Plenty of early-childhood studies have shown that children who attend preschool start kindergarten with a measurable advantage of their peers who were not enrolled.
But often, those same studies show that the academic progress of those two groups of children start to converge as the children move through school. By the time they reach 3rd grade, the students often are academically indistiguishable from one another.
Two new studies have tackled the topic of early-education 鈥渇adeout.鈥� And though they use different data sets, the researchers point to similar conclusions: For positive benefits to last, early-childhood programs have to be of high quality and can鈥檛 be seen as a one-shot inoculation that will sustain children throughout their academic careers.
Testing Whether Good Schools Sustain Preschool Gains
The first study looked at two large samples of students. One group of about 12,450 children started kindergarten in 1998, and the other group, made up of around 11,000 children, started kindergarten in 2010.
The researchers were looking at several outcomes, but one hypothesis they wanted to test was whether a good elementary school helped the preschool boost last longer. Many advocates have argued that preschool fadeout occurs because children enroll in elementary schools that aren鈥檛 prepared to sustain their academic gains.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 a very compelling premise, and it makes some intuitive sense,鈥� said Daphna Bassok, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia and the lead author of the study, titled 鈥� The study was published April 17 in the journal Child Development.
But, she added, 鈥淚t鈥檚 something we鈥檝e latched onto without a ton of rigorous empirical support.鈥�
Using these data sets, Bassok and her co-authors controlled for measures that are associated with elementary school quality. For example, these data sets tracked whether students were enrolled in schools that had robust transition practices between preschool and kindergarten, such as parent orientations and teacher visits to students鈥� homes. The researchers also measured whether schools reported exposing kindergarten students to advanced math and reading content, and whether the kindergartners were in classrooms of fewer than 20 students.
But none of those elementary program characteristics made a difference in how quickly the benefits of preschool faded out for students.
鈥淚f kids are going to benefit in a profound, long-lasting way, we have to focus less on these crude characteristics,鈥� Bassok said. 鈥淚f you think of preschool as this black box of stuff that is supposed to magically change kids鈥� lives, that鈥檚 unlikely to give you the results you want.鈥�
What does matter, Bassok says, is serious and sustained attention to preschool curriculum and to professional development of teachers. 鈥淭o guarantee a high-quality learning environment for kids, we have try to focus on the actual experiences that kids have,鈥� she said.
Preschool Gains Can Last In Specific Circumstances
The second study also tracked the early childhood experiences of a group of children. But rather than looking only at preschool, researchers examined the outcomes of children who were in high-quality child-care and early-learning environments from birth to 5th grade. And instead of using proxies for high quality as the other study did, this study relied on direct assessments of quality made by trained observers who witnessed the child-teacher interactions.
The authors found that the positive benefits of good child care and preschool were sustained through adolescence鈥攁s long as the children attended high-quality elementary classes as well. When the elementary classrooms were of observably lower quality, the benefits of the early-childhood boost again faded out.
鈥淭o elevate children鈥檚 experiences takes more of an investment in the whole early-childhood system,鈥� said Arya Ansari, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Virginia and the lead author of 鈥溾�� The study was published April 5 in the journal Developmental Psychology.
To develop these findings, Ansari examined the outcomes of a group of about 1,300 children in 10 cities who were born in 1991 and have been tracked through 9th grade. Observers periodically measured adult-child interactions with the children starting when they were six months old. The children鈥檚 classroom quality was also assessed in 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades.
One interesting finding was that children who attended high-quality child care were not more likely to move into elementary classrooms deemed to be of high-quality. And, being in a high-quality elementary school classroom in early grades did not guarantee a high-quality experience in later grades.
So, only a small fraction of the children studied had high-quality experiences all the way from infancy to elementary school. But the children who had that long-term, high-quality education performed measurably better on tests of literacy and math compared to children whose elementary school classrooms were of moderate or poor quality.
All told, the findings point to the importance of cumulative effects, Ansari said. Good child care, good preschool, and good elementary school experiences all add up, he said鈥攖he challenge is how to ensure that happens. In contrast to the nationally-represenative sample of children in the first study, these children were primarily white and from affluent families. And even they experienced some lower-quality care and education, Ansari notes. It鈥檚 much harder for less-affluent families to get the cumulative benefits, he said.
鈥淭his basic communication across systems"鈥攃hild care, preschool and elementary鈥�"is the really big issue were鈥檙e going to have to grapple with,鈥� Ansari said.
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