Here is a stunning infographic that demonstrates the value of early childhood education.
It appears on Julian Vasquez Heilig’s website called “Cloaking Inequity.”
We know how busy our elected officials are. They don’t have time to read research papers. Just show them this simple yet profound illustration of the benefits of early childhood education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I dunno, call me cynical (guilty as charged), but the more Obama talks about investing in preschool, the more I think it’s a bad idea. The last thing we need is a junior version of Race to the Top. If it was just funding, I would be all about it. But Obama seems unable to fund anything without handing it over to his billionaire buddies.
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You’re probably right. More testing at a younger age until they get to this:
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tiniest-test-takers.html
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We need to get rid of tests and focus on creativity and innovation and technology in pre-schools and getting children to simply express their best self. It can easily be done because its easier for children to learn on their own than for us to ‘teach’ them.
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There already is “a junior version of Race to the Top.” It’s called the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTTT-ELC) and winners were selected. Given the pattern with RTTT, I have to say that RTTT-ELC concerns me greatly, since this administration is so focused on academics and relies so much on test scores…
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Agreed. Funding preschool would be great if the experts on early childhood got to make all the decisions. Won’t happen. So rttt and its billionaires must stay away from the beauty of preschoolers. The jerks will only corrupt the wide open nature, curiousity, joy, imagination, and natural ability to learn (when adults get out of their way) of three and four year olds.
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Nicely done.
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This is nicely done but how very disgraceful to think that we are
having to use pictures, like the pre-school children this is about,
for our government officials. I have not believed for a very long time
that they were reading and that they were handing over their eyes and ears to their aides, but now we are having to treat those bright young minds like children as well.
This nightmare of deception and folly that is being perpetrated and foisted on society, the hundreds of millions now and in the future, is nothing more then a race to power and control. This preparation
for the robotic future and the plan to infuse the minds of the pre-schoolers, while breaking the spirit and ability to teach with skills and humanity of the educators, is nothing more then grabbing young
minds, sorting them, and then determining their futures. Why is this
different then what is done in other countries where children are radicalized to hate and readied for limited mental and physical use?
This education system retooling is anything then what the citizens of
this country envisioned. Read Doughls D. Noble and weep!!! He paid a high personal price for telling the people the truth! Don’t say you have not been warned! Each of his papers/books are worth the time and the reading.
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We need to invest in our little ones. Do we add to the existing model? Do we invent a new one? Our job is to figure all of this out and get it right. Beginning strong is the best way to guarantee ending strong! http://bit.ly/11EhPnf
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Great graphic! Thanks for sharing it, Diane.
I just want to add to this statement,
“To adults, it might just look like finger-painting and building blocks… but more preschool means a brighter future,”
“More preschool” means more painting and blocks for more children, not workbooks and drill for skill. The high quality preschool programs that this information is based on were play-based and they addressed the whole child. The effective preschool programs studied were not teacher-directed and academically-oriented, targeting just cognitive development. They provided a good balance of child-directed and teacher-directed activities in all developmental domains, and play was integral to children’s learning.
Early Childhood Specialist
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Cosmic Tinkerer, thanks for your comments. Baltimore is already boasting that its preschoolers are getting higher test scores when entering kindergarten due to preschool Common Core. I doubt they are finger painting and building blocks.
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Indeed not. Last week I went to a presentation by two kindergarten teachers about “kindergarten readiness” from a local public elementary school in NJ. They were talking about doing math to begin the day, then writing workshop, then lunch, then reading workshop, then more math. The weekly schedule is peppered with art and music (maybe once a week for each of these).
When I was in high school we spent two hours in art and two hours in music every week. But that was back in the 90’s and in a far away country.
It is a full day kindergarten (8am-3pm) and there are only two half-hour recesses.
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Can you say child abuse? or educational malpractice??
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Thanks for the info, Diane. I doubt they are finger painting and building blocks, too. Those are not on the tests. My worst fears about RTTT-ELC are being realized. It’s so sad that non-educators have basically decided that young children should not be allowed to have their childhoods anymore, or learn in ways that are most optimal for their development. Not letting little kids learn through play is very likely to come back and bite: http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/crisis_in_early_ed.pdf
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Remember when teaching a child included social skills, fine motor skills and character development? That was the education I got. It’s not the education I gave, thanks to NCLB/RTTT. One summer, our principal threw away all blocks, housekeeping centers, and everything else “non-academic” in our kindergarten, and banned crayons for 2nd-5th graders. Ever heard of visual-spatial skills? Ever read about how imaginative play leads to higher intelligence and creativity? And don’t get me started on the lack of motor skills in kids today: it was common for me to get a kindergartener who had never colored or held a pencil before. Without our clay and play-dough center, it only takes longer to develop the muscles to write. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Principals today are very dense when I comes to early childhood education. I believe most principals come from older grade levels. I’ve never heard of a kindergarten teacher-turned principal.
That’s why I’m an ex-teacher: I wasn’t allowed to be a teacher in the first place, just a drill sergeant.
