2018 Summer Kansas Child

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Early Childhood Programs Improvements That Last Child advocates agree: Investing in children early makes a positive difference in their lives as older children and as adults. While many researchers and professionals in early childhood education have continued to discuss the benefits of 0-5 education, others have questioned the lasting effects on outcomes and the worthiness of spending on these programs. Some simply have difficulty thinking that programs for toddlers can affect those children as high schoolers and beyond. A new study published in Education Researcher examines this idea about longterm effects. McCoy and colleagues (2017) combed the early childhood education research from 1960-2016 and analyzed the results of 272 research studies to determine whether the participants experienced long-term benefits to the programs under review. Excitingly, the analysis found evidence to show that there were, in fact, long-term, positive effects for the children who participated in classroom-based early childhood education. To ensure that McCoy, et. al., were comparing apples to apples and to highlight the outcomes of greatest interest to many policymakers, the researchers focused on studies that had results falling into the following categories of positive outcomes: •§ Decreases in special education placement •§ Decreases in holding children back a grade •§ Increases in graduation rates Focusing on these specific outcomes allowed the researchers to analyze more deeply the results of 22 of the studies, which led to greater statistical confidence in the conclusions. These conclusions noted that the effects of early childhood education delivered in classroom settings benefitted the children overall with 8% decreases in special education placements, 8.3% decreases in students being held back, and 11.4% increases in graduation rates. Figure 1 shows these outcomes where “ECE” means participants in early childhood education programs, and “No ECE” means participants who did not engage in early childhood education programs. While the specific rates of decrease/ increase differed based on whether the researchers controlled for time since the end of the program, the overall trends remained the same. This directly refutes the idea that the benefits produced by early childhood programs going into kindergarten do not endure over time. NICOLE FREUND, Ph.D. Research Scientist, Center for Applied Research and Evaluation, Wichita State University’s Community Engagement Institute Nicole Freund, Ph.D., is a research scientist with the Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) at Wichita State University’s Community Engagement Institute (CEI). She has more than 12 years of research experience in both academic and corporate settings. Her research at CARE is varied and includes evaluations and projects across a number of domains, including early childhood, behavioral health, developmental disability, traffic safety, and others. Dr. Freund works with the early childhood team on the Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund Early Childhood Block Grant (ECBG) evaluation. McCoy’s and the study’s co-authors’ summary and scientific analysis of research stretching back decades necessarily does not include some of the more innovative and scaled-up public, early childhood programs that have started since 2017. However, this study does offer advocates of early childhood education 18 Kansas Child A Publication of Child Care Aware ® of Kansas
more positive evidence that intervening early in a child’s life has benefits worthy of investment. The authors note that the investments in preventing undesirable outcomes, such as dropping out of high school, are a comparatively smaller burden than spending on those undesirable outcomes themselves. A focus on very young children as the builders of future communities and economies makes more than feel-good sense; it makes strategic and economic sense, as well. n RESOURCE McCoy, D. C., Yoshikawa, H., Ziol-Guest, K. M., Duncan, G. J., Schindler, H. S., Magnuson, K., Yang, R., Koepp, A., & Shonkoff, J. P. (2017). Impacts of Early Childhood Education on Medium-and Long- Term Educational Outcomes. Educational Researcher, 46(8), 474-487. www.ks.childcareaware.org Kansas Child 19
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2018 Summer Kansas Child

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