Category Archives: Early childhood programs

The benefits of early childhood programs depend upon design

Posted on September 2, 2013 by timbartik

Melinda Wenner Moyer wrote a recent column in Slate on how U.S. day care affects kids. Her column provides a useful summary of the day care research. Day care has mixed effects relative to parental care: more positive if the … Continue reading →

Posted in Distribution of benefits, Early childhood program design issues, Early childhood programs | 3 Comments

Pre-K benefits the middle-class as well as the poor in Boston

Posted on August 25, 2013 by timbartik

A recent study of Boston’s universal pre-K program provides additional evidence that pre-K programs have benefits greater than costs for children from middle-class families. This supplements the more extensive evidence that pre-K has high benefit-cost ratios for children from low-income … Continue reading →

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Promising results for relatively time-intensive parenting program

Posted on August 21, 2013 by timbartik

A recent study of a parenting program in Jamaica for highly disadvantaged children has found strong evidence for large effects on adult earnings. The study was written by a large group of researchers, including Paul Gertler, James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, … Continue reading →

Posted in Early childhood program design issues, Early childhood programs | 2 Comments

Experimental vs. non-experimental evidence on early childhood programs

Posted on August 15, 2013 by timbartik

A recent evaluation of Tennessee’s pre-K program found very mixed results. The report was done by Vanderbilt researchers Mark Lipsey, Kerry Hofer, Nianbo Dong, Dale Farran, and Carol Bilbrey. The program’s initial effects on academic achievement at the end of … Continue reading →

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The effectiveness of many state and local pre-K programs has been backed by sound research

Posted on July 24, 2013 by timbartik

Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution has still another blog post attacking President Obama’s preschool proposal. (I have previously responded to three previous blog posts on this topic by Whitehurst.) The most recent post by Whitehurst, co-authored with David Armor, … Continue reading →

Posted in Early childhood programs | 1 Comment

Local areas matter for income mobility, especially for younger kids, and especially for kids from lower-income families

Posted on July 23, 2013 by timbartik

David Leonhardt of the New York Times has highlighted a recent article by economists Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez.  Chetty et al use IRS data to look at how the income mobility of children varies across … Continue reading →

Posted in Early childhood programs, National vs. state vs. local | 1 Comment

Pre-K teacher salaries, teacher quality and turnover, and outcomes for children

Posted on July 23, 2013 by timbartik

Marcy Whitebook, director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California-Berkeley, has a useful brief article on the consequences of low pre-K teacher salaries for providing quality pre-K programs on a large scale. … Continue reading →

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My recent appearance on HuffPost Live

Posted on June 20, 2013 by timbartik

On Wednesday, June 19, I participated in a video discussion of preschool on HuffPost Live. An archive of the approximately 25 minute discussion can be found here.

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Brookings article provides support for high benefit-cost ratios for state pre-K, but you wouldn’t know it from the article

Posted on June 19, 2013 by timbartik

In response to a reader request, I looked at a recent article on Obama’s preschool proposal, written by Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution.  Dr. Whitehurst is a child psychologist who previously directed the research arm of the … Continue reading →

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New study shows large effects of high-quality pre-K for a broad-access program

Posted on June 19, 2013 by timbartik

My new study of an innovative pre-K program in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, has just been posted at the Upjohn Institute website. The Kalamazoo County program is called “Kalamazoo County Ready 4s”, or KC Ready 4s.  KC Ready 4s aims to … Continue reading →

Posted in Distribution of benefits, Early childhood programs | 1 Comment