ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Box 4-4: Technological Innovation that Stimulates
Learning during Out-of-School Time
Sesame Street & Early Childhood Education
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have the potential to
enhance children’s experiences in early education, by extending low-cost
early education materials to large numbers of young children. One of the
earliest examples of such innovation is the educational program Sesame
Street.
A recent study on Sesame Street in its earliest years showed
that preschool-aged children who lived in areas where Sesame Street
was available were more likely to advance age-appropriately through
school. The results were particularly pronounced for boys, for children
in economically disadvantaged areas, and for students from disadvantaged
backgrounds, including non-Hispanic African-American children.
Although the long-term outcome results were inconclusive, the authors
of the study suggest that the potential impacts of the program on advancing
through school as appropriate, coupled with the very low cost for
each student ($5 a child annually), and the enhanced impact for students
from disadvantaged backgrounds, show promise for MOOCs to supplement
early childhood education for low-income children (Kearney and
Levine 2015). It is important to note that the National Research Council
and the Institute of Medicine (2000) agree that children learn best
through enriching, social interactions with adults and peers in their lives,
including teachers and families. Sesame Street and other educational
programs are not intended to replace formal high-quality early education,
or high-quality adult-child interactions in the earliest years; rather
they can serve as a supplement to the learning that happens in early
learning settings and with families at home by providing an opportunity
to spend out-of-school time learning.
This low-cost delivery of an effective curriculum continues to be
important for disadvantaged children today, since the costs of early
childhood care and educational activities have risen so rapidly in recent
years, putting high-quality education out of reach of many low-income
families. Low-cost supplements to early education, like Sesame Street,
can help low-income children gain some of the out-of-school educational
experience received by higher-income children.
Texting to Improve Parental Inputs
Text messaging is another promising delivery method that can
improve parental behavior at low cost. Most American adults (88
percent) have cell phones and can receive texts (Zickuhr and Smith
2012), which have a 95-percent open rate (Mogreet 2013). READY4K!,
an eight-month-long text messaging program designed to help parents
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