Big cuts in early childhood programs in North Carolina

Posted on June 23, 2011 by timbartik

Last week, the North Carolina legislature overrode Governor Bev Perdue’s veto and approved a budget that cuts the state’s two major early childhood programs by 20 percent.  These cuts are to the state’s “More at Four” preschool program for at-risk four-year-olds, and to the state’s “Smart Start” program, which provides a wide range of services from birth to age five.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, there is good research evidence supporting both of these programs. I used the evidence from Duke University researchers to calculate that for each dollar that North Carolina invests in More at Four and Smart Start, the state would receive economic development benefits of $8.79. These economic development benefits are the resulting increase in per capita earnings of state residents.

These cuts to early childhood programs are part of an overall state budget that cuts other state programs, and allows various temporary increases in state taxes to expire.

What can be said about such budget cuts to programs backed by high-quality research? I think this suggests that the future of early childhood education in the U.S. is quite uncertain. There are substantive arguments from research about the payoffs to high-quality early childhood programs. There is significant political support for these programs. But there are still many policymakers who see early childhood programs as “nice, but inessential” to core public goals of greater economic prosperity. In any event, some policymakers perceive early childhood programs to be considerably less important than the policy goal of lower taxes.

Changing the political balance may in part rely on research, such as mine, that points to early childhood programs having considerably higher economic development benefits than any adverse effects caused by the required taxes to finance these programs. But it also depends on these programs delivering broad benefits to many households, that these households understand and value enough to affect how they vote. Finally, it depends upon a business community that values the long-term benefits offered by high-quality early childhood programs.

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How difficult is “high-quality” preschool?

Posted on June 22, 2011 by timbartik

Well-known blogger Matt Yglesias had a post on preschool recently. In this post, Yglesias argued that implementing preschool programs at a large scale, at high-quality, is difficult.  Yglesias’s argument is overstated. The research suggests that most states and local governments can invest in more preschool in a way that can significantly improve child outcomes compared to the current policy alternatives.

Yglesias says that “I’m all for more investments in preschool, but…I see no particular reason to believe that talking about four-year-olds rather than ten-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds gets us out of the quality quandary….It’s not obvious how to run a really excellent preschool classroom any more than it’s obvious how to run a really excellent sixth grade classroom. “

But the policy issue in preschool education is somewhat different from the policy issue in K-12 education. For preschool education, the debate is over public funding for preschool, versus no public funding, for some group of children.  For K-12, there are no serious proposals to abolish sixth grade for some group of students, and then just send these students home for a year.

We know enough about what makes for quality in preschool that we can provide a publicly supported preschool program at a large-scale that is better than the alternatives for many children. There is evidence for preschool success on a large scale and in the long-run for preschool programs run by Chicago Public Schools. There is evidence for preschool success in improving kindergarten readiness at a large scale for preschool programs funded by the states of Oklahoma, West Virginia, Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina,  New Mexico, and North Carolina.  All of these programs show success for participating children. That success is relative to the uneven quality mix of home care, child care, and private preschool programs that these children would otherwise attend.

These state and local areas have a wide variety of governments, political cultures, and social environments. The success of preschool investment in these wide variety of settings suggest that investing in preschool will in most cases beat the alternative of doing nothing.

Do we need to know more about what makes for higher quality preschool classrooms? Sure we do. But we know enough that we can implement publicly-funded preschool programs at a large scale that can get good results, compared to the alternatives without public funding.

For improving sixth grade, or other K-12 interventions, the issue is somewhat different. We’ve already settled the policy issue of public responsibility: there is significant public funding for K-12 education for children. The issue is over the magnitude of the funding, or how best to use the funding, etc. Such issues are more difficult, and controversial.

For preschool, there are similar difficult issues over exactly what teacher credentials to require, what is the best curriculum to use, and what the most efficient class size is.  I certainly agree that we need to invest in research on these important policy issues, so that we can get the best results out of additional investments in preschool. But if our additional investments in preschool have some reasonable class sizes, a curriculum that includes both hard skills and soft skills, and sufficiently high teacher salaries to attract and retain high quality teachers, than these programs will be successful, relative to the alternative of no public investments in preschool.

