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James Heckman
Center for the Economics of Human Development
University of Chicago

Professor Heckman’s latest research, “The Lifecycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program,” looks at the effects of the ABC/CARE early childhood development programs in North Carolina. These nearly identical approaches provided comprehensive early childhood care and learning from birth through age five, and delivered a 13% per year return on investment, including all costs associated with running the programs. While it is not possible to isolate which program component produced individual outcomes, common program elements point practitioners and policymakers toward a set of elements that comprise a quality program capable of delivering the greatest results to children and those who invest in their early development.

High-quality programs:

1. Start at birth.
2. Provide continuous care.
3. Engage parents.
4. Incorporate health as an input.
5. Recognize the importance of nutrition.

Learn more here.

Nicole Smerillo, Arthur Reynolds, Suh-Ruu Ou, Judy Temple

Society for Research in Child Development 2017

Presented by Nicole Smerillo at the 2017 Society for Research in Child Devlopment biennial meeting April 6-8 in Austin, TX.

The purpose of this study was to:

• Extend the literature on chronic early absence.
• Bring a focus to attendance in the early years-early attendance is often overlooked because school leaders focus on the attendance of older children.
• Look for heterogeneous impacts of chronic early absence to inform the development of attendance interventions.

This study provides evidence that chronic absence in the early grades may cause potential harm, not only to academic achievement, but also to children’s abilities to adjust to student life and norms.

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Deborah A. Phillips, Mark W. Lipsey, Kenneth A. Dodge, Ron Haskins, Daphna Bassok, Margaret R. Burchinal, Greg J. Duncan, Mark Dynarski, Katherine A. Magnuson, and Christina Weiland

Brookings and Duke Univeristy

Scientific research has established that if all children are to achieve their developmental potential, it is important to lay the foundation during the earliest years for lifelong health, learning, and positive behavior. A central question is how well our public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs are doing to build this foundation.

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia, through 57 pre-K programs, have introduced substantial innovations in their early education systems by developing the infrastructure, program sites, and workforce required to accommodate pre-K education. These programs now serve nearly 30 percent of the nation’s 4-year-olds and 5 percent of 3-year-olds.

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in assessing how well these short- and long-term goals have been achieved. What should we expect pre-K to produce for our society? How can we ensure that children who attend these programs get as much out of them as they can?

In “Puzzling it out: The current state of scientific knowledge on pre-kindergarten effects” (PDF), a task force comprised of social scientists from Brookings and Duke University lists six consensus statements on what we know about the effects of pre-K and highlights the importance of gathering further evidence to answer three important questions: What features of pre-K programs, specifically, put children on a positive developmental trajectory? What’s the best way to scale up small pre-K programs to a school-district or state-wide level? How can we use evaluations of an earlier generation of programs to guide the development of today’s pre-K programs? The consensus statement is part of a broader report titled “The current state of scientific knowledge on pre-kindergarten effects” (PDF).

Workforce Development for the Next Generation: Early Childhood Education

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Community Development and Policy Studies, Chicago Fedeal Reserve

By Emily Engel

Workforce development, long thought to be the purview of community colleges and other vocational programs increasingly extends into early childhood education and elementary school. In fact, many practitioners today believe that workforce development and early childhood education go hand in hand, with many of the skills that bode well for career success developed early in life.

Read the full article here.

StarTribune                                

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A new Federal Reserve survey has found that children who grew up in poverty were twice as likely to struggle with financial challenges later in life, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Thursday.

The survey showed that more than half of young people age 25 to 39 who reported that as children they worried over things like having enough food were currently facing financial challenges, Yellen said. That was double the number with financial troubles who did not face such concerns as children.

Yellen told a Fed conference on community development that the findings underscored the need to provide children with the resources they need to achieve financial success later in life.

In her speech, Yellen made no comments on the current state of the economy or interest rates.

In the survey, which the Fed will publish later this spring, Yellen said there was a clear connection between childhood struggles and financial problems later in life.

"Young adults who regularly or sometimes worried when they were children about care, safety or having enough to eat are also less likely to be employed, less likely to have consistent income month-to-month and less likely to pay all of their current monthly bills in full, compared with those who never or rarely worried about these concerns as children," Yellen said.

Yellen said the research to be presented at the Fed's two-day conference made a compelling case for the need to prepare people starting at an early age for success in the labor market.

"This research underscores the value of starting young to develop basic work habits and skills," she said. "These habits and skills help prepare people for work, help them enter the labor market sooner, meet with more success over time and be in a position to develop the more specialized skills and obtain the academic credentials that are strongly correlated with higher and steadier earnings."

Yellen said a growing body of research showed that greater success was being achieved by addressing workforce development in early childhood education compared to spending on job training later in life.

"Ensuring that all of our kids have 'strong foundations' will help build a similarly strong foundation for the U.S. economy," Yellen said.

LAURA BORNFREUND, HARRIET DICHTER, MIRIAM CALDERON, AMAYA GARCIA

In December 2015, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, replacing No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This latest iteration of the law brings new attention to children’s earliest years. In a paper out today, New Americaand the BUILD Initiative offer an introduction to ESSA and explore major provisions that have implications for our nation’s youngest learners.

Report prepared by University of British Columbia

Released February 14, 2017

This report, prepared by University of British Columbia for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), is an important step toward a powerful movement not just to strengthen the infrastructure for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) but to improve the quality of teaching from preschool through high school nationwide.

Read the full report

Tarjei Havnes and Magne Mogstad

Discussion Papers No. 774, March 2014
Statistics Norway, Research Department

This study assesses the case for universal child care programs in the context of a Norwegian reform which led to a large-scale expansion of subsidized child care. Taken together, the findings could have important implications for the policy debate over universal child care programs, suggesting that the benefits of providing subsidized child care to middle and upper-class children are unlikely to exceed the costs.

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Mark W. Lipsey, Ph.D.; Dale C. Farran, Ph.D.; Kerry G. Hofer, Ph.D.

Peabody Research Institute, Vanderbilt University   September, 2015

In 2009, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute, in coordination with the Tennessee Department of Education’s Division of Curriculum and Instruction, initiated a rigorous, independent evaluation of the state’s Voluntary Prekindergarten program  (TNVPK). It was designed to determine whether the children who participate in the TN‐VPK program make greater academic and behavioral gains in areas that prepare them for later schooling than comparable children who do not participate in the program.

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U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education just released findings from a descriptive study of PreK-3rd grade continuum that examined the implementation of P-3 alignment, including differentiated instruction, in five programs.

Read the