Investing in Preschool Programs

informational post; follow link for paper; no comment at this time

Investing in Preschool Programs
by: Greg J. Duncan and Katherine Magnuson
Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 27, Number 2—Spring 2013—Pages 109–132

"It appears that an effective strategy is to combine a proven curriculum that
offers well-designed lesson plans and activities, based on an understanding of children’s
trajectories of learning within specififi c content areas, with strong professional
development to target improvement in specififi c instructional practices. Several
random-assignment studies of curricular innovations in early childhood education
programs have shown substantial effects on children’s learning in math and literacy,
and these curricula are currently found in some effective preschool programs. The
What Works Clearinghouse provides up-to-date information on rigorous evaluations
of early childhood education curricula (at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/).

The Boston pre-kindergarten system provides a scaled-up model of how this
might work. System leaders developed a curriculum from proven literacy, math, and
social skills interventions. The academic components focused on concept development,
the use of multiple methods and materials to promote children’s learning,
and a variety of activities to encourage analysis, reasoning, and problem-solving
(Weiland and Yoshikawa forthcoming). Extensive professional development training
and on-going coaching ensured that teachers understood the curriculum and were
able to implement it effectively in their classrooms. A regression- discontinuity evaluation
showed relatively large impacts on vocabulary, math, and reading (effect sizes
ranging from .45 to .62 standard deviations) as well as smaller, but still noteworthy
effects on working memory and inhibitory control (effect sizes ranging from .21 to
.28 standard deviations; Weiland and Yoshikawa forthcoming).

.....

For the economically disadvantaged children in the sample—those with family
income below 180 percent of the poverty line in their fifi rst year of life—participation
in the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) produced large impacts
on cognitive development. Specifically, children in the treatment group outscored
their control-group counterparts by .82 standard deviations on the Stanford–Binet
IQ mental subscale by age three .5 For children in higher-income families, the
IHDP’s program impact was much smaller, only .18 standard deviations.