Pre-K Picks

Dear Supporter,

My picks this month cover a wide range of topics, from how to build comprehensive systems for young children to pre-k enrollment trends to connections between certain early learning skills and later academic achievement. You'll find plenty here to advance the policy and practice of high-quality pre-k.

This is the last Pre-K Picks edition for 2007, so I'd like to wish you a happy holiday season. Here's to a new year of great progress in the early childhood field and even greater benefits for all young children in our country.

Warm regards,
Albert Wat
State Policy Analyst
Pre-K Now
E-mail me a pick recommendation

P.S. I recently attended the National Conference of the Early Childhood Research Collaborative, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota Center for Early Education and Development. The two-day conference featured many of the leading thinkers in early childhood development. I'll bring you the highlights in January.

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The Prime Pick Pre-K Success Raises Profile of Early Childhood Issues As told in "Life Chances," a special report from The American Prospect, the momentum behind the pre-k movement is beginning to focus attention on the larger early childhood system, including prenatal services, programs for infants and toddlers, and the early elementary grades. In a series of articles, policy experts, researchers, and philanthropists review the recent surge in interest in early childhood issues, discuss the major policy debates, and look into the field's future and its potential to put all children and our economy on a trajectory of success. No matter the perspective of the writer, the reader comes away with a similar conclusion: It's time for our policies – from local communities to statehouses to our nation's capital – to catch up to the science of early childhood development. Reflecting that conclusion, this month Pre-K Now and ZERO TO THREE released a joint report, "Common Vision, Different Paths," (PDF) which details five states' journeys toward comprehensive and coordinated early childhood systems. The report reveals four cornerstones that contributed to system-building success in California, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.

Pick Positions Birth to Five Policy Alliance debuts online Study examines relationship between social-emotional development and later academic achievement Iowa schools promote pre-k collaboration RAND studies show California pre-k has miles to go New website goes from knowing what works to doing it Canadian researchers start online encyclopedia on early childhood development Journals focus on pre-k and other early care and education issues Assessment methods and instruments used in pre-k programs Evaluation of Texas' pre-k collaboration model finds some significant results Research and policy developments for Latino children in Oklahoma and California NIEER provides new national data on pre-k enrollment Study finds play-based pre-k curriculum benefits children's thinking skills

The increasing interest and policy debates surrounding early childhood issues are covered in "Life Chances." "Common Vision, Different Paths" reveals lessons for building comprehensive early childhood systems.

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1. Birth to Five Policy Alliance debuts online

The Birth to Five Policy Alliance, a collection of leading, national political and early childhood organizations, recently launched a new website loaded with the latest news, policy developments, and research studies that support state-level early childhood policies.

2. Study examines relationship between social-emotional development and later academic achievement

In a new study (PDF), appearing in Developmental Psychology, researchers reviewed data from six large, longitudinal, correlational studies to examine the extent to which early cognitive skills, attention skills, and social-emotional development are related to subsequent math and reading skills.

Interestingly, in all but one of the studies, behavioral problems were not significantly related to later test scores, leading the authors to conclude that "only three of the school-entry skill categories predict subsequent reading and math achievement: reading/language, math, and attention."

These findings took into account characteristics such as the child's gender and the family's income. Since early math skills were a strong predictor of both later math and reading skills, the researchers suggest paying more attention to how developmentally-appropriate curricula can help young children improve in this area.

The authors caution that this does not mean pre-k curricula should not focus on children's social-emotional development. The study only looked at how early cognitive and social-emotional development related to test scores in children as old as 14. Early social-emotional development is very possibly related to other important educational or behavioral outcomes that this study did not examine; for example, drop-out rates, special education placement, the ability to work well with peers, and motivation to learn.

Common sense would also suggest that, even if problem behaviors do not necessarily mean lower achievement, they do make teachers' jobs harder and disrupt learning in the classroom.

3. Iowa schools promote pre-k collaboration

During the 2007 legislative session, Iowa became the seventh state to commit to the goal of offering pre-k to all four-year-old children. Among the key features of the state's pre-k-for-all plan is the promotion of school-community partnerships to implement high-quality pre-k.

New resources on the Iowa Association of School Boards' (IASB) website show a commitment by school district leaders to follow the spirit of the law and facilitate real community collaborations.

The resources help K-12 administrators learn about the benefits of pre-k, the characteristics of quality programs, and the advantages of implementing a diverse delivery system. A "Preschool Program Collaboration Toolkit" is available from IASB as well, providing tips for developing community collaborations, examples of successful pre-k partnerships, and a DVD that shows what quality programs look like.

