Child Care & Early Education : Research
Starting out right: pre-k and kindergarten
Author: Center for Public Education
What’s the best early childhood education combination communities can provide? Until now, research hasn’t had an answer. Although there is a wealth of research on pre-k and on kindergarten, they have been examined mainly in isolation. That research has shown that both high-quality pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten can have significant, often lasting, benefits for children. Therefore, students would benefit most from attending high-quality prekindergarten, and then going on to full-day kindergarten. However, these particular programs are not necessarily required or paid for by many states. Cash-strapped states and districts around the country are being forced to choose how to best spend their dollars, including allocations to publicly-funded pre-k and kindergarten that are both best for students and feasible within current budgets.
Transforming Public Education: Pathway to a Pre-K-12 Future
Author: Pew Center on the States
Overview: As Pew completes its 10-year commitment to the Pre-K Now campaign, our final report (PDF) challenges the nation’s policy makers to transform public education by moving away from our current K-12 system. The future of public education is Pre-K-12. State investment in pre-k programs has more than doubled in the past decade, but states have yet to maximize the impact of high-quality pre-k on children’s academic performances. Bridging early education and school reform will strengthen the return on investment from the billions of public and private dollars that are being spent each year on increasing academic achievement.
The State of America's Children 2011
Author: Children's Defense Fund
Overview: CDF’s new report The State of America's Children 2011 finds children have fallen further behind in many of the leading indicators over the past year as the country slowly climbs out of the recession. This is a comprehensive compilation and analysis of the most recent and reliable national and state-by-state data on population, poverty, family structure, family income, health, nutrition, early childhood development, education, child welfare, juvenile justice, and gun violence.
The Head Start Impact Study - January 2010
Source: U.S. Health and Human Services
Study Goals
1) Determine the impact of Head Start on: children’s school readiness, and parental practices that support children’s development.
2) Determine under what circumstances Head Start achieves its greatest impact and for which children.
Read the PDF
Read economist Tim Bartik's blog about the study
Read Cornelia Grumman's First Five Years blog about the study
Read the NIEER blog about the study
Preschool As a School Turnaround Strategy
Source: Pew Center on the States - June 2011
Excerpt: Across the nation, state and local school systems, recognizing the strong and growing evidence of pre-kindergarten’s effectiveness in closing achievement gaps and improving school performance,1 are implementing early learning programs as part of their education reform efforts. In low-performing districts, pre-k has emerged as a promising turnaround strategy, reaching children before they become low-achieving middle and high school students. As members of Congress discuss reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), they can look to these initiatives to see how strategic use of limited funds for proven early education programs can raise student achievement, and to identify opportunities for smart federal investment.
Center for the Study of Child Care Employment study
Staff Preparation, Reward, and Support: Are Quality Rating and Improvement Systems Addressing All of the Key Ingredients Necessary for Change?
Illinois Kindergarten Individual Development Survey
The proposed Illinois Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS) will help identify gaps in school readiness, guide classroom instruction and provide information for supporting decision-making about resource allocations.
The State of Preschool 2010 - The National Institute for Early Education Research
The 2010 State Preschool Yearbook is the eighth in a series of annual reports profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest Yearbook presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2009-2010 school year. The first report in this series focused on programs for the 2001-2002 school year and established a baseline against which we may now measure progress over nine years. Tracking these trends is essential, since changes in states' policies on preschool education will influence how successfully America's next generation will compete in the knowledge economy.
Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation - April 2011
Educators and researchers have long recognized the importance of mastering reading by the end of third grade. Students who fail to reach this critical milestone often falter in the later grades and drop out before earning a high school diploma. Now, researchers have confirmed this link in the first national study to calculate high school graduation rates for children at different reading skill levels and with different poverty rates.
Promising state child care quality and infant/toddler initiatives - April 2011
High-quality child care encourages children’s learning and development and helps them enter school ready to succeed. Yet in most communities, high-quality care is in short supply, particularly for low-income children and very young children. States and communities are working to address this shortage and improve the quality of care through a number of promising strategies, with the help of federal funding.
