Effectiveness of Infant and Early Childhood Programs

This section includes information about:

• National Centers
• OSEP National Longitudinal Studies
• Long-Term Impacts of Early Intervention
• Economic Impact Studies
• Major Reviews of Effectiveness

In general over the last couple decades, research on the effectiveness of early childhood interventions has shifted from asking the question "Are early education programs effective?" to "How are certain elements of programs effective, in what ways, and for which children?" Research on the economics of early childhood interventions has shifted from asking the question "Are early education programs economically efficient?" to "How can programs produce the greatest benefits at the lowest cost?"

The initiatives and research studies included in this section address the following types of questions about the efficacy of early childhood interventions:

• What types of outcomes can be expected from early intervention and early childhood programs?
• How can these outcomes be measured?
• Are these outcomes being achieved?
• How do differences in interventions or program factors affect the outcomes?
• How can the outcomes of interventions be differentiated from other influences on children's development?
• What is the value of outcomes to children, parents, schools, and society as a whole?
• How do the costs of early childhood interventions relate to the competing goals of other programs or national priorities?

National Centers

• What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is a project of US DOE funded in 2002 to summarize scientific evidence of effectiveness of programs and strategies to enhance educational outcomes. It will provide easily accessible and searchable online databases including registries for educational interventions (practices), evaluation studies, approaches and policies, test of instruments, and evaluators willing to conduct quality evaluations of education interventions. One current topic will focus on interventions for K-3 students who are having difficulties developing beginning reading skills. Although topic areas are chosen to meet the needs of K-12, possible future topic areas include interventions for preschool-aged children's school readiness.

• Promising Practices Network (PPN) highlights programs and practices that credible research indicates are effective in improving outcomes for children, youth, and families:
  • Research on Children Ready for School provides links to short summaries of research findings or synthetic summaries of research which have been screened to ensure objective, high quality evidence that is concise and easy to understand.
  • Children Succeeding in School provides links to short summaries of research findings which describe how children are succeeding in school.

• NGA Center for Best Practices' Task Force on School Readiness identified actions that governors and their early childhood policy leaders can take to support families, schools, and communities in their efforts to ensure that all children start school ready to reach their full potential. The recommendations are based on a review of available research and of strategies, activities or approaches that have proven effective in attaining intended outcomes. See Building the Foundation for Bright Futures: Final Report of the Task Force on School Readiness and companion piece, Building the Foundation for Bright Futures: A Governor's Guide to School Readiness.

• National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) was established at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education with a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. NIEER supports early childhood education initiatives by providing objective, nonpartisan information based on research to ensure that every American child can receive a good education at ages three and four. NIEER has two studies on the long-term effects of variations in the intensity and duration of early education experiences for urban children in New Jersey.

• The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) sponsored a national call for nominations of comprehensive initiatives to support infants, toddlers, and their families. Information presented throughout this website draws on the experiences of 25 selected initiatives across the country to provide a menu of concrete, innovative strategies states and communities can use to promote more targeted and effective policy and practice to help infants, toddlers and their families get off to strong and nurturing starts.

• Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy is sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government with the mission to promote government policymaking based on rigorous evidence of program effectiveness. An evidence-based approach to social and economic policy, advocated by the Coalition, could for the first time bring rapid progress to areas such as education, poverty reduction, crime prevention, health care financing and delivery, and economic development, and fundamentally improve life outcomes for millions of Americans.

• The Future of Children is a publication of the Children, Families, and Communities Program of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation that promotes effective policies and programs for children by providing policymakers, service providers, and the media with timely, objective information based on the best available research.

• Effectiveness of Early Childhood Programs, Curricula, and Interventions in Promoting School Readiness is a research initiative intended to stimulate rigorous research studies and programs that examine the effectiveness of integrative early interventions, programs across a variety of early childhood settings, and curricula promoting school readiness for children, birth through 5, who are at risk of later school difficulties. Integrative programs are those that include components intended to promote children's school readiness across multiple domains of cognitive and socioemotional functioning.

OSEP National Longitudinal Studies

OSEP has funded longitudinal studies to assess the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 97). The collective purpose of the national research studies is to influence policy and practice in support of improved results for children and youth with disabilities. Two OSEP longitudinal studies are child-based studies that relate specifically to young children with disabilities:

• National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study (NEILS) is following more than 3,300 children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities and their families through their experiences in early intervention and into early elementary school. The study will provide information about the characteristics of children and families, the services they receive, and the outcomes they experience. Includes study design, data collection, reports and publications, presentations.
• Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS) is following a group of children who receive preschool special education services as they progress through the early elementary years. The information from PEELS will be used to help policymakers and researchers understand the variety and effectiveness of preschool special education programs.

Long-Term Impacts of Early Intervention

• The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a carefully controlled scientific study of the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children. Children from low-income families received full-time, high-quality educational intervention in a childcare setting from infancy through age 5. Each child had an individualized prescription of educational activities. Educational activities consisted of "games" incorporated into the child's day. Activities focused on social, emotional, and cognitive areas of development but gave particular emphasis to language. Children's progress was monitored over time with follow-up studies conducted at ages 12, 15, and 21. The young adult findings demonstrate that important, long-lasting benefits were associated with the early childhood program. The Web site includes major findings, policy implications and publications.