4. RAND studies show California pre-k has miles to go

Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation began its California Preschool Study to determine what additional resources the state's early care and education system needs to narrow the achievement gap among students of different racial, economic, and family backgrounds. The first two of RAND's series of four studies were released recently.

The first study documents the existing achievement gap as it relates to children's home language, racial and income backgrounds, and parental education background. The report shows that this gap starts before the beginning of formal schooling and suggests that expansion of quality pre-k in California could narrow this gap.

Notably, researchers also found that 44 percent of "non-economically disadvantaged" students and 30 percent of children whose parents have post-graduate education are not achieving proficiency in English language arts, suggesting that targeting pre-k programs to traditionally "at-risk" groups may not be sufficient.

The second study assesses California's existing early care and education system, including how well it serves the groups targeted for services. Researchers found that, even when all federal, state, and local publicly funded programs are counted, California is leaving about 30 percent of eligible four year olds and 60 percent of three year olds unserved.

At the same time, only half of all eligible four year olds and 25 percent of eligible three year olds are served by programs that have a child development and education focus, as opposed to a primarily child care focus. The study's authors raise questions about the quality of these settings. None of the programs require lead teachers to have an associate's or bachelor's degree, and 11 percent of young children are receiving care from unregulated, license-exempt providers.

RAND's researchers conclude that California is spending billions of dollars to care for and educate young children, yet this funding is "not closely tied to the quality or stability of the care children receive."

5. New website goes from knowing what works to doing it

A new website from the U.S. Department of Education, Doing What Works (DWW), takes over where the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) leaves off. WWC evaluates educational programs, including those in early childhood education, by reviewing the rigor of the research evidence behind each program. DWW shows how such programs and practices are implemented in educational settings.

The Doing What Works website features audio recordings, slides, and videos of teachers and administrators discussing research-based programs and putting them into action. Still in its development phase, the site's resources are currently limited to practices geared toward English Language Learners, but what works in early childhood education and other areas will soon be added.

6. Canadian researchers start online encyclopedia on early childhood development

Canada's Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development recently launched an online Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development.

The site compiles research on more than 30 topics related to early childhood, including pre-k programs, learning disabilities, and second language acquisition. Users can easily download a synthesis of the research and a bibliography of studies for each topic.

7. Journals focus on pre-k and other early care and education issues

In addition to the special report published in The American Prospect (see the Prime Pick above), two academic journals have dedicated recent issues to pre-k and early care and education.

The latest issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (Volume 28, Issues 5 & 6) is dedicated to findings from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.

Among the studies is one that compares the quality of different types of child care centers (nonprofit vs. for-profit centers; chains vs. independent centers; non-religious vs. faith-based centers). Another study examined how child care quality impacts achievement among low-income children, directly and indirectly, through its influence on the children's home environment.

Taking a legal perspective, a recent issue of Children's Legal Rights Journal (Volume 27, Number 1) focused on the development of state pre-k programs.

Several articles, including one by Ellen Boylan from the Education Law Center, deal with lessons that have emerged from using the courts to expand pre-k access. Other articles document the journeys that states like Illinois and Georgia took to build their pre-k systems.

These unique, often first-hand perspectives should be useful to advocates and policymakers who are weighing policy options in different areas, from governance, to workforce development, to funding.

8. Assessment methods and instruments used in pre-k programs

Last month's Prime Pick was a report from the National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force that put forth a framework for developing state pre-k assessment systems. For those ready to dig deeper, a report from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro provides more detailed information on how pre-k programs currently assess young children.

The report reviews more than 82 evaluations conducted for pre-k programs in 22 states and 15 local communities and describes some common themes about the kinds of assessment instruments they use and how they are administered.

Included are bibliographies of the evaluations and publications that help decision-makers develop assessment systems. The report also has detailed descriptions of the 27 assessment instruments used by the programs studied.

Together with the Task Force's report, this publication should be a great resource for anyone involved in developing or improving pre-k assessments.

9. Evaluation of Texas' pre-k collaboration model finds some significant results

A multi-year independent evaluation of the the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM) by Edvance Research, Inc. shows mixed results for the program. Participation in the program seems to improve teaching practices in the short-term and impacts only some children's early literacy skills.

TEEM requires participating pre-k programs to collaborate and coordinate their efforts and resources with other early care and education programs in their communities. TEEM programs receive additional resources including professional development, technical assistance, instructional materials, and computerized assessment tools. Thirty-three Texas communities currently participate, serving 27,000 children in 1,800 classrooms, more than half of which are in Head Start and child care centers.