In other words, if the alternative is no preschool classroom at all, perhaps it doesn’t matter that we don’t know definitively how to run the best possible preschool classroom. If the alternative is “nothing”, all we need to run is a “reasonably good”” classroom to be helpful to many children. We know enough that we can create such “reasonably good” classrooms at a large scale, if the public funding and policy direction is sufficient.

This doesn’t mean that anything labeled “preschool” will work. If the class size is huge, publicly funded preschool will be no better than the alternative of no public funding. If the curriculum has minimal educational content, then public funding for preschool will not be an improvement over nothing.  If the public funding is so meager that good teachers constantly are leaving preschool settings, then publicly funded preschool will not improve child outcomes compared to the alternatives. But the research suggests that many state and local governments can figure out how to provide a preschool program that is better than the alternatives without public funding.

I should note that I’ve made similar arguments before in response to other bloggers. Some bloggers who are interested in promoting K-12 reform seem determined to emphasize the difficulty of quality in preschool education. Perhaps the concern is that investment in preschool may come at the expense of K-12 reform.  However, in my view, we need both investments in preschool education and K-12 reform. But investing in preschool education that will work on a large scale is, in my view, somewhat administratively easier to do, precisely because in this policy area, there is so much room to improve over what is currently available to many children. It’s easier to beat nothing than to beat something.

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Request for questions

Posted on June 13, 2011 by timbartik

I will be out of town until Tuesday June 21st. I may do some posts in that time period, as time permits. However, I don’t expect to resume daily posting until June 22nd.

In the interim, please suggest to me questions or topics that you would like me to address in this blog. I believe some of my more useful posts have been in response to queries from readers. For example, in your dealings with legislators and other policymakers about early childhood issues, what information or research do you wish you had more information on? What concerns have you heard expressed? Post questions in comments to this post, or send them to me at bartik@upjohn.org.

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Tennessee’s pre-K program

Posted on June 10, 2011 by timbartik

A recent report on Tennessee’s state-funded pre-k program has led to some controversy over the program’s effects.

The report’s authors, Strategic Research Group, concluded that “the results provide evidence that the objective of Tennessee’s Pre-K program – school readiness is being met…[T]he results should clearly inform stakeholders that not only should the Pre-K program continue to serve at-risk students in Tennessee, it should be complemented with additional support and intervention for students over time to help sustain the early academic growth observed among Pre-K students in Kindergarten.” (pp. 40-41)

However, state representative Bill Dunn argues that the report shows that Tennessee’s pre-K program lacks long-run effectiveness.  Rep. Dunn said in a press release that “This report should serve as a revelation for individuals who still believe pre-K is some sort of answer for long-term achievement in education. The fact is, it just isn’t. It may be the largest hoax ever perpetrated on the people of Tennessee.”

The basis of this dispute is a report that shows some short-run evidence of pre-k’s effects as of the end of kindergarten and first-grade, particularly for students eligible for free and reduced price lunch. However, these effects appear to disappear by 3rd to 5th grade.

What can be said about this dispute, and the effectiveness of pre-K in Tennessee?

First, the basis for this dispute is a report that does NOT have a randomly chosen control group. Rather, the report matches pre-K participants with non-pre-K participants of the same gender, race, free-or- reduced- price lunch (FRL) status, and school district (or in some cases school). This is important because in general, reports that do not have a randomly chosen control group, or a comparison group that is a good comparison group, may be seriously biased.

Second, there is some reason based on the study’s design to think that such bias may have occurred in this particular study. For free-or-reduced price lunch (FRL) status, the study matched pre-K participants to non-pre-K participants based on whether the student had EVER been designated as FRL, from pre-K on up through 5th grade.

For Tennessee’s pre-K  program, however, first priority for admission was based on whether student’s families would meet the income guidelines for free or reduced price lunch status as of the pre-K year. After such children are enrolled, programs may enroll students with disabilities, or English language learners, or who are at risk of abuse or neglect.

What this means is that Tennessee pre-K participants must either have low income in the pre-K year as well, or have other risk factors. The matched non-pre-K participants do not need to have low income in the pre-K year or have these other risk factors. This means that the income status of the pre-K participants who are eligible for FRL is more likely to be persistently poor. For pre-K participants who are non-FRL status, they are more likely to have other risk factors.

