Getting Children Ready for School and Ready for Life

Pre-School Programs May Pay For Themselves In Reduced Treatment Later

01 13 12'

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ScienceDaily (May 12, 2008) — A growing body of economic research suggests that public investment in early childhood programs may be able to lower public costs for social services by improving children’s long-term welfare, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

Such research could promote a reorientation of child and human services toward investment and prevention, moving away from the current system that seeks to “treat” problems that develop later in life, according to the report.

But economic analysis of early childhood programs does not necessarily result in clear direction about what is the single best approach to any problem, according to researchers. Instead, economic research is more likely to highlight a spectrum of promising services and provide guidance about how to choose an optimal level of each program.

The RAND report is intended to provide policymakers with a primer about how economic analysis can help set agendas for early childhood policy and identify the economic benefits of targeting certain groups for help.

“Economic analysis increasingly plays a role in the debate on the merits of early childhood programs, but many people are unprepared to participate in the discussion,” said Rebecca Kilburn, the report’s lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “The report is intended to provide clarity and structure for making use of such research.”

Interest in using economics to help analyze early childhood policies has grown as business CEOs, Federal Reserve Bank analysts, and Nobel Prize-winning economists have called for increased public spending on early childhood programs.

Two overarching concepts from economic research have become important in discussions of early childhood policy — human capital theory and monetary “payoffs” from investments in early childhood programs.

Human capital theory is an economic model that provides a framework that brings together current thinking about early childhood policy, including the concept that later skills build on skills developed earlier in life. The theory accounts for such concepts as nature and nurture, and the idea that capabilities involve multiple dimensions.

Probably the most widely recognized intersection between economics and early childhood policy is in the analysis of the costs and benefits of early childhood programs such as home visiting and preschool. Such analysis typically compares the costs and benefits of early childhood programs to determine the “rate of return” the public will receive for money spent on such efforts.

A growing body of program evaluations shows that investments in early childhood programs can generate government savings by, for example, reducing the need to provide social services later in life or by improving individuals’ earnings, which then generates more tax revenue.

Kilburn and co-author Lynn Karoly write that an increasing body of knowledge has demonstrated how poorly U.S. children fare compared to their counterparts in other developed countries. Research has shown that U.S. babies increasingly are born with low birth weights, elementary-age children are overweight and asthmatic at growing rates, and more than 700,000 children spend time in foster care each year.

In addition, research from the fields of neuroscience, developmental psychology and program evaluation has shown how early experiences help determine how a person’s brain develops and that effective early intervention strategies can improve a wide range of outcomes from childhood through early adulthood.

While many studies have found that the cost of early childhood programs can produce long-term benefits that offset their costs, not every early childhood program does so, according to the RAND report.

In addition, researchers caution that evidence suggests that the returns from early childhood programs may decline under certain conditions. While monetary benefits can remain positive for universal programs, the rate of return may be higher when programs are targeted toward the groups likely to benefit from them the most, according to the report.

There also is recognition that the benefits from early childhood interventions may be tied to the quality of those interventions, but higher quality often costs more. Unless funding grows, researchers say, shifting toward higher quality may mean that fewer children can be served.

The study is entitled “The Economics of Early Childhood Policy: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children” and is available from the RAND website. Support for study was provided by Casey Family Programs.

 

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Large-Scale Early Education Linked to Higher Living Standards and Crime Prevention 25 Years Later

01 11 12'

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ScienceDaily (June 9, 2011) — High-quality early education has a strong, positive impact well into adulthood, according to research led by Arthur Reynolds, co-director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative and professor of child development, and Judy Temple, a professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. The study is the longest follow-up ever of an established large-scale early childhood program.

In the study published June 9 in the journal Science, Reynolds and Temple (with co-authors Suh-Ruu Ou, Irma Arteaga, and Barry White) report on more than 1,400 individuals whose well-being has been tracked for as much as 25 years. Those who had participated in an early childhood program beginning at age 3 showed higher levels of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, job skills, and health insurance coverage as well as lower rates of substance abuse, felony arrest, and incarceration than those who received the usual early childhood services.

The research focused on participants in the Child-Parent Center Education Program (CPCEP), a publicly funded early childhood development program that begins in preschool and provides up to six years of service in the Chicago public schools. Through the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS), Reynolds and colleagues have studied the educational and social development of a same-age cohort of low-income, minority children (93 percent African American) who participated in this program. The CLS is one of the most extensive and comprehensive studies ever undertaken of young children’s learning. Reynolds and colleagues have reported on the Chicago individuals starting in preschool, then annually through the school-age years, and periodically through early adulthood.

The new paper reports on the sample participants at age 28, when they found the most positive outcomes among the 957 individuals who began services in preschool — especially males and children of high school drop outs. Positive effects also were found for the duration of services, those participating for 4 to 6 years from preschool to third grade. The control group of 529 included individuals of the same age who participated in alternative early childhood programs in randomly selected schools and who matched the program group on socioeconomic status. Among the major findings (preschool group compared to the control group, adjusted for sample attrition):

  •        9 percent more completed high school; 19 percent more males
  •        20 percent more achieved moderate or higher level of socioeconomic status
  •        19 percent more carried some level of health insurance coverage
  •        28 percent fewer abused drugs and alcohol; 21 percent fewer males alone
  •        22 percent fewer had a felony arrest; the difference was 45 percent for children of high school dropouts
  •        28 percent fewer had experienced incarceration or jail

Participants who participated in CPCEP for four to six years (preschool to third grade) compared to the control group receiving less than four years:

  •        18 percent more achieved moderate or higher level of socioeconomic status
  •        23 percent more had some level of private health insurance coverage
  •        55 percent more achieved on-time high school graduation
  •        36 percent fewer had been arrested for violence

“When you follow people for more than two decades, an understanding of how early experiences shape later development can be achieved,” Reynolds notes. “A chain of positive influences initiated by large advantages in school readiness and parent involvement leads to better school performance and enrollment in higher quality schools, and ultimately to higher educational attainment and socioeconomic status.”

