a state and the state per-child spending over time. On the whole, it’s clear that states have shifted toward meeting more quality standards in 2010-2011 than they did in 2001-2002, though per-child funding has by and large stayed below what is needed to implement these standards and ensure teachers are paid a competitive wage, as presented in Table 7 of the Yearbook.

Education has always been largely funded and controlled at state and local levels, which allows for greater flexibility and a focus based on local needs. However, there is no doubt that such large disparities among states prevent the benefits of early childhood education from reaching all children who could benefit. Given the increasing mobility of American society, the failings of one state to prepare children today is to the detriment of another state’s workforce down the line. We encourage all stakeholders in early childhood education to look at the data not just for their state, but for other states, and reach across state lines to bring best practices home and to their neighbors.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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The State of Preschool 2011: Rising Media Star

April 13, 2012

This week we released The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook, our annual survey of state-funded pre-K, at a press conference at the Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C. This year’s report included 10 years worth of data as well as recommendations for the next decade. Speaking at the press conference, NIEER Director Steve Barnett opened his discussion of the report’s findings by emphasizing the impact of high-quality preschool. “One of the few facts that economists of all stripes agree on is that preschool is a good public investment. It’s an investment that can decrease school failure, cut crime, and increase employment. Today more than ever we need such investments,” he said.

Also speaking at the release of The State of Preschool 2011 was U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who stated, “We cannot continue down the path of cutting investments in early learning and jeopardizing the quality of programs for young children. Budgets are never just numbers. How we spend our resources, especially in tough economic times, reflects our values.” Secretary Duncan was referring to the State Preschool Yearbook’s findings that state spending for pre-K has decreased by nearly $60 million since the past year’s report, and per-child spending is down more than $700 over the 10-year period.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and NIEER Director Steve Barnett: two strong advocates for high-quality pre-K.

Dr. Barnett and Secretary Duncan were introduced at the event by Bancroft Elementary School’s Principal Zakiya Reid who also noted the importance of preschool by saying, “We know that high-quality pre-K works. It helps prepare children for school. And research tells us that high-quality pre-K eventually gives children greater opportunities to graduate from high school and pursue college and good careers. … Families need and deserve for their children to have a great start to their education.”

Following the release, Dr. Barnett and findings from The State of Preschool 2011 were featured in a video from NIEER as well as a segment on NBC news. In NIEER’s video statement, Barnett said, “The key message in this year’s report is that cuts are endangering quality, and quality is what’s responsible for the payoff from preschool.” NBC correspondent Tracie Potts’s video segment ran on several affiliate stations throughout the country.

Besides the NBC coverage, the 2011 State Preschool Yearbook story was picked up by additional national outlets, such as The Washington Post, Governing magazine, The Huffington Post, Time magazine, and Education Week, to name a few.

State-specific findings from The State of Preschool 2011 were also covered in numerous state media outlets, including, but not limited to, The Miami Herald, The Huntsville Times, Chicago Parent magazine, The News & Observer, The Seattle Times, The Charleston Daily Mail, Dayton Daily News, The Press of Atlantic City, Tulsa World, The Times-Picayune, The Orlando Sentinel, Cronkite News, The Washington Examiner, The Tennessean, Oakland Tribune, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Have you seen The State of Preschool 2011 featured in your state or local media? Let us know where by adding a comment below!

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

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NIEER Marks Decade of Study by Releasing State of Preschool 2011 Yearbook

April 10, 2012

Today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined me for the release of The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook at Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C. The new Yearbook not only provides insights on the state of state-funded pre-K for 2010-2011 but also for the entire past decade. Where is the nation headed in preschool education? How do states compare on access, quality standards, and funding for pre-K? How much progress have they made over the decade?

Our key finding is that while preschool expansion over the past decade garnered great attention, something else happened that got less notice. Funding slipped as enrollment increased –undercutting efforts to ensure program quality. Adjusted for inflation, state funding for pre-K programs plummeted by more than $700 per child over the past decade. The nation took a giant step backward in preschool education even as it appeared to be moving forward. How did this happen? As many states expanded enrollment, funding did not keep pace. In the past year alone two-thirds of the states cut funding per child.

