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Starting Early: Education from Prekindergarten to Third Grade Starting Early: Education from Prekindergarten to Third Grade VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2 Fall 2016 3 Starting Early: Introducing the Issue 21 When Does Preschool Matter? 37 The Economic Returns to Early Childhood Education 57 Reading and Language in the Early Grades 75 Math, Science, and Technology in the Early Grades 95 Neuroscientific Insights: Attention, Working Memory, and Inhibitory Control 119 Quality in Early Education Classrooms: Definitions, Gaps, and Systems 139 The Early Care and Education Workforce 159 Supporting Young English Learners in the United States 185 Supporting Young Children with Disabilities 207 Parent Programs in Pre-K through Third Grade A COLLABORATION OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AND THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The Future of Children promotes effective policies and programs for children by providing timely, objective information based on the best available research. Senior Editorial Staff Journal Staff Sara McLanahan Kris McDonald Editor-in-Chief Associate Editor Princeton University Princeton University Director, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, and William S. Tod Jon Wallace Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs Managing Editor Princeton University Janet M. Currie Senior Editor Lisa Markman-Pithers Princeton University Outreach Director Director, Center for Health and Wellbeing; Princeton University Chair, Department of Economics; Associate Director, Education and Henry Putnam Professor of Economics Research Section and Public Affairs Allegra Pocinki Ron Haskins Outreach Coordinator Senior Editor Brookings Institution Brookings Institution Regina Leidy Senior Fellow, Cabot Family Chair, and Communications Coordinator Co-Director, Center on Children and Families Princeton University Cecilia Elena Rouse Tracy Merone Senior Editor Administrator Princeton University Princeton University Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Katzman-Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education, and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Isabel Sawhill Senior Editor Brookings Institution Senior Fellow The Future of Children would like to thank the Foundation for Child Development for its generous support. ISSN: 1054-8289 ISBN: 978-0-9857863-6-6 VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2 FALL 2016 Starting Early: Education from Prekindergarten to Third Grade 3 Starting Early: Introducing the Issue by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Lisa Markman-Pithers, and Cecilia Elena Rouse 21 When Does Preschool Matter? by Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn 37 The Economic Returns to Early Childhood Education by Lynn A. Karoly 57 Reading and Language in the Early Grades by Catherine E. Snow and Timothy J. Matthews 75 Math, Science, and Technology in the Early Grades by Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama 95 Neuroscientific Insights: Attention, Working Memory, and Inhibitory Control by C. Cybele Raver and Clancy Blair 119 Quality in Early Education Classrooms: Definitions, Gaps, and Systems by Robert Pianta, Jason Downer, and Bridget Hamre 139 The Early Care and Education Workforce by Deborah Phillips, Lea J. E. Austin, and Marcy Whitebook 159 Supporting Young English Learners in the United States by Lisa Barrow and Lisa Markman-Pithers 185 Supporting Young Children with Disabilities by Kathleen Hebbeler and Donna Spiker 207 Parent Programs in Pre-K through Third Grade by Katherine Magnuson and Holly S. Schindler www.futureofchildren.org Starting Early: Introducing the Issue Starting Early: Introducing the Issue Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Lisa Markman-Pithers, and Cecilia Elena Rouse cross the nation, more compelling evidence that exposing children and more people want to educational experiences when they’re to see children receive young can have profound effects on later quality education before educational, social, and adult outcomes. kindergarten. Public opinion In fact, as Lynn Karoly points out in this Apolls suggest that 70 percent of adults issue, estimates based on some older favor such programs, partly because of pre-K programs suggest that every dollar the irresistible idea that “starting early,” invested in prekindergarten pays off $3 to and ensuring that children arrive in school $17 in terms of benefits, both to the adult ready to learn, is the best way to generate individual and to society. That suggests happy, healthy, and productive adults.1 The prekindergarten is one of the most effective notion of starting early resonates. Head investments that we can make in children. Start, the federally funded prekindergarten Indeed, James Heckman of the University program for children from low-income of Chicago, a Nobel laureate in economics, homes, was a cornerstone of President has argued that investments made in early Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Even childhood are more beneficial and also then it was believed that students can’t more cost-effective than those made in fully benefit from an elementary education later childhood and adolescence.2 if they don’t arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. Presidents with views as disparate The idea that prekindergarten can enhance as those of George W. Bush and Barack later learning and adult success is based on Obama have called for strengthening early the premise that if pre-K programs provide childhood education in their budgets and enriching activities more intensively and State of the Union addresses. more intentionally than parents can, then those programs have the potential to boost One reason for the strong support of early children’s learning and skill acquisition. In childhood education is the seemingly brief, quality pre-K experiences can teach www.futureofchildren.org Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and co-director of the National Center for Children and Families. Lisa Markman- Pithers is the associate director of the Education Research Section at Princeton University, the outreach director for Future of Children, and a lecturer at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Cecilia Elena Rouse is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Katzman-Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education, and a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. VOL. 26 / NO. 2 / FALL 2016 3 Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Lisa Markman-Pithers, and Cecilia Elena Rouse children the skills that make it easier composition, and programs’ quality and for them to learn new skills in early intensity. elementary school: that is, skills beget skills. Scholars have extensively studied the efficacy of pre-K programs, especially Differences in literacy and cognitive those offered to four-year-olds. Of skills between children in low-income more than 100 evaluations of pre-K families and their better-off counterparts programs, the vast majority used random are already apparent by age three, assignment of children to receive the or perhaps even earlier.3 The pre-K preschool treatment or not.5 Most of these education programs initiated in the 1960s experimental programs served children and 1970s were designed to reduce from low-resource families, in keeping those gaps by providing quality pre-K with the premise that these children were education to disadvantaged children, less likely to have the skills needed for who were less likely to be ready for kindergarten and were therefore most school. Few pre-K programs existed in likely to benefit. Consequently, we know the low-income neighborhoods where the most about how preschool influences most disadvantaged children lived, and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. parents with little income and education And because many of these evaluations were therefore less likely to send their were conducted before pre-K programs children to prekindergarten than were were widespread, children who didn’t parents with more resources. And when participate in a specific program (that disadvantaged parents were able to find is, those assigned to the control group) a pre-K program, it was likely to be of generally received no pre-K education at relatively low quality.4 all. Based on these observations, we would As theory predicted, these programs were expect that children from disadvantaged largely successful. They raised children’s environments would benefit the most academic achievement in the short term, from pre-K education; that high-quality and subjects who were followed into early programs would deliver the greatest adulthood showed higher educational benefits; and that children who received attainment, reduced crime, and more such education would benefit more than employment. More recent evaluations, those who remained at home, cared for by especially those involving universal pre-K parents, family, and friends. Comparisons programs rather than those targeting between different pre-K programs, on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, the other hand, shouldn’t show such also generally show short-term benefits a stark contrast. These assumptions overall. Evaluations that examined imply that not all programs would show children from different backgrounds equal benefits in empirical evaluations. have revealed stronger effects among Scholars have called this heterogeneity disadvantaged children, again in keeping in outcomes. Interpreting the research with theory. These evaluations are too requires attention to many factors— recent to have followed their children into
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