Report aims to 'untangle' conflicting research on early learning programs

Educationdive | January 31, 2019

It’s easy for educators following research on early-childhood education to get confused. District and school leaders that want to add or expand on-site preschool programs may especially be wondering how to best design a program when one study points to the lasting benefits of preschool and another seems to contradict it.A new report from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) seeks to clarify what sometimes feels like conflicting research on early learning programs, especially those that are publicly funded. “Untangling the Evidence on Preschool Effectiveness: Insights for Policymakers” includes a comprehensive review of existing studies and highlights what specific benefits — such as literacy and math skills, placement in special education and grade retention — they were able to measure. “Sorting out these findings requires an examination of the way that different studies construct comparison groups — whether children in those groups are truly comparable to the children who attended the preschool program under study and whether they themselves attended a different preschool,” the authors write.The report, however, also focuses more specifically on two studies that found disappointing results for children who participated in a particular model. The first is Head Start — a 2012 impact study showed that by the time former Head Start students reached 1st grade, most were not performing noticeably better in school than a sample of similar children from low-income families that did not attend the program, which provides early-childhood education and other resources to this student population and their families.

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