At the request of the group ReadyNation, I prepared a one-page issue brief. This issue brief was designed to provide a brief review of the facts about early childhood programs for business leaders who are involved with ReadyNation.

The one-page issue brief is cut and pasted below. I hope it provides a useful summary. The issue brief includes links to previous posts and websites and articles/books that back up the statements that are made.

The below will fit on one page if you eliminate some of the line spaces and use Calibri 11-point font (and I’m sure other fonts as well, but that’s what I used).

Facts from Early Childhood Research

Returns are large

• Pre-K: Present value of increased adult earnings = 3 to 5 times program costs.
• Child-care/parenting programs: Earnings effects= 2 to 3 times cost. (Why? More staff per kid)
• Value of reduced crime might double benefits.
• Half-day pre-K at age 4 increases earnings of disadvantaged kids by 7%. Middle-class: 3%.
• This increases to 10% if we go to full-day or add age 3.
• Comprehensive child-care and pre-K birth to age 5: 25% earnings boost.

Large returns confirmed by recent studies of regular state and local agencies operating at large scale

• Not just Perry/Abecedarian/Chicago, but also Tulsa, Boston, Kalamazoo, New Mexico, Arkansas, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Michigan, South Carolina, West Virginia.

Fade-out: short-term test scores better predictor of long-term earnings than long-term test scores

• Perry had fade out of test score effects, but 19% earnings boost.
• Deming : fade in Head Start test scores, but later outcomes predict 11% adult earnings boost.
• Chetty found that short-term test score effects of kindergarten good predictor of adult earnings effects, but test effects at 3^rd grade predict only one-sixth of actual future earnings effects.
• Why? Importance of hard-to-measure “soft skills”.
• Some fade-out may reflect controls getting remediation. Remediation savings is benefit of pre-K.

Head Start study

• Fade-out of short-term effects to statistical insignificance at 3^rd grade consistent with long-term effects.
• Head Start study compares HS group with controls that often participated in pre-K.
• Head Start doesn’t have same relative benefits compared to alternatives as it did 40 years ago, which requires HS to up its game.

Costs affordable, and eventually self-financing

• High-quality half-day pre-K is $5K/kid, full-day $9K, full-time child care and pre-K from birth to age 5 is $80K/kid, and parenting programs such as Nurse Family Partnership cost $10K/kid.
• National costs at full-scale are $15 billion/yr. for  half-day pre-K for all 4-yr- olds, double for full-day or adding age 3.  Full-time child-care/pre-K from birth to age 5 for all disadvantaged kids would cost $40B/yr. NFP for all disadvantaged 1st-time moms costs $4B/yr.
• Costs are modest per capita. Universal pre-K cost of $15B/yr is $50 per capita.
• Fiscal benefits from higher tax revenues, lower welfare/special ed/crime costs result in fiscal benefits exceeding costs after 9 to 49 yrs., depending on assumptions.

Pre-K has broad benefits for working class and middle class kids as well as poor

• Similar $ effects on earnings predicted for both middle-class & poor based on Tulsa/Boston.
• Why? Quality pre-K hard for middle-class to afford on its own.
• Targeting still requires big #s: just below half of children less than 5 are below 200% of poverty.

Child-care/parenting program benefits focused on poor kids, but parental benefits may be broader.

• Why? Middle-class parents may be able to offer/afford such services on their own.
• Subsidized child-care may have broad benefits for middle-class parents & economy.

State test score trends are consistent with positive benefits of broader access to quality pre-K

• Focus on individual states (e.g., OK, GA) is misplaced, because not clean experiment. States change gradually, and other trends going on.
• OK, GA test score effects consistent with pre-K effects, but wide uncertainty in comparing one or two states with others.
• Higher state pre-K enrollment is correlated with higher 3^rd grade scores, sufficient to predict adult earnings effect of at least 5%.