It should be remembered that a zero-one indicator for whether someone is eligible for free-or-reduced price lunch is only a rough control for family income. Within the FRL category, families with lower income will tend on average to have students who will have more problems in school. (Obviously this is just an average tendency, not inevitability, and it can be affected by public policy.) More persistent FRL status is more likely to be associated with lower family income.

If the pre-K participants are on average somewhat lower income or have unobserved higher risk factors or higher income, this will tend to bias downwards the estimated effects of Tennessee’s pre-K program. This bias will occur even in the end of kindergarten test score results. However, this bias will tend to grow over time, because unobserved family income effects or risk factors will have a cumulative effect on student test score performance that will grow over time.

Third, the report’s findings for pre-K’s effects in Tennessee are far weaker than the effects found in a recent Vanderbilt study that has a better comparison group.  This Vanderbilt study uses both a randomly chosen control group, and also does a regression discontinuity analysis. The Vanderbilt study’s statistics suggests some problems with the random assignment portion of the study due to missing data. However, the regression discontinuity portion of the study uses a very strong methodology that has been shown in other studies to usually lead to comparison groups that are truly comparable.

Measured in terms of “effect sizes”, the Vanderbilt study shows effects at the beginning of kindergarten that are 15 to 60 times as large as the  Strategic Research Group results for effects at the end of kindergarten. It seems highly implausible that the “true effects” could differ so much between the beginning and end of kindergarten.

One plausible interpretation of these discrepancies is that the Strategic Research Group’s results are biased downwards due to unobserved lower income and higher risk factors in the pre-k group relative to the SRG comparison group. This bias could be already apparent at the end of kindergarten, and then grow over time in later grades.

Fourth, our interpretation of Tennessee’s results should be informed by previous research studies. We have good evidence, from the Perry Preschool program and the Chicago Child-Parent Center program, that high-quality preschool can yield long-term benefits. These studies use good comparison groups.  While these preschool programs are not identical to Tennessee’s program, the preschool programs do have some similarities.

On the whole, given some of the issues with the SRG comparison groups, I don’t think the SRG results for long-term effects are sufficiently reliable to overcome the evidence from prior research studies that high-quality preschool has long-term benefits.  In an ideal world, it would be good to have evidence with a more rigorously chosen comparison group for the specific long-term effects of Tennessee’s pre-K program. Such evidence may be forthcoming if the Vanderbilt random assignment study is able to be pursued over the long-term, and if the Vanderbilt random assignment study is able to correct for some of its problems with missing data.

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Top five facts to support local government investment in early childhood programs

Posted on June 9, 2011 by timbartik

I recently responded to an information request from one early childhood program advocate. This advocate is trying to persuade a local county government to invest funds in early childhood programs. The request was for the “top 5 facts” that might support such investment.

Here is what I came up with:

(1) Early childhood investment will raise the long-run quality of the workforce, which will in the long-run attract more and better jobs to the local area. For example, in various studies, participation in high-quality preschool will increase high school graduation rates by 11% to 21%. For each dollar invested, the present value of local per capita earnings will increase by $2 to $3.

(2) In the short-run, the higher test scores and improved educational performance of preschool participants will attract parents to the local area, which will enhance the local labor force and raise property values. For each $1 in annual program spending on high-quality preschool, property values are estimated to increase by $13.

(3) The reduced incidence of special education assignments and other remedial educational programs will offset a considerable proportion of the initial costs of early childhood programs over a five to 10 year period. Special education assignments, which often cost over $10,000 per year, are predicted to decline by 11% to 23%. Depending upon the assumptions made, and the particulars of the local situation, special education cost savings may cover from 40% to over 100% of the costs of high-quality preschool programs.

(4) Over a 15 to 20 year period, the lower crime rates associated with early childhood programs will lower criminal justice system costs. Involvement in juvenile crime is reduced by one-third to one-half.

(5) The jobs created among preschool teachers and other early childhood employees will have multiplier effects on local economic activity, even if implicitly financed through higher local taxes. Tax-financed early childhood spending creates one new local job for every $175,000 spent, which would be expensive if no useful services were provided, but is a meaningful bonus benefit of a program that also provides valuable services.