A decline of this magnitude should serve as a wake-up call for parents and policy leaders about how weak our commitment has become to preparing today’s preschoolers to succeed in school and later find good jobs in a competitive global economy. What makes this particularly striking is that over the past decade the evidence that high-quality preschool education is a good public investment has grown substantially. We now understand that the important difference is between great programs and middling programs; the gain from upgrading from low to moderate quality means far less to a child’s future success.

As always the State Preschool Yearbook provides many details about access, quality, and funding. Here are some of the most important.

Over 1.3 million children now attend state-funded pre-K, and enrollment at age 4 doubled over the past decade. State pre-K serves 28 percent of 4-year-olds. Combined with Head Start and other public programs, enrollment is up to 45 percent as a national average.
Far less progress has been made in pre-K enrollment at age 3. It is barely higher than it was a decade ago — 4 percent in state pre-K, and no more than 20 percent across all public programs.
Behind the national averages are huge disparities in pre-K enrollment from one state to another. If you are lucky enough to be born into one of the top states you most likely go to pre-K at age 4. Yet, 11 other states fund no state pre-K at all. And, the majority of states still offer no funding for pre-K at age 3.
The recession clearly has slowed progress toward increasing enrollment. A number of states that committed to serving all children have made little progress in the last several years and others have actually cut enrollment. Four Midwestern states—Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio—serve fewer 4-year-olds than they did a decade ago.
We assess state policies against 10 benchmarks for adequate program quality standards. In 2010-2011 five states met all 10 and 15 more states met 8 or 9. That’s the good news. However, while two states improved on quality standards, four states fell back for a net loss.
The decline in quality standards is no surprise. Last year, real funding per child dropped $145. Total funding for pre-K fell by $60 million, adjusting for inflation.

These are troubling signs. Research tells us the only pre-K programs that really help children prepare for school are high quality. So, it’s wonderful that more children have access to pre-K classes. But most states don’t serve nearly all those who could benefit. And, many states that make pre-K available to large numbers of children fail to ensure that these are high-quality programs. It’s time for us to step up as a nation. The research is quite clear: failure to prepare children for school success is far more costly than providing high-quality pre-K. Ultimately, high-quality pre-K means a better-educated, more competitive workforce, healthier communities, and less money spent on school failure, welfare, and prisons.

All we’re asking is this: as states begin to recover economically, they should expand high-quality pre-K and invest more in these effective programs. By the end of the next decade voluntary high-quality public pre-K should be a choice for every American 4-year-old and for all 3-year-olds in poverty.

I usually stick just to the numbers, but it helps to understand the situations of the real people behind these numbers. I get letters and emails from parents desperate to find a quality preschool program for their children. I even got an email from a big sister who didn’t want her younger brother to have the same troubles she did starting school unprepared. Usually, they are families who earn enough to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, but don’t qualify for Head Start or many state-funded pre-K programs because they are not below the poverty line. Yet, they can’t afford quality pre-K on their own—there just isn’t enough left over in their paychecks after the rent has been paid. They know their children would benefit from attending a good pre-K, but they can’t get into one.

Some states are already moving forward to change this situation — Georgia, Iowa, Vermont, and West Virginia have made remarkable progress despite the recession. Alabama and Rhode Island are poised to move ahead with increased access to top-quality programs. They demonstrate that progress can be made even in difficult times. Georgia also demonstrates how precarious progress can be. After finally making its way to the top for quality standards, it increased class size and cut the length of the school year due to limited lottery funds in the current year. Similarly,North Carolinahas become a pre-K battleground as budget cutters slash enrollment and cut funding in a state that was once a national leader in early education. This backsliding and the low standards and funding that characterize some massive state pre-K programs (Florida, for example) are the reasons we publish the Yearbook so that parents and everyone else can see exactly what their public officials are doing, or not doing, to invest in their children.

