Browsing by Subject "Early childhood education"

This study uses the data from the National Institute for Children Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to evaluate features of wage and childcare price changes that are associated with positive effects on children's early cognitive skills. Identifying beneficial characteristics of changes in market variables is especially relevant in a policy environment where the main priority of tax incentives related to the use of childcare is not facilitating the formation of children's cognitive skills, but reducing reliance on the welfare system through increase in employment among poor households.

We estimate jointly the discrete household choices related to the employment status of the mother and the use of a paid care mode, the demand functions for quantity and quality of childcare, the production function for cognitive outcomes, the wage process for the mother, and childcare price equations based on the hedonic pricing method, while at the same time introducing unobserved heterogeneity in the disturbance terms of the estimated outcomes. Our strategy for handling selection problems also utilizes the exogenous variation in childcare prices across the 10 geographical markets defined by the study sites in the NICHD SECCYD dataset, which in our model influence choices, but do not affect cognitive outcomes directly.

Our results show that failing to account for common unobserved characteristics would lead to underestimating the impact of all analyzed wage and price changes. We find that prices and wages do not have a statistically significant impact on the quality of paid care, while the marginal product of that attribute of care is positive for almost all input combinations in the production of cognitive attainment. Therefore, a policy utilizing changes in wages and prices can be effective in improving early cognitive skill only through the impact of those changes on the intensity of paid care use.

The comparison of the effects of wage and price changes on early cognitive skills for three sets of values of the observable household characteristics representing low, middle and high income households lead to the following conclusions: (1) a tax credit for working mothers and childcare subsidies for center-based care can bring disproportionate gains for children in low and middle income groups; (2) subsidizing paid home care for children less than three and a half years old can be more effective than subsidizing center-based care for the same age group in terms of improving cognitive outcomes at the age of five; (3) conditioning childcare assistance for paid care on the employment status of the mother does not seem to have a strong negative effect on early skill formation; and (4) tax incentives affecting wage rates and childcare prices prove to be beneficial for the formation of early cognitive skills only when they are implemented while the child is less than three and a half years old.

*Designated as an exemplary master's project for 2015-16*

State and local governments are seeking to expand preschool programs for low-income children and to enroll an increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse population. To ensure that expanded preschools equitably serve populations who are currently under-represented in current preschool programs, policymakers must understand the contexts that influence parents’ enrollment decisions. This set of three mixed-methods studies examines the influence of inter-racial and inter-ethnic group relations on the preschool enrollment decisions of black and Hispanic parents in a region experiencing a burgeoning Hispanic population.

Paper 1: Historic and contemporary studies provide evidence that racial and ethnic relations affect parents’ selection in to and out of schools in the K-12 education context. However, no study examines whether racial and ethnic group relations that influence school enrollment in the K-12 setting may also influence parents’ selection in to or out of a public preschool program. This study addresses this gap by examining how intergroup relations are related to the public preschool enrollment status of low-income black and Hispanic parents in a region experiencing Hispanic population growth. Intergroup relations are measured through group identity, linked fate, competition and conflict. Through surveys of black and Hispanic parents in poverty (n=369), this study finds that linked fate has a negative relationship with enrollment for Hispanic parents. In addition, there is a positive relationship between parents’ report of conflict and Head Start enrollment.

With states and local government seeking to expand their preschool systems, findings that intergroup relations influence parents’ preschool enrollment decisions

will be an important policy, program, and outreach consideration for preschool expansion. Moreover, with the growth and dispersal of Hispanic populations into new regions and communities, intergroup relations will be a particularly important consideration for preschool expansion in a growing demographic context.

Paper 2: As state and local governments expand their public preschool systems targeting the enrollment of children from low-income families, understanding why some low-income families do not apply for public preschool may provide insights about barriers to enrollment. This study provides cluster analyses of data on 369 low-income parents with preschool-age children; 202 parents had children enrolled in preschool, while 167 parents did not apply for public preschool. Cluster analyses and a series of robustness checks reveal two distinct typologies of parents who do not apply for public preschool. The first group of parents exhibit several characteristics associated with non-enrollment. The second group of parents are distinguishable only by their lack of transportation. This exploratory analysis of types of non-enrollers is informative for the local community from which these data were derived and provides a blueprint for further examination of typologies of parents who do not enroll.

Paper 3: Through in-depth interviews with 34 low-income, black and Hispanic mothers in a southern city experiencing a burgeoning Hispanic population, this study examines racial/ethnic relations as mothers engage in constrained labor and public preschool markets. This study reveals that while there is indeed a sense of competition for scarce labor market resources, these sentiments are more strongly expressed by black mothers than by Hispanic mothers. However, Hispanic and black mothers express similar levels of competition for public preschool. Interviews reveal family structure and policy determinants of intergroup tensions.

This study examined the effect of the Kindergarten Home Visit Project, a novel universal intervention program designed to enhance the transition to kindergarten for children and families by providing teachers with the training and support they need to conduct a home visit for each of their students at the beginning of the school year. Forty-four kindergarten teachers from 19 schools and 928 children and their families participated in the project. Teachers were blocked within schools and randomly assigned to intervention or control conditions. Intervention teachers successfully completed home visits for 98% of their students. After controlling for child and teacher demographic factors, multilevel modeling with children nested within classrooms and schools revealed that random assignment to receive a home visit had a significant positive impact on classroom work habits by students and teacher-child relationship warmth at the end of kindergarten. Assignment to home visiting was also associated with positive child outcomes for girls, specifically including: higher academic achievement, academic motivation, work habits, social skills, and better conduct. Impact on boys was non-significant. The effect of home visiting on child outcomes was mediated by an intervening effect on academic motivation for girls during the fall. Positive effects of assignment to intervention were also demonstrated for children from non-English speaking homes. These children demonstrated higher academic motivation and better work habits. In addition, both non-English speaking parents and their teachers reported reduced adverse effects of language barriers on home-school collaboration. The intervention was also found to have a positive effect on teacher attitudes and beliefs. Teachers who conducted home visits reported an increased understanding of the diverse needs and cultural differences of families, a greater willingness to reach out to parents, and a more positive connection to students and their families. These findings suggest that home visiting is beneficial to teachers, students and families and should be continued and expanded as a kindergarten transition practice in the schools.