Children's Defense Fund look at the benefits and availability of full-day kindergarten
The reports surrounding the existence of full-day kindergarten as a given in the publicly funded K-12 education system in this country are greatly exaggerated as well.
Early Care and Education State Budget Actions FY 2010
The National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) Early Care and Education State Budget Actions report is an annual survey of state fiscal decisions in early care and education policy and programs, including child care, prekindergarten, home visiting and other related early childhood programs. The report tracks and analyzes trends in state decisions, particularly aiming to capture state funding choices in this area. State early care and education appropriations have experienced year-to-year increases for the last several years. In FY 2009, states increased appropriations across each area—child care, prekindergarten, home visiting and related early childhood programs—even in the face of emerging budget crises. In FY 2009 to FY 2010, state appropriations to early care and education were generally flat, reflecting no significant percentage change. This is particularly striking, given the unprecedented state budget gaps that lawmakers were addressing.
Center on the Developing Child - Harvard University
A remarkable explosion of new knowledge about the developing brain and the human genome, linked to advances in the behavioral and social sciences, offers exceptional opportunities that did not exist a decade ago. Science now offers increasing promise as a vehicle for greater understanding of how the foundations of successful adaptation and effective learning in the childhood years lead to better outcomes in academic achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, and successful parenting of the next generation.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development - Child Care Study
The most comprehensive child care study conducted to date to determine how variations in child care are related to children's development.
National Institute for Early Education Research - State Preschool Profiles
The 2007 State Preschool Yearbook is the fifth in a series of annual reports profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. Tracking these trends is essential, since changes in states' policies on preschool education will influence how successfully America's next generation will compete in the knowledge economy.
Great Start Readiness Program (Formerly known as the Michigan School Readiness Program)
This study measures the effects of Michigan’s School Readiness Program (MSRP) on entering kindergartners’ academic skills using an innovative research model. Language (receptive vocabulary), early literacy and early math skills were assessed in a sample of children from across Michigan. The study found that Michigan’s School Readiness Program has statistically significant and meaningful impacts on children’s early literacy and mathematical development.
America's Vanishing Potential: The Case for PreK-3rd Education
A Report from the Foundation for Child Development - October 2008
Impacts of Early Childhood Programs
A set of briefs from the Brookings Institution, provide high-quality evidence on several early childhood interventions and their impact on children and families. The interventions include State Pre-K, Head Start, Early Head Start, Model Early Childhood Programs, and Nurse Home Visiting Programs.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/09_early_programs_isaacs.aspx
National Center for Children in Poverty
The achievement gap for low-income young children starts early in life and is difficult to reverse. What science tells us about brain development, along with what we know from economic analysis, makes it clear that investing in high-quality early care and learning is essential to reducing this gap.
http://nccp.org/topics/earlycareandlearning.html
Family, Friend and Neighbor Care
Over the past few decades, research in many fields from education and child development to neuroscience has underscored the importance of early childhood development and what young children need to grow and learn: stable relationships with caring adults who are able to recognize and encourage each child’s natural curiosity and drive to learn. Research has also confirmed that young children thrive when the adults caring for and teaching them are intentional—that is they are learners themselves, about their own and children’s learning and are thus able to connect with children in ways that foster positive growth and development.
http://www.familiesandwork.org/sparking/pdf/FFN_Care_and_Early_Learning_Systems.pdf
National Child Care Information Center Resources, Q and A, Online Library, TA, Publications.
"Preschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society" Committee for Economic Development, February 2002
"The Economic Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool: Using Early Education to Improve Economic Growth and the Fiscal Sustainability of States and the Nation" Committee for Economic Development, June 2006
"The State of Preschool: 2005 State Preschool Yearbook" W. Stephen Barnett, Ph.D., Jason T. Hustedt, Ph.D., Kenneth B. Robin, Psy.D., and Karen L. Schulman, M.P.P.