• The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project developed a high-quality educational approach nearly 40 years ago focusing on 3- and 4-year-olds at risk for school failure. The longitudinal study has found that not only was the project effective as an educational intervention, it also demonstrated other positive outcomes, including a significantly lower rate of crime and delinquency and a lower incidence of teenage pregnancy and welfare dependency. By the age of 27, program participants were nearly three times as likely to own their own homes than the control group and less than half as likely to be receiving public assistance. The Web site includes program outcomes, early childhood risk factors for delinquency, and program and policy implications.

• The Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) Program is a large-scale school-based preschool and early school-age intervention for low-income children that emphasizes parent involvement and the development of literacy skills. Studies have indicated that program participation beginning in the half-day preschool program is associated with higher school achievement, higher rates of school completion through age 20, lower rates of school dropout, lower rates of juvenile arrest for violent and non-violent charges, and with less need for school remedial services.

• A Longitudinal Follow-up of Graduates from Two Contrasting Preschool Instructional Models: Phase 3 is a four-year follow-up study on a sample of 205 students with disabilities who were educated in two highly contrasting preschool instructional models and who have been followed prospectively to age 18. By looking at developmental profiles that address such issues as when children become competent readers, their placement in regular or special education or movement between the two, the development of affective behavior through adolescence, and attitudes toward school and life after school, informed conclusions can be drawn from the data collected by the project about what actually happened to the large group of students with disabilities under study since early childhood.

• What Do We Know About Raising Minority Academic Achievement? A 2001 American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) report provides a compendium of evaluations of school and youth programs that show gains for minority youth across a broad range of academic achievement indicators. The purpose of the report is to inform policymaking and funding decisions by providing easy-to-read, accessible, concrete and research-proven evidence of academic achievement gains for minority youth. Evaluations of early childhood programs were particularly strong and positive. When compared to control groups, minority children who attended early childhood development programs were more likely to remain in school, complete more years of education, and require less special education. The study presents the ten most frequent strategies identified in those programs showing gains for minority youth.

Economic Impact Studies

• The Long Term Economic Benefits of High Quality Early Childhood Intervention Programs: NECTAC Minibibliography (December 2005) (PDF: 99kb) provides a selection of articles, reports, and book chapters that review some of the major findings on long-term cost savings of high quality early intervention for at-risk infants, toddlers and young children and their families. Some of the included studies focus on services for young children with disabilities, although most address early intervention for children who are at risk for adverse developmental outcomes due to poverty and other environmental factors.

• Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return (March 2003), by analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, makes a case for investing in early childhood development. Studies find that well-focused investments in early childhood development yield high public as well as private returns.
• A Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention (November 2002) was conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER). While other studies showed the children enrolled in the program fared significantly better in school and had better prospects as young adults, the new research set out to assess whether the benefit to society was worth the costs. The research found that taxpayers received a four-to-one return on their investment. The study shows other social dividends, including savings to school districts because participants were less likely to require special or remedial education and significantly higher lifetime earnings for participants and their mothers.

• Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-Parent Center Program: Executive Summary (June 2001) showed that each component of CPC program had economic benefits that exceeded costs. This was accomplished by increasing economic well being and reducing educational and social expenditures for remediation and treatment. With an average cost per child of $6,730 (1998 dollars) for 1.5 years of participation, the preschool program generated a total return to society at large of $47,759 per participant. Economic benefits of the preschool program to the general public (taxpayers and crime victims), exclusive of increased earnings capacity, were $25,771 per participant. Overall, $7.10 dollars were returned to society at large for every dollar invested in preschool.

• Cost, Quality and Outcomes Study (1999) A major national study by researchers at 4 universities shows that high-quality child care positively affects children's cognitive and social skills through the second grade. Children in quality care programs when they were 3 and 4 years old scored better on math, language and social skills development through the early elementary years than children in poor-quality care. Includes technical report and executive summary.

Major Reviews of Effectiveness

• Handbook of Early Childhood Education (2002), edited by Jack Shonkoff and Sam Meisels, has a section on measuring the impact of service delivery that provides an understanding of the issues around program effectiveness and efficacy.

• The Effectiveness of Early Intervention (1997), edited by Michael Guralnick, explores program factors and the effects of intervention for children at risk and for children with established disabilities. It reviews the past decade's advances and presents an agenda for new research that reflects the complexities and interrelatedness that exist among child and family characteristics, program features, and early intervention outcomes.

• From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000), edited by Jack Shonkoff and Deborah Phillips for the National Academy of Sciences, is the product of a national committee which evaluated and integrated the current extensive body of research on early childhood development and the role of early experiences. The convergence of advancing knowledge in neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences with the changing social and economic circumstances under which families with young children are living calls for a reexamination of the nation's responses to the needs of young children and their families. How can the nation use knowledge about early childhood development to nurture, protect and ensure the health and well-being of all young children as well as maximize the nation's economic, political and social interest?. This book presents conclusions and recommendations for early childhood policy, practice, professional development, research and evaluation.

• ERIC Digests on the Effectiveness of Early Intervention. ERIC digests are short reports that provide a basic overview and key resources on topics of interest to the educational community. Links to a number of ERIC digests on the Effectiveness of Early Intervention are available on our NECTAC Clearinghouse Web site.