investinginkids

One intriguing figure in the new book, Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life, examines the benefits per dollar of different early childhood and early school-age programs at different ages. (The figure is on p. 182, in a chapter by Arthur Reynolds, Judy Temple, and Suh-Ruu Ou. The chapter is mostly about the Chicago Child-Parent Center program. But it also includes some more general discussion of “what works”.)

The figure shows two things. First, there are a variety of programs at all these ages, from birth to age 8 (the maximum age the figure considers), that have dollar benefits greater than costs. Second, as Reynolds, Temple and Ou say, “preschool programs for 3- and 4-year olds generally show the highest returns” (p. 181).

I have similar findings in my book Investing in Kids. For each dollar invested in universal pre-K at age 4, state economic development benefits are $2.78. For each dollar invested in the Abecedarian program, which provided child care and preschool services from birth to age 5, the state economic development benefits are $2.25. For each dollar invested in the Nurse Family Partnership program, which helps disadvantaged first-time mothers from the pre-natal period to the child’s second birthday, the state economic development benefits are $1.85.

I also compare universal pre-K at age 4 with reducing class size in early elementary school. Universal pre-K has about twice the effects per dollar of lower early elementary class size. However, lowering early elementary class size does have state economic development benefits exceeding costs.

I was reminded of this when I heard an excellent talk the other night by Richard Rothstein.  (Rothstein is a long-term commentator on the role of social and economic class in influencing educational outcomes. He has helped develop the so-called “broader bolder” approach to improving American education.)

I was reminded of this when Mr. Rothstein mentioned, as a side point, that although preschool is needed, for many kids it is too late, because their language development is already way behind by the time they are age 4.

Similar points are sometimes made when people talk about brain development and when it occurs. The compelling logic is that if so much development happens early on, before ages 3 and 4, shouldn’t the returns be highest for programs that intervene early on?

I would agree that potential returns are higher for programs that intervene earlier, when children’s brains and characters are more malleable. But realizing such potential returns may be a little harder to do in a cost-effective way when children are younger, at least based on what we currently know.

When children are ages 3 and 4, we can improve early childhood development in larger group settings than are effective for younger children. That lowers the costs per child of preschool relative to some earlier interventions. It also seems that although we need well-trained teachers and a good curriculum and reasonable class sizes for preschool, we don’t need to have some genius government administrator to run such programs.  An average American state and local government or school district of reasonable competence can successfully run such preschool programs in a way that is effective for many children in improving their life course.

Earlier interventions such as child care need to have smaller group settings. Parenting programs seem most effective, based on current knowledge, when they are one-on-one. The parenting program with the most rigorous evidence of success, the Nurse Family Partnership program, requires that the home visitation with parents be delivered by nurses, which obviously raises costs compared to other possible delivery systems.

None of this argues that these programs don’t work.  As I point out above, high quality parenting programs such as NFP do have benefits that significantly exceed costs, as do high-quality child care programs.  However, as of right now, the most rigorous evidence for these programs suggests that their benefits per dollar are somewhat less than those of high-quality preschool programs.

More intensive programs such as full-time child care may also deliver higher total benefits than one year of preschool.  For example, as I pointed out in a recent post, full-time child care and preschool from birth to age 5 can raise the future earnings of the lowest income children by about one-third. One year of preschool has effects more on the order of perhaps raising future earnings of low income children by 10% on average.  However, these greater total returns for the earlier intervention come at more than proportionately greater costs, so benefit to cost ratios are somewhat lower for the earlier intervention than for preschool at age 4.

Does this pattern reflect some inevitable “law” of social science? No. I would not be surprised if over time we figure out some earlier interventions than preschool that would be significantly more cost-effective than preschool in providing benefits to children. For example, there potentially would be major increases in benefit/cost ratios for  a parenting assistance program that could be delivered more in a group setting, with less one-on-one attention — but only if that cheaper program proved to be significantly effective in improving parenting. It would certainly be worthwhile if some national foundations funded some experiments in this area.

One of my news alerts recently came across an interesting blog entry from Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  Her blog entry highlighted recent budget cuts to Georgia’s pre-K program, and their consequences.

According to the blog entry, the recent budget cuts included a cut in the pre-K year from 10 months to 9 months. One consequence of this reduced program year was a 10% pay cut for pre-K teachers. As a result, a recent AJC story suggests that this has significantly increased pre-K teacher turnover.  For example, in Fulton County,

“Prior to all the budget cuts, we retained about 70 to 75 percent of our teachers,” said Montreal Gore Bell, Fulton’s coordinator of early childhood and remedial programs. “Now, we’ve pretty much flip-flopped.”

