Investing in Our Future:
The Evidence Base on
Preschool Education
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Margaret R. Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa,
William T. Gormley, Jens Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah Phillips, Martha J. Zaslow
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
Investing in Our Future:
The Evidence Base on
Preschool Education
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Margaret R. Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa,
William T. Gormley, Jens Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah Phillips, Martha J. Zaslow
*
* After the first two primary authors, the authors are listed alphabetically. The authors thank Deborah Phillips and the Foundation for Child Development for
funding this work. The authors would also like to thank those who provided helpful reviews: J. Lawrence Aber, Mary Catherine Arbour, Karen Bierman, Maia
Connors, Greg Duncan, Philip Fisher, Ruth Friedman, Eugene Garcia, Ron Haskins, Jacqueline Jones, Laura Justice, Nonie Lesaux, Joan Lombardi, Pamela
Morris, Adele Robinson, Jack Shonkoff, Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, and Jane Waldfogel.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University
Christina Weiland, University of Michigan
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University
Margaret R. Burchinal, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina
Linda M. Espinosa, University of Missouri, Columbia
William T. Gormley, Georgetown University
Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago
Katherine A. Magnuson, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Deborah Phillips, Georgetown University
Martha J. Zaslow, Society for Research in Child Development and Child Trends
You can find this report at
http://fcd-us.org/resources/evidence-base-preschool
http://www.srcd.org/policy-media/policy-updates/meetings-briefings/investing-our-future-
evidence-base-preschool
Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education 1
Executive Summary
Large-scale public preschool programs can have substantial impacts on children’s
early learning. Scientific evidence on the impacts of early childhood education has
progressed well beyond exclusive reliance on the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian
programs. A recent analysis integrating evaluations of 84 preschool programs concluded
that, on average, children gain about a third of a year of additional learning across language,
reading, and math skills. At-scale preschool systems in Tulsa and Boston have produced
larger gains of between a half and a full year of additional learning in reading and math.
Benefits to children’s socio-emotional development and health have been documented in
programs that focus intensively on these areas.
Quality preschool education is a profitable investment. Rigorous efforts to estimate
whether the economic benefits of early childhood education outweigh the costs of providing
these educational opportunities indicate that they are a wise financial investment. Available
benefit-cost estimates based on older, intensive interventions, such as the Perry Preschool
Program, as well as contemporary, large-scale public preschool programs, such as the
Chicago Child-Parent Centers and Tulsa’s preschool program, range from three to seven
dollars saved for every dollar spent.
The most important aspects of quality in preschool education are stimulating and
supportive interactions between teachers and children and effective use of curricula.
Children benefit most when teachers engage in stimulating interactions that support
learning and are emotionally supportive. Interactions that help children acquire new
knowledge and skills provide input to children, elicit verbal responses and reactions from
them, and foster engagement in and enjoyment of learning. Recent evaluations tell us that
effective use of curricula focused on such specific aspects of learning as language and
literacy, math, or socio-emotional development provide a substantial boost to children’s
learning. Guidelines about the number of children in a classroom, the ratio of teachers and
children, and staff qualifications help to increase the likelihood of—but do not assure—
supportive and stimulating interactions. Importantly, in existing large-scale studies, only a
minority of preschool programs are observed to provide excellent quality and levels of
instructional support are especially low.
Supporting teachers in their implementation of instructional approaches through
coaching or mentoring can yield important benefits for children. Coaching or
mentoring that provides support to the teacher on how to implement content-rich and
engaging curricula shows substantial promise in helping to assure that such instruction
is being provided. Such coaching or mentoring involves modeling positive instructional
approaches and providing feedback on the teacher’s implementation in a way that sets goals
but is also supportive. This can occur either directly in the classroom or though web-based
exchange of video clips.
2 Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education
Quality preschool education can benefit middle-class children as well as disadvantaged
children; typically developing children as well as children with special needs; and dual
language learners as well as native speakers. Although early research focused only on
programs for low-income children, more recent research focusing on universal preschool
programs provides the opportunity to ask if preschool can benefit children from middle-
income as well as low-income families. The evidence is clear that middle-class children can
benefit substantially, and that benefits outweigh costs for children from middle-income as
well as those from low-income families. However, children from low-income backgrounds
benefit more. Children with special needs who attended Tulsa’s preschool program showed
comparable improvements in reading and pre-writing skills as typically developing children.
