New findings coauthored by Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney, published today in the September/October 2009 issue of Child Development, reveals the quality of early childcare may play a role in boosting reading and math achievement among low-income youth. The study, conducted by McCartney, Boston College Associate Professor Eric Dearing, and Samford University Professor Beck Taylor, looked at reading and math achievement of more than 1,300 children in middle childhood from economic backgrounds ranging from poor to affluent.
"We found that the effect of quality child care on fifth grade reading and math achievement varies by family income. Specifically, the effect of quality child care is larger for children from low-income families," McCartney said. "Thus, quality early care levels the academic playing field for children in poverty. These findings have important implications for antipoverty policy."
Using information from the longitudinal Study of Early Care and Youth Development, which was carried out under the auspices of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, they discovered that children who spent more time in high-quality (that is, above-average) child care in the first five years of their lives had better reading and math scores. This was especially true for low-income children; in fact, their scores were similar to those of affluent children, even after taking into account a variety of family factors, including parents' education and intelligence.
"In large part, our results can be explained by the fact that low-income children who attended higher-quality child care developed reading and math skills in early childhood that likely prepared them for later achievement in middle childhood," said Dearing, associate professor of applied developmental psychology at Boston College and the study's lead author. "These results give added credence to the central role that higher-quality child care should play in future discussions on antipoverty policy."
As a developmental psychologist, McCartney's research focuses on theoretical questions on early experience as well as policy questions on child care, early childhood education, and poverty. McCartney has held many prominent positions including principal investigator on the National Institute of Child Heath and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care & Youth Development, director of the University of New Hampshire Child Study & Development Center, and Fellow by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Educational Research Association.
Dean McCartney and her team of researchers, and I quote form the above article: "discovered that children who spent more time in high-quality (that is, above-average) child care in the first five years of their lives had better reading and math scores."
No, they didn't "discover" those results! They confirmed again research findings that have been available for many years now. Surely someone on this research team has heard of the "Carolina Abecedarian Project" which studied the effects of high-quality educational intervention of children from low-income families in a childcare setting from infancy through age 5.
Joseph Sparling and his team of researchers confirmed what Montessori schools have been demonstrating for 100 years, i.e.: that high quality, developmentally appropriate, stimulating, individualized teaching/learning experiences in a carefully prepared leaning environment make it possible for children to achieve their highest potential not just in school but also in life!
The Abecedarian study monitored the progress of children from infancy through age 5. By the time they were 2 years of age they were way ahead of their comparison group and they stayed ahead of the children that did not have that early stimuation for the rest of their lives!
The Abecedarian team continued to monitor their progress over time with follow-up studies conducted at ages 12, 15, and 21.
The young adult findings demonstrated that important, long-lasting benefits were associated with the early childhood program.
I achieved even more dramatic outcomes by enrolling at-risk 3, 4 and 5 year old children in an "Early Intervention Program to Prevent School Failure" in the Irvine Unified School District in California 20 years ago. The children came from 6 minority language groups. They were monolingual (ELL) children who spoke Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Farsi and Spanish. I recruited native speaking, bilingual teachers from the six language groups and prepared them for a year to be effective 3-6 Montessori teachers.
The children that came into the program at 3 and 4 years of age were bilingual and bi-literate by the time they were five years of age and the children who came in at 5 and were only in the program for one year caught up with their younger peers during the first two years of elementary school!
I then selected a cadre of American credentialed elementary school teachers and trained them to be Montessori 6-9 teachers. By the time that our once monolingual and at-risk children were 9 years of age and in the 3rd grade, they outperformed the native English speaking children from the affluent community of Irvine on the California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS).
My Montessori children had a mean score of 72 on the CTBS which meant that some of them were chinning themselves in the high 90s. The mean score of the Irvine School District on the CTBS was only 60 and the California state mean was 50.
I currently serve as the Goizueta Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta,GA. I prepare Montessori teachers to serve children from 2.5 to 6 years of age in M.Ed. and Continuing Education programs. This is the only Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (MACTE) accredited program in the state.
There are over 5,000 Montessori schools across the U.S. Why don't we join forces and conduct a study of children from infancy to 5 years of age in Montessori schools and compare them to the children in centers that use the "High Scope" and the "Regio Emilia" approaches? I have studied these three programs for a number of years and I think that it is time to provide parents with some dependable guidelines regarding these programs.
Drop me a line if you are interested.
Dr. Meadows, I work with local multifaith and citizens groups seeking to change educational policy, especially as it relates to Title One impacts in K-12 schools. Translating this and related research to public education and policy is the challenge. I am particularly interested in networking with communities in the Southeast that are tackling this.