Study Finds Major Benefits From Quality Day Care
Quality child care for underprivileged preschoolers produces benefits that persist well into adulthood, according to a new study released Thursday.
Twenty years after their enrollment in an intensive day-care program at the University of North Carolina, young black adults from poor families were twice as likely to still be in school as children in conventional care programs or who stayed at home with a parent. They also scored significantly higher on reading and math achievement tests, were more likely to have a job and had their first children later in life.
The year-round child care program--more personalized than Head Start programs and beginning earlier in life--clearly demonstrates that early childhood education can make a critical difference in the later success of poor children, said university psychologist Frances Campbell, who headed the assessment.
The findings imply “that they will be able to obtain good jobs, support their families, have much brighter futures,” she said. The extra cost of such care, she added, “is well worth the investment.”
“I don’t know that people appreciate how important this finding is,” said developmental psychologist Steve Barnett of Rutgers University. The only similar study that is longer running is the Perry Preschool project in Ypsilanti, Mich., that was started in 1963, he said.
Long-term results from that study, which worked with 3- and 4-year-olds, found similar improvements in academic achievements, employment and other outcomes among poor children. But the North Carolina study released today shows that if you start educating the children earlier, “you get bigger results,” Barnett said.
The findings also agree well with studies on animals by researchers such as Bill Greenough of the University of Illinois, who have found that exposing newborn and infant animals to a rich and complex environment stimulates the growth of brain cells. In contrast, young animals raised in a barren environment have less gray matter.
“Learning begins in infancy,” Campbell said. “Education should too.”
The study results will provide policymakers with a potent ethical question, said psychologist Craig Ramey, who initiated the North Carolina project and is now at the University of Alabama. How, he asked in a news conference, can bureaucrats justify not providing good child care to at-risk children now that the benefits have been proven?
Ramey and his colleagues began the project in 1972 at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina. They enrolled 111 infants from low-income families within commuting distance of the center, 98% of them from African American families. The team randomly assigned 57 of the infants to high-quality child care at the center, while the rest had a variety of child care arrangements, ranging from being at home with the mother to attending full-time child care centers.
The Abecedarian Project--named for the first three letters of the alphabet--differed from other child care studies by enrolling the infants as early as 6 months and by having them come all day, year-round. The project also had a high adult-to-child ratio--1 to 3 for the infants, 1 to 7 for older children--and specially designed play programs that incorporated subtle teaching techniques to encourage social, emotional and cognitive development.
The protocol has been described previously in research articles and a book, “Learning Games for the First Three Years,” and has been adopted by many day-care centers. Some Head Start programs have begun enrolling children at an earlier age as a result of reports from earlier phases of the study.
Of the 111 original subjects in the Abecedarian Project, 104 participated in the most recent follow-up. The team found that among those in the intervention group:
* Forty percent were still in school, compared with 20% of those in the control group.
* Thirty-five percent were either still attending or had graduated from a four-year college, compared with 14% of the control group.
* Most had higher scores on both reading and math tests.
* About 65% were employed, compared with 50% of the controls.
* Most delayed having children, with their first child being born when the average mother or father was 19, compared to 17 in the control group.
“These data are significant, not only for parents, but for policymakers seeking to make a difference in children from low-income families and for directors and administrators of child care programs,” Ramey said.
Some critics, such as John T. Bruer of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, author of the new book “The Myth of the First Three Years,” have argued that the benefits of early education have been overstated and that the effects fade after several years. Bruer would not comment on the new study because the authors have not yet published their data.
But Larry Schweinhart of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, which is running the Perry Preschool Project, called those criticisms “overblown.”
Those arguments, he said, are based on studies that show that gains in IQ produced by early education are not sustained throughout the school years. The Perry and Abecedarian projects, he said, show that increased achievements are sustained, whether IQ is permanently affected or not.
“All of the debate is about IQ change, not about positive effects on school success,” Barnett added. “But academic success seems to be fairly independent of IQ.”
Most agree that preschool programs such as the Abecedarian project are substantially more expensive than conventional preschool, costing perhaps $10,000 a year for each child. But an economic analysis of the Perry project showed that for every $1 spent on the program, society saved $7 in reduced costs for crime, premature births and increased employment.
And some of the money to finance such programs may already be available, according to the federal government. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala announced last week that more than $9 million had been available for preschool programs last year, but that community groups had applied for only $1.5 million of it.
More information about the Abecedarian Project is available at www.fpg.unc.edu/~abc.