Further, at the end of first grade, children with special needs who had attended Head Start
as 3-year-olds showed stronger gains in math and social-emotional development than
children with special needs who had not attended Head Start. Studies of both Head Start
and public preschool programs suggest that dual language learners benefit as much as, and
in some cases more than, their native speaker counterparts.
A second year of preschool shows additional benefits. The available studies, which focus
on disadvantaged children, show further benefits from a second year of preschool. However,
the gains are not always as large as from the first year of preschool. This may be because
children who attend two years of preschool are not experiencing a sequential building of
instruction from the first to the second year.
Long-term benefits occur despite convergence of test scores. As children from
low-income families in preschool evaluation studies are followed into elementary school,
differences between those who received preschool and those who did not on tests of
academic achievement are reduced. However, evidence from long-term evaluations of
both small-scale, intensive interventions and Head Start suggest that there are long-term
effects on important societal outcomes such as high-school graduation, years of education
completed, earnings, and reduced crime and teen pregnancy, even after test-score effects
decline to zero. Research is now underway focusing on why these long-term effects occur
even when test scores converge.
There are important benefits of comprehensive services when these added services
are carefully chosen and targeted. When early education provides comprehensive
services, it is important that these extensions of the program target services and practices
that show benefits to children and families. Early education programs that have focused in
a targeted way on health outcomes (e.g., connecting children to a regular medical home;
integrating comprehensive screening; requiring immunizations) have shown such benefits as
an increase in receipt of primary medical care and dental care. In addition, a parenting focus
can augment the effects of preschool on children’s skill development, but only if it provides
parents with modeling of positive interactions or opportunities for practice with feedback.
Simply providing information through classes or workshops is not associated with further
improvements in children’s skills.
Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education 3
Investing in Our Future:
The Evidence Base on
Preschool Education
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Margaret R. Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa,
William T. Gormley, Jens Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah Phillips, Martha J. Zaslow
**
The expansion of publicly-funded preschool education is currently the focus of a prominent
debate. At present, 42% of 4-year-olds attend publicly funded preschool (28% attend
public prekindergarten programs, 11% Head Start, and 3% special education preschool
programs).
1
A vigorous debate about the merits of preschool education is underway,
although at times it has not included the most recent available evidence. The goal of this
brief is to provide a non-partisan, thorough, and up-to-date review of the current science
and evidence base on early childhood education (ECE). Our interdisciplinary group of early
childhood experts reviewed rigorous evidence on why early skills matter, the short- and
long-term effects of preschool programs on children’s school readiness and life outcomes,
the importance of program quality, which children benefit from preschool (including
evidence on children from different family income backgrounds), and the costs versus
benefits of preschool education. We focus on preschool (early childhood education) for
four-year-olds, with some review of the evidence for three-year-olds when relevant. We
do not discuss evidence regarding programs for 0 – 3 year olds.
Early skills matter,
and preschool can help children build these skills.
The foundations of brain architecture, and subsequent lifelong developmental potential, are
laid down in a child’s early years through a process that is exquisitely sensitive to external
influence. Early experiences in the home, in other care settings, and in communities interact
with genes to shape the developing nature and quality of the brain’s architecture. The
growth and then environmentally based pruning of neuronal systems in the first years
support a range of early skills, including cognitive (early language, literacy, math), social
(theory of mind, empathy, prosocial), persistence, attention, and self-regulation and
**After the first two primary authors, the authors are listed alphabetically. The authors thank Deborah Phillips and the Foundation for Child Development for
funding this work. The authors would also like to thank those who provided helpful reviews: J. Lawrence Aber, Mary Catherine Arbour, Karen Bierman, Maia
Connors, Greg Duncan, Philip Fisher, Ruth Friedman, Eugene Garcia, Ron Haskins, Jacqueline Jones, Laura Justice, Nonie Lesaux, Joan Lombardi, Pamela
Morris, Adele Robinson, Jack Shonkoff, Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, and Jane Waldfogel.