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Continued high unemployment and early childhood programs, part II

Posted on June 8, 2011 by timbartik

As indicated in a previous post, the U.S. is likely to have continued high unemployment for many years. One way that early childhood programs may help in this situation is by helping to offset some of the negative effects of parents’ high unemployment on their children.  Another role for early childhood programs is in providing jobs in the short-term.

One interesting pattern in recent labor market reports of BLS is the weakness in government employment. For example, total government employment has been declining since October of 2010. This has offset some of the recent private sector job growth. The weakness in government is concentrated in local government, including the local government education sector.

Expanding early childhood programs immediately expands jobs. This job expansion is large enough that it offsets the negative effects of the increased taxes needed to pay for these programs.

A tax-financed expansion of early childhood programs will immediately provide additional jobs at a rate of approximately 1 additional job in the state economy for every $175,000 spent (see my 2006 report, p. 37).  This might be considered a high cost per job. However, we should take into account that these additional jobs provide useful services. In fact, we know that the present value of the increased earnings as adults of former child participants is 2 to 3 times the cost of these jobs. This short-term job creation, with a value that might be at least equal to the average compensation associated with these jobs, is an important bonus benefit of expanding early childhood programs, not their primary purpose.

A deficit financed expansion of early childhood programs would create considerably more jobs per dollar of public spending.  The Council of Economic Advisors estimates that deficit-financed direct public spending on services creates jobs at a cost of about $92,000 per job created.

The federal government might do even better in short-term job creation with incentives for public and private sector job creation. Such incentives might also include early childhood programs. I will come back to this subject in a future blog post.

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Continued high unemployment and early childhood programs, Part I

Posted on June 7, 2011 by timbartik

Last Friday’s monthly labor market report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics yielded disappointing news. The unemployment rate ticked up from 9.0% to 9.1%. Job growth was only 54,000 jobs. This is less than the approximately 125,000 job growth per month that is needed to keep up with population growth. The employment to population ratio stayed the same at 58.4%. The employment to population ratio is actually 0.3 percentage points lower than it was in May of 2010.

Based on these numbers, the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution projects that it will be many years before the U.S. labor market gets back to non-recessionary employment conditions.  If the economy consistently generates job growth per month equal to the best year of the 1990s, we will get back to pre-recession labor market conditions by 2016. If the economy consistently generates job growth per month equal to the best year since 2000, we will get back to pre-recession labor market conditions by 2023. My own guess is that a return to pre-recession labor market conditions is more likely to be closer to 2023 than to 2016.

What implications does continued high unemployment for perhaps the next 10 years have for early childhood programs? I think the implications are two-fold. First, early childhood programs are one effective way of minimizing some of the long-term consequences for children of prolonged labor market distress of parents. Second, early childhood programs are one of many effective ways of generating jobs now.  I will address the first of these implications in today’s post. I will deal with the second in later posts.

As Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research has pointed out, we know that high unemployment for parents is reflected in their children having more labor market problems as adults. From research by Greg Duncan and his co-authors, we know that parental income during early childhood is more important in determining a child’s future labor market outcomes than parental income when the child is older.

High-quality early childhood programs are an effective way of improving adult labor market outcomes for former child participants. The rate of return to early childhood programs is likely to be particularly high if the child is more likely to otherwise have more serious adult labor market problems. Therefore, this prolonged recession is likely to mean that investing NOW in early childhood programs will have an even higher rate of return. This higher rate of return is because the programs are more needed to offset the negative effects on children’s future earnings of their parents’ high unemployment and other labor market problems.

Posted in Early childhood programs, Economic development | 1 Comment

Jean Jennings Bartik Memorial Service

Posted on June 3, 2011 by timbartik

I will not be posting for a few days because I will be traveling to and from my mother’s memorial service. I posted a little bit about her in a previous blog post shortly after her death on March 23rd. In addition, since then Steve Lohr of the New York Times wrote a very nice obituary about my Mom.

The great cause of my Mom’s last years was promoting a greater role of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  My mother was involved in the early stages of the computer industry, as one of the first six programmers (all women!) on the ENIAC computer. She experienced great joy in some of her work in the computer industry, in particular from working with brilliant people such as Pres Eckert and John Mauchly, the co-inventors of the ENIAC.  But after that pioneering work, she also experienced much frustration due to the blatant sexism that prevailed in many technology fields against women. It was a great disappointment to my mother that there has not been more progress in promoting a greater role for women in science and technology related fields.