This is the second year in a row that Secretary Duncan has joined me for the release and his remarks were characteristically supportive of preschool education. He emphasized the importance of expanding access to high-quality early learning programs as an “investment that benefits us all.” Media interest in the report has been high and we’ll be carrying some of the coverage on our new web site. Many thanks to the NIEER web site development team and the Yearbook team, both of whom worked many, many hours to get both the Yearbook and the web site ready in time for this release that marks a decade of commitment to high-quality preschool education!

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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Filling an Assessment Need with the Early Learning Scale: NIEER’s New Preschool Assessment

March 14, 2012

As NIEER noted in a 2004 policy brief, “Child assessment is a vital and growing component of high-quality early childhood programs. Not only is it an important tool in understanding and supporting young children’s development, it is essential to document and evaluate program effectiveness. For assessment to be widely used though, it must employ methods that are feasible, sustainable and reasonable with regard to demands on budgets, educators and children. Equally important, it must meet the challenging demands of validity (accuracy and effectiveness) for young children. It is the balance between efficiency and validity that demands the constant attention of policymakers — and an approach grounded in a sound understanding of appropriate methodology.”

There are several purposes for using child assessments in early childhood. Generally, issues with assessment at this early age are often grounded in a mismatch between the chosen assessment and the purpose of the assessment. First, there are screening measures used to quickly highlight children in need of further assessment or intervention. There are standardized assessments to examine how children perform in relation to their peers, to evaluate the need for special services or to use in research evaluation protocols. Lastly, there are measures that document development and performance in students’ natural learning environment; these measures are best used to inform teaching. A recent report by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) describes the status of pre-K assessment policies and implementation in state-funded programs.

Teachers are already burdened with many responsibilities, and field research and professional development conducted by researchers at NIEER revealed that teachers feel overwhelmed by assessment requirements. Because of this, teachers are unable to effectively use assessment data in concert with instruction. Teachers expressed that they viewed assessment as an exercise of immense paperwork rather than a valuable resource used to improve student learning. In response, NIEER developed an observation-based performance assessment that is comprehensive and standards-based, but is also manageable and meaningful. The Early Learning Scale (ELS) was developed using respected research and with extensive input from teachers using it in the field. The ELS allows teachers to use high-quality data to effectively inform instruction and to make a direct impact on teaching and learning.

After a thorough review of child development research and literature, the authors of the ELS developed the scale, pilot-tested the instrument in preschool classrooms, and determined it is a reliable and valid measure, as described in the full technical report. This assessment system assists teachers in targeting the individual needs of children ages 3 to 5. Focusing on 10 measureable items across three critical domains—math/science, social-emotional/social studies, and language/literacy—the ELS provides teachers with a manageable and effective tool for assessing children’s progress toward early learning standards and expectations.

Using a curriculum-neutral approach, the ELS teaches educators how to become “participant observers” who use the rich data they collect to make accurate evaluations, plan instruction, and communicate effectively with parents and caregivers about children’s development. Before implementing the ELS, teachers are required to complete in-person training or self-paced online training, both of which are extensive and comprehensive. Furthermore, this training provides teachers with instruction on the importance of assessment, the components of an effective assessment cycle, how to use the ELS instrument, how to plan activities that will lead to efficient documentation, and how to meaningfully use data to plan for instruction.

For preschool programs interested in online capabilities, the ELS is available in paperless format via the Internet. The online version of the ELS was developed in conjunction with The Center: Resources for Teaching & Learning and is identical to the print version, except that the data is entered online and is available for evaluation electronically. Plus, the online version of the ELS offers handheld capabilities. Using a smartphone or tablet, teachers can record observations in real time and then upload them to the website, where observations are linked to items on the ELS.

To learn more about the ELS, call Lakeshore at (800) 421-5354 and ask for Custom Learning Solutions.