What are the consequences of such program reductions for the effectiveness of pre-K programs, and hence state and local economic development? As I argued in a previous blog entry, reducing average test score gains for a pre-K class of 15 by just 1 percentile point would reduce the present value of future earnings for that class by $22,500. Most of this would occur within the local economy, as most former pre-K participants would stay in the same local area for most of their working career.

A full-day pre-K program such as in Georgia might, if it is high-quality, increase students’ test scores at kindergarten entry, compared to non-participants, by 16 to 18 percentile points.  Cutting the school year by 10% might easily, by itself, cut those average test score gains by more than 1 percentile.

But surely higher teacher turnover would also hurt quality. One fairly consistent finding in the research on teacher quality is that first-year teachers are generally less effective than more experienced teachers.

Georgia’s budget cuts to pre-K probably reduce future economic benefits by significantly more than the budget savings. They appear to be an example of “penny wise and pound foolish”.

I recently testified about early childhood programs before a state legislative committee. One of the representatives asked a subsequent witness a question, whose gist was as follows:

Wouldn’t it be better and cheaper to address parenting rather than spending all this government money to expand preschool? Isn’t parenting the real issue that needs to be addressed?

I didn’t have an opportunity to answer this question at the hearing. So I will use this blog post to respond.

As part of a comprehensive early childhood package of services, it would wise to include programs to improve parenting. However, it is not easy to improve parenting through cheap and small interventions. Rather, the parenting programs with the most rigorous evidence of effects require extensive personal intervention with parents over many hours, and considerable planning and expertise.

For example, the parenting program with the most rigorous evidence of success is the Nurse Family Partnership. NFP provides first-time disadvantaged mothers with one-on-one support from nurses from the pre-natal period until the child is age 2. NFP’s costs per family assisted are over $10,000 over this 2.5 year intervention.

Despite these high costs, the benefits of NFP significantly exceed costs. In my book, Investing in Kids, I estimate the local economic development benefits of NFP, in increased earnings per capita, to be about twice program costs. Benefits are even higher if one counts the benefits of reduced future crime rates of the children from NFP-assisted families.

However, high-quality parenting education programs are not cheap. In particular, these programs are not cheap compared to preschool. For example, one year of half-day high-quality preschool probably costs about half as much as NFP.  The evidence suggests that even such a time-limited preschool program will have sizable local economic development benefits and other benefits.

In addition, as of right now, it appears that parenting education programs are of most significant benefit for the most disadvantaged families. For example, for NFP, the research suggests that the program has much lower net benefits for more advantaged families.

In contrast, high-quality preschool appears to produce similar test score gains for low-income children and middle-class children. These broader benefits mean that high-quality preschool can have benefits exceeding costs even when expanded to a larger, more universal scale.

A broader point is that parenting education and preschool programs should not be seen as supplements, but as complements. We should try to improve parenting. The best preschool programs should include a parent involvement and education component. But in addition, we need to provide the “soft skills” or social skills that high-quality preschool is able to provide in group settings. It is difficult for even the best parents to provide on their own, without any preschool, some social skills that are most effectively provided in group settings.

It is always tempting to believe that social problems have one single, cheap solution. However, the reality is that most difficult social problems require a variety of assistance programs. The individuals that are assisted will require many contact hours with the programs, and the programs will have to have skilled staff and a good program curriculum. All of this means that to maximize government efficiency, you should avoid being “penny wise but pound foolish”.  In many cases, the interventions with the highest net economic and social benefits will require considerable costs per child.

A just-released paper, by Chloe Gibbs, Jens Ludwig, and Douglas Miller, provides a somewhat different analysis of recent research on Head Start, and its implications for policy. (Unfortunately, for many potentially interested readers, the paper is probably not available for free. However, I think most university libraries would have free access to NBER working papers.)

Among the important points of the paper (henceforth called GLM), with my comments, are the following:

1. GLM strongly defend the “quasi-experimental” research literature that has shown long-run effects of Head Start. (As GLM note, Ludwig and Miller have contributed to this literature.)  Steve Barnett has argued that such research may give a misleading impression if only papers with significant positive effects end up getting published. GLM argue that this quasi-experimental research has in fact thoroughly looked at the only national data sets that allow such long-run quasi-experimental analysis, and that there are not unexamined data sets that yield different long-term effects of Head Start.

My comment: I think GLM have a strong point here. The methodology of these long-term studies is sound, and they use the available data bases. I think the results should be deemed valid unless someone re-analyzes these data bases and shows the results are sensitive to estimating assumptions.