Findings demonstrate that effects of sustained school-based early education can endure through the third decade of life. Previously, Reynolds and colleagues documented the cost benefits of early education, demonstrating an 18 percent annual return on investment for society. However, policy has yet to support the kind of early interventions needed to solve persistent societal issues.

“Unfortunately, we still spend very little on prevention,” says Reynolds. “Only 3 percent of the $14 billion dollars allocated to school districts to serve low-income children under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [No Child Left Behind] goes to preschool. Yet preschool programs are one of the most cost-effective of all social programs.”

He explains that since about half of the achievement gap between children from higher and lower economic statuses at age 10 already exists at age 5, education interventions need to start even earlier. “State and federal policies don’t reflect the knowledge of how much earlier these gaps appear, and therefore the need to start as early as possible,” he says.

Based on this and earlier studies, Reynolds and Temple say the key to CPC’s success lies in both the quality of the program and its teachers, the opportunity for more than one year of participation, small classes, comprehensive family services, structured activity-based curricula focusing on language and literacy, and attention to continuity of learning from preschool to the early school grades.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

 

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Early Childhood Education Program Yields High Economic Returns

01 10 12'

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ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011) — For every $1 invested in a Chicago early childhood education program, nearly $11 is projected to return to society over the children’s lifetimes — equivalent to an 18 percent annual return on program investment, according to a study led by University of Minnesota professor of child development Arthur Reynolds in the College of Education and Human Development.

For the analysis, Reynolds and other researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the Chicago Public Schools’ federally funded Child Parent Centers (CPCs) established in 1967. Their work represents the first long-term economic analysis of an existing, large-scale early education program. Researchers surveyed study participants and their parents, and analyzed education, employment, public aid, criminal justice, substance use and child welfare records for the participants through to age 26.

“Our findings provide strong evidence that sustained high-quality early childhood programs can contribute to well-being for individuals and society,” said Reynolds, director of the Chicago Longitudinal Study and co-director of the Human Capital Research Collaborative at the University of Minnesota. “The large-scale CPC program has one of the highest economic returns of any social program for young people. As public institutions are being pressed to cut costs, our findings suggest that increasing access to high-quality programs starting in preschool and continuing into the early grades is an efficient use of public resources.”

The CPC program in the project provided services for low-income families beginning at age three in 20 school sites. Kindergarten and school-age services are provided up to age nine (third grade). Funded by Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, CPC is the second oldest (after Head Start) federally funded preschool program. The analysis appears in the January/February issue of Child Development, the journal of the Society for Research in Child Development. Co-authoring researchers included Judy Temple, Barry White and Suh-Ruu Ou at the University of Minnesota and Dylan Robertson from the Chicago Public Schools.

Reynolds and his colleagues did the cost-benefit analysis of the CPC using information collected on about 900 children enrolled in the 20 centers starting when they were three and first enrolled in a preschool program. The study continued until the children were nine and taking part in a school-age program that featured smaller classes, teacher aides, and instructional and family support. Follow-up interviews were done in early adulthood and information was collected from many sources until age 26. These children were compared to a group of about 500 comparable children who didn’t take part in the CPC but participated in the usual educational interventions for disadvantaged youths in Chicago schools.

The CPC resulted in significantly higher rates of attendance at 4-year colleges and employment in higher-skilled jobs and significantly lower rates of felony arrests and symptoms of depression in young adulthood.

The program’s economic benefits in 2007 dollars exceeded costs, including increased earnings and tax revenues, averted costs related to crime and savings for child welfare, special education and grade retention. The preschool part showed the strongest economic benefits providing a total return to society of $10.83 per dollar invested — equivalent to an 18 percent annual return on program investment. Gains varied by child, program and family group.

When the researchers included the benefits from reductions in smoking, total returns rose to more than $12 per dollar invested. The school-age program yielded a return of about $4 per dollar invested (annual rate of return of 10 percent) and the combined preschool and school-age program (preschool to third grade) yielded returns of $8.24 per dollar invested (annual rate of return of 18 percent), based on average net benefits per child of $38,000 above and beyond less extensive intervention.

Children at higher levels of risk experienced the highest economic benefits, including males ($17.88 per dollar invested; a 22% annual return), children who had taken part in preschool for a year ($13.58 per dollar invested; a 21% annual return) and children from higher-risk families, including those whose parents had not graduated from high school ($15.88 per dollar invested; a 20% annual return).

The researchers identified five key principles of the CPC that they say led to its effectiveness, including providing services that are of sufficient length or duration, are high in intensity and enrichment, feature small class sizes and teacher-student ratios, are comprehensive in scope and are implemented by well-trained and well-compensated staff. A further unique feature of the research is that the origin of the economic returns can be empirically traced through a chain of early educational advantages to cumulate in long-term effects.

The findings from this analysis can be useful to policymakers and school superintendents across the nation as they make funding decisions. A lot of states are thinking of scaling back on early childhood investments, but this analysis suggests the opposite, Reynolds said.

“Access to effective programs like CPC should be increased,” Reynolds said. “In scarce times, policymakers should divest in programs that aren’t working and reserve the scarce resources for the most effective.”

 

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