- Shannon Riley-Ayers, Assistant Research Professor, NIEER

- Judi Stevenson-Garcia, Research Coordinator, NIEER

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The Pre-K Debates: What the Research Says About Teacher Quality

February 10, 2012

The body of research on teacher quality is, if nothing else, a mixed bag, in terms of both quality and approach. Studies of the effects of preschool education levels have employed techniques ranging from simple correlations to complex statistical analyses that seek to account for the complexities of interrelated policies and practices that affect teaching and learning. Given just how complex policy and practice are, it may be that the simple correlations are just as informative for policy purposes, but neither approach is particularly satisfactory. Controlled randomized trials that look at teacher quality might get us farther, but even these may not tell us what we really want to know, and they are few and far between in any case. Little wonder, then, that some studies find that teachers with higher levels of education have stronger effects on children’s learning while others do not. A 2007 NIEER quantitative summary (meta-analysis) of the literature found a modest positive effect of teachers with a bachelor’s degree compared to those with less education. A few studies in that analysis deserve extra attention because they have obvious strengths:

1. The Cost, Quality and Outcomes Study of child care found that higher levels of teacher education and pay were associated with higher quality as measured by structured observations, and children’s cognitive test scores. A reanalysis that controlled for location and center found no differences between teachers with bachelor’s degrees and those with associate’s degrees or high school diplomas. However, the reanalysis fails to take into account that programs basically hire all their teachers under the same budget constraint, that teachers within a center are not independent performers, and that centers like to assign difficult-to-teach kids to better teachers.

2. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) study of early care and education has an advantage over most studies because it includes measures of education in the home, thereby more completely modeling the processes that contribute to children’s learning and development. And, it does so over multiple years and not just a few months. Several NICHD studies have found that teacher education contributes to children’s learning and development.

3. Two studies that found no effects of teacher education on children’s learning are a University of Nebraska study of child care centers in four Midwest states and a University of North Carolina study using data from the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) Multi-State Study of Pre-K. The latter involved more than 230 classrooms and 800 children. While both have relatively large samples, nether takes into account teacher assignment, apparently assuming that it is random and they do not measure home learning processes. In the Nebraska study, only about seven teachers out of the hundreds interviewed had salaries above $30,000.

To my mind, the most informative evidence comes from real policy changes such as when the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered high-quality preschool provided to all children in 31 low-income school districts. This “natural experiment” was implemented in a public system wherein most children were served by private providers under contract to the districts. Teachers lacking the necessary credentials received scholarships to attend more schooling so they could meet the new standard of a bachelor’s degree and early childhood certification. Salaries were raised to public school levels. Teachers received coaching on a regular basis. It comes as no surprise to many involved in this dramatic, albeit painful, transition that the quality of teaching as measured by direct observation was transformed, changing from poor-mediocre to good-excellent.

Of course, we can’t pinpoint teacher qualifications as the sole source of success in New Jersey, and I wouldn’t. Raising qualifications requirements without raising pay from its typically abysmal level is a recipe for disaster. Honestly, would the field really be debating whether preschool teachers needed to be well-educated if wages were not at issue? In addition, coaching and a continuous improvement process are certainly important, but it would be equally misguided to conclude that specialized training and professional development alone could produce quality teaching over the long-run with low wages and poorly educated teachers.

Education research rarely provides a basis for certainty and this is particularly true of studies looking at teacher effectiveness where so many variables matter. If policymakers want greater certainty than the existing evidence provides, different sorts of studies will be needed that are based on real policy changes. In the meantime, leading experts in the field provide us with well-reasoned arguments for and sometimes against requiring higher levels of education for preschool teachers than is currently the case in most classrooms across the nation. Their arguments are well represented in The Pre-K Debates, a new book edited by Ed Zigler and Walter Gilliam at Yale and me. If nothing else, it is always interesting to see university professors argue that their students don’t learn anything useful or that minority students can’t make it in higher education. I’m always happy to put forward Rutgers University as a counterexample.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

Note: This post is part of a series discussing issues of contention from The Pre-K Debates. For my analysis of universal preschool’s role in economic mobility, see this earlier post in the series.

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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

5 Comments | Access, Preschool, Research, School Readiness | Permalink
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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

1 Comment | Early Childhood, Early Literacy, International, Research | Permalink
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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)

17 Comments | Achievement gap, Early Childhood, Early Head Start, Head Start programs, Outcomes, Preschool, Quality Early Childhood Programs, Research | Permalink
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