2. GLM point out that what is really unusual about the results from the randomized national Head Start Impact Study is not the initial impacts of Head Start, which are similar to past studies, but rather that the results so quickly fade by Grade 1. They argue that this increased fade-out of academic test score effects of Head Start could be due to the K-12 system becoming more effective in helping lower achievement students, who will be disproportionately in the control group, to catch up to higher achievement students.  Therefore, these fade-out effects of Head Start understate the true effects of Head Start, as part of Head Start’s benefits are that by helping some students avoid the need for remedial catch-up efforts, they free up resources which can be used to help other students.

My comments: This is a plausible hypothesis. However, it would be nice to confirm this by seeing how Head Start expansions affect who receives extra attention in catching up. The problem is that to really do such a study, we would have to have detailed information on how teachers allocate their time with different students before and after a major Head Start expansion.

3. GLM express some skepticism about the “regression discontinuity” studies of state pre-K programs, which show larger immediate test score effects of state pre-K programs than for Head Start.  They argue that such studies could be biased if more able students who just miss the age cut-off are enrolled by their parents in private preschool and private kindergarten, and are thereby excluded from the sample of students in these analyses. Essentially, the argument is that regression discontinuity studies may understate the effects of student age on test scores near the age cutoff, which will exaggerate the “jump” in test scores due to participation in state pre-K programs.

My comments: I am hardly a disinterested observer, because my recent paper with Gormley and Adelstein applies this regression discontinuity model to Tulsa’s pre-K program. I think that GLM’s objection is theoretically possible. However, in practice, I think it is unlikely that it is a major source of bias in studies of the kindergarten readiness effects of state pre-K programs. In most cases, and in particular in our study in Tulsa, the analysis examines whether there is any sign that observable characteristics of students and parents show a “jump” at the age cut-off.  If there was severe selection bias based on student ability for students who just missed the age cut-off, we would expect to see some sign of this in a jump in student or family characteristics at the age cut-off.  I know we do not see this in Tulsa. In addition, in the case of Oklahoma, private schools do not have a large market share, so this selective attrition to private schools seems unlikely. My bottom line: we should believe the finding that many state pre-K programs have larger immediate test-score impacts than Head Start.

4. GLM argue that based on other studies, such as those by Deming and Chetty et al, early intervention programs may have large effects on adult outcomes even if their test score impacts fade. These long-run impacts may be due to effects on soft skills, which are harder to measure. Therefore, in making reforms to Head Start, we need to be careful not to inadvertently weaken the program’s impacts on soft skills.

My comments: As I have argued in numerous blog posts, how early childhood programs develop soft skills is a major issue. I think GLM’s concern is a valid one. Our processes for evaluating Head Start programs, or adopting new approaches to providing federal aid for early childhood programs, should be balanced in that they should stress both “hard skills” and “soft skills”.  This may require that we use more subjective approaches to assessing whether a particular Head Start program, or a particular reform approach, is successful in increasing “soft skills”.

The bottom-line: The Gibbs, Ludwig, and Miller paper makes an important contribution in arguing forcefully that the recent Head Start Impact Study findings should not be interpreted as meaning that Head Start is ineffective. That interpretation conflicts with other well-done research, and may lead to counter-productive reforms to Head Start.

One argument you sometimes hear against early childhood programs is that these programs won’t work unless we have good K-12 systems. Therefore, the argument goes, early childhood programs shouldn’t be vigorously pursued unless we can simultaneously pursue K-12 school reforms. This argument is incorrect.

It is true that the rate of return to early childhood programs may have some synergy with the quality of K-12 systems. At one hypothetical extreme, for example, if there were no K-12 education at all, it seems doubtful that early childhood programs would make much difference by themselves. Furthermore, as pointed out in a previous blog post, there is some research evidence that the rate of return to preschool programs may increase with the quality of the subsequent K-12 system.

But early childhood programs can still have quite high rates of return even if the K-12 system faces many difficult challenges. For example, some of the best research on high-quality preschool is on the Chicago Child-Parent Center program. This research has now followed participants and the comparison group until age 26. The estimates suggest a ratio of benefits to costs of over 10 to 1. These benefits include significant increases in adult earnings and reductions in crime.

These estimates are for a program in which the vast majority of the preschool graduates ended up attending Chicago Public Schools. With all due respect to Chicago Public Schools, I think it is fair to say that this school district has by no means overcome all its difficult challenges. If high-quality preschool can work when participants subsequently attend Chicago Public Schools, it seems likely that preschool can work when combined with a wide diversity of K-12 systems.

Public policy should pursue both large-scale expansion of high-quality early childhood programs and improvements in K-12 education.  These two strategies complement each other. That is, pursuing both strategies together will have greater benefits than just pursuing one of these strategies.

However, we can get benefit-cost ratios exceeding one even if we implement just one of these strategies.  Early childhood programs can have large net social benefits even if we are unable for political or financial reasons to also implement significant K-12 improvements.