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“Principals today are very dense. . . ” Many if not most have been for quite awhile, at least since the turn of this century as many if not most have only spent a few years in the class room. But they consider themselves “educational leaders”. They couldn’t intellectually fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Ethics, most don’t have a clue what that is about.
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I wish the information could be more specific. A lot of the nice long-term outcomes may not be a result of attending preschool. But rather, nice outcomes and attending preschool may both be results of being from a wealthier family.
The only piece that seems to take this into account is “in a study of disadvantaged kids”. But then it does not specify what sort of disadvantages are considered.
Rushing to build a universal preschool system out of thin air (disclaimer: I don’t know if this is what is happening now), would only turn into a worse disaster with much longer term impact.
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I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here. There are and have been quality preschool programs that are well-established, from Waldorf to Montessori to other primarily or wholly play-based programs. There is no reason in the world for all new preschools to look like each other just because they’re publicly funded.
I’m not sure that will be understood by those doing the funding, of course, since they’ll want data data data to back up their funding before they’ll give one iota more – but how do you measure the subjective benefits on children that may or may not be apparent for many years – at least in a way acceptable to lawmakers debating the funding?
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This data/result/outcome-based thinking, which seems to be quite common among people making decisions, is really worrisome, to say the least.
What *result* do we expect from education? Things can start to go in the right direction only when the majority have a consensus on this.
In my opinion, education does not stop once a student graduates. Don’t we all need to learn new things when we start a job? I truly think the whole point of school education is to build good learning habit, so that the students can continue to learn all the things for the rest of their lives. The actual materials and skills that are taught at school are good, but they are not why we send children to schools.
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Actually, on the Infographic page, if you scroll down to where it says, “Pre-K, a Gold Standard: You certainly don’t get what you don’t pay for,” there are links provided to reports on the research, and at the end of those reports, there are more links provided which go to info about the studies cited.
There has been a lot of research on low income children, including the famous longitudinal study of the High/Scope Perry Preschool program which can be found here: http://www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=219
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Thanks for the useful information!
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I don’t doubt all of the facts, but I wonder if there is an underlying cause, not just attending kindergarten. Parents who are more likely to send their kids to kindergarten, are more likely to support education overall. I think back to a chapter in Freakonomics where they claim that factors set before birth (e.g., age of parents, parents education, parents income, etc.) had a higher correlation to student success then factors that occurred after birth (e.g., reading to your kids, taking them to museums, etc.). Now, there was a higher correlation between socio-economic situation pre-birth with doing the activities that are perceived to be “good” for kids who do well in school. Are we simply seeing another facet of that here.
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Google Prof. Heckman and his talk on the Perry Preschool project. His research shows that for very disadvantaged preschoolers there is measurable and long-lasting improvement in important areas.
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Agreed re Perry, though the original comparison group was quite small.
There is, imho, more recent research showing the impact of for, example, age 3-grade 3 programs. Art Taylor and Judy Temple
http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2011/UR_CONTENT_293949.html
School-based early childhood education program yields high economic returns, University of Minnesota researchers find
Media Note: Embargoed until 12:01 a.m. Friday, Feb. 4. For a copy of the study, contact Patty Mattern at mattern@umn.edu.
Contacts: Diane Cormany, College of Education and Human Development, dcormany@umn.edu, (612) 626-5650
Patty Mattern, University News Service, mattern@umn.edu, (612) 624-2801
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/03/2011) —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.”
For more information about The Chicago Longitudinal Study, including the CPC program, go to http://cehd.umn.edu/icd/cls The Human Capital Research Collaborative is at http://humancapitalrc.org. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which is part of the National Institute of Health, funded this study. To learn more about NICHD go to http://www.nichd.nih.gov.
Tags: College of Education and Human Development
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Yes, there is strong longitudinal research supporting the efficacy of the Chicago Child Parent Centers (CPCs). Too bad so many of them were shut down under Arne Duncan and Barbara Bowman. They attributed that to funding issues and gentrification, but no attempt was made to provide CPCs to communities that really needed them, in other low income areas of the city, especially Hispanic neighborhoods.
As I recall, at the same time, CPS was shutting down neighborhood schools and they rented them out to charters for $1, so why the CPCs could not have been moved and at least co-located in those buildings suggests that charter expansion was the priority. And renting schools for $1 does not square with a high need for funding. See this article, and be sure to scroll down and read the comments: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2012/02/28/19886/child-parent-centers-expand
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As a pre-k teacher who is feeling the push down into pre-k I am more than a bit concerned about the interest by the current Administration in early childhood. The Common Core and the insistence on “academic rigor” has all but destroyed pre-k education.
I am trying to hide real learning during the day and still provide what the suits are requiring in a way that will do the least harm to my students.
I am feeling discouraged and defeated but I refuse to abandon my students to this current madness.
It is my hope that eventually, before we destroy more generations of students, the tide will turn and I can return to giving my students what they need and not what the suits think they need.
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