My Mom spent a lot of time talking to groups about the role of women in the computer industry. She particularly enjoyed speaking to young women, ranging from Girl Scout groups to women engineers at Google.  I have been told that they frequently found her story an inspiring one.

At the Memorial Service this weekend, we will be mentioning the following about donations:

  “Donations in memory of Jean Jennings Bartik may be made to either:

(1) The ENIAC Programmers Project, which is raising funds to finish a documentary on the original six ENIAC women programmers, at www.eniacprogrammers.org/donate.shtml or Kathy@eniacprogrammers.org.

(2) The Jean Jennings Bartik Women in Computing Scholarship at Northwest Missouri State University, a newly created scholarship for Northwest women students who are majoring in computer science or math/science related majors. Contributions can be made through the Northwest Foundation, Office of University Advancement, Northwest Missouri State University, 800 University Drive, Maryville, MO 64468 or by contacting 660.562.1248 or advance@nwmissouri.edu.”

I think both these causes are good ways to promote the advancement of women in technology fields

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What works in job creation and economic development

Posted on June 2, 2011 by timbartik

Yesterday, I gave the keynote address to a conference organized by the National Employment Law Project (NELP). The NELP conference focused on grassroots ideas for creating jobs and economic opportunities in local communities. My keynote address was entitled “What Works in Job Creation and Economic Development”. The full text of the keynote address can be found here.

The address discusses what policies are most cost-effective in increasing local earnings per capita. These policies include high-quality early childhood programs. But I also identify other local policies that have a large benefit-cost ratio in increasing local earnings per capita. Such policies include customized job training, wage subsidies for hiring the long-term unemployed, and high school career academies.

The important social goal of better local employment opportunities should be pursued by comprehensive strategies. Early childhood program advocates need to understand how their programs might fit into a broader policy context. Economic development advocates should see how their strategies should be broader than business incentives.

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Teacher pay in early childhood education

Posted on June 1, 2011 by timbartik

Some readers have brought to my attention a recent study of how typical annual earnings vary with college major. This study, by Anthony Carnevale, Jeff Strohl, and Michelle Melton at Georgetown University, relies on 2009 data from the American Community Survey.

What has received some attention in the early childhood community are the study’s findings for early childhood education majors. The study found that median annual earnings of B.A. graduates with a major in early childhood education were $36,000 (e.g., half made less than $36,000, and half made more). This was second lowest among the 171 occupations that were considered.

What needs to be pointed out is that this study significantly UNDERESTIMATES the low earnings problem of the early childhood profession. For example, from this same study, students with a major in elementary education have a median annual salary of $40,000. Therefore, from this study, majors in early childhood education end up with median earnings only about 10% less than majors in elementary education.

However, the Georgetown study only includes individuals with a bachelor’s degree.  The salaries of this group with greater academic credentials tend to be greater than the salaries of other early childhood teachers.

I looked at May 2010 data from the Occupational Employment Statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Specifically, I looked at the National Cross-Industry Estimates.) These data, unlike the Georgetown data, includes all individuals in a given occupation. The Georgetown data only looks at individuals with a bachelor’s degree and a particular major. The Georgetown data also includes individuals with a major who end up working in an occupation that is not associated with that major. The OES data are derived from surveys of employers.

Based on the OES data, median annual salaries of preschool teachers were $25,700. In contrast, median annual salaries of elementary school teachers were $51,660, over twice as much.

Even at the 75th percentile of the distribution of preschool teachers’ salaries, earnings were only $34,420.  What this means is that 75% of all preschool teachers earned less than $34,420. At the 90th percentile, preschool teacher salaries were $46,830, meaning that only 10% of preschool teachers made $46,830 or more. But the 90th percentile preschool teacher still makes less than the median elementary school teacher.

With such low salaries, it is hard for preschool teaching as an occupation to be competitive with other alternative choices for prospective preschool teachers, such as elementary education.

Higher preschool teacher salaries may not guarantee higher preschool teacher quality. But it seems likely that higher preschool teacher salaries are a necessary condition for improving preschool teacher quality.

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