Main findings of the Edvance report include:

• During the first year, the evaluators found no significant effect on children's early literacy skills. However, the study was crippled by the fact that implementation of TEEM did not begin until January 2004, resulting in only a three-month interval between pre-test and post-test data collection. Nevertheless, the evaluators did find a positive effect on teaching behavior (e.g., use of lesson plans, quality of book reading).

• During the second year, the evaluators compared programs that have been in TEEM for two years with those newly funded by the program. They found no difference in teaching practices between teachers in the two groups, suggesting that additional training did not lead to improvement among teachers. However, when comparing children in the two groups, the evaluators found that programs with with a longer period of participation in TEEM produced greater early literacy gains among their students than new TEEM programs, but only for Spanish-speaking children. For the other children, any gains observed were similar between the two types of programs. The researchers speculated that this differential impact on Spanish speakers may be due to the higher likelihood of these children to have teachers with four-year degrees.

• The report demonstrated that early literacy gains observed for each cohort of children over the program's four-year history were similar to each other, suggesting that the effectiveness of the program was maintained as it expanded.

• Finally, the evaluators also found that changes in children's outcomes and teaching practices differed significantly between and within TEEM communities. It is unclear whether the variation in outcomes is a result of differing characteristics among the communities, classrooms, and teachers; inconsistent implementation of TEEM; or both.

10. Research and policy developments for Latino children in Oklahoma and California

Previous studies of the Oklahoma pre-k program have shown that, among all racial groups, Latino children tend to reap the most benefits.

New data from William Gormley's evaluation (PDF) of the Tulsa pre-k program reveal that children in the program whose home language is Spanish and those whose parents were born in Mexico make greater gains in early reading and math skills than those who speak English and have parents who were born in the U.S.

Learning gains were also greater for students whose teachers spoke Spanish, even if formal instruction was conducted in English. To ensure that these gains are a result of overall cognitive development rather than English language acquisition, the study also tested over half of the children who spoke some Spanish in both languages. While the Spanish language test gains were not as large as those in the English language tests, they were significant, suggesting that Spanish-speaking children in the pre-k program were improving not only in English language skills, but in other cognitive areas.

In the meantime, as reported by Education Week, California officials are expected to adopt early learning standards specifically for English Language Learners (ELLs) in early 2008, a first-in-the-nation achievement. Unlike the more comprehensive standards the state department of education has also been developing for all pre-k children, the ones for ELLs are focused on reading, writing, listening, and speaking. While the standards' scope is limited to English skills, they are designed to be used in both monolingual and bilingual classrooms.

11. NIEER provides new national data on pre-k enrollment

The National Institute for Early Education Research updated their policy brief titled "Who Goes to Preschool and Why Does it Matter?"

NIEER's review of early care and education enrollment data from 1991 to 2005 revealed the following:

• Most of the growth in enrollment occurred among four year olds. Enrollment among three year olds remained relatively flat.

• The enrollment rate for children of working mothers rose at a similar rate as children whose mothers who are not in the workforce, suggesting that the demand for these programs is motivated by education needs as much as child care needs.

• Across all income groups, families earning less than $60,000 per year enroll their children at substantially lower rates than those earning more, suggesting that families earning almost 300 percent of the federal poverty level also lack access to these programs.

• Latino children continue to have the lowest enrollment rate, while African-American children have the highest.

The brief also analyzes enrollment trends by geographic regions and mother's education and employment.

12. Study finds play-based pre-k curriculum benefits children's thinking skills

A set of skills called executive functions (EFs) have been found to have strong associations with school readiness and later academic achievement, and a study appearing in Science magazine shows how high-quality pre-k can improve these skills.

EFs are thinking skills that help individuals with cognitive tasks. They include being able to resist distractions or initial reactions, retain information, and think creatively and flexibly to solve a problem. This experimental study showed that a pre-k curriculum called Tools of the Mind was effective in helping children develop such skills.

Using random assignment for both the children and the teachers, the researchers found that at the end of the second year of pre-k, children who experienced the Tools curriculum did better on tasks that demand the use of EF skills than the control group did. In fact, the greater the demand for EF skills, the bigger the difference was between the two groups.

Further analysis also showed that children's performance on EF-related tasks was correlated with early reading and math measures, suggesting that these skills help children academically.

Since play is a central part of this curriculum, this study demonstrates its potential in developing cognitive skills.