Understanding Heterogeneity in the Impact of Public Preschool Programs.
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2023-06
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We examine the North Carolina Pre-K (NC Pre-K) program to test the hypothesis that observed variation in effects resulting from exposure to the program can be attributed to interactions with other environmental factors that occur before, during, or after the pre-k year. We examine student outcomes in 5th grade and test interaction effects between NC's level of investment in public pre-k and moderating factors. Our main sample includes the population of children born in North Carolina between 1987 and 2005 who later attended a public school in that state, had valid achievement data in 5th grade, and could be matched by administrative record review (nā=ā1,207,576; 58% White non-Hispanic, 29% Black non-Hispanic, 7% Hispanic, 6% multiracial and Other race/ethnicity). Analyses were based on a natural experiment leveraging variation in county-level funding for NC Pre-K across NC counties during each of the years the state scaled up the program. Exposure to NC Pre-K funding was defined as the per-4-year-old-child state allocation of funds to a county in a year. Regression models included child-level and county-level covariates and county and year fixed effects. Estimates indicate that a child's exposure to higher NC Pre-K funding was positively associated with that child's academic achievement 6 years later. We found no effect on special education placement or grade retention. NC Pre-K funding effects on achievement were positive for all subgroups tested, and statistically significant for most. However, they were larger for children exposed to more disadvantaged environments either before or after the pre-k experience, consistent with a compensatory model where pre-k provides a buffer against the adverse effects of prior negative environmental experiences and protection against the effects of future adverse experiences. In addition, the effect of NC Pre-K funding on achievement remained positive across most environments, supporting an additive effects model. In contrast, few findings supported a dynamic complementarity model. Instrumental variables analyses incorporating a child's NC Pre-K enrollment status indicate that program attendance increased average 5th grade achievement by approximately 20% of a standard deviation, and impacts were largest for children who were Hispanic or whose mothers had less than a high school education. Implications for the future of pre-k scale-up and developmental theory are discussed.
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Watts, Tyler W, Jade M Jenkins, Kenneth A Dodge, Robert C Carr, Maria Sauval, Yu Bai, Maya Escueta, Jennifer Duer, et al. (2023). Understanding Heterogeneity in the Impact of Public Preschool Programs. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 88(1). pp. 7ā182. 10.1111/mono.12463 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/28998.
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Yu Bai
Helen F. Ladd
Helen F. Ladd is the Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke Universityās Sanford School of Public Policy. Her education research focuses on school finance and accountability, teacher labor markets, school choice, and early childhood programs. With colleagues at Duke University and UNC, she has used rich longitudinal administrative data from North Caroline to study school segregation, teacher labor markets, teacher quality, charter schools, and early childhood programs. With her husband, Edward Fiske, she has written books and articles on education reform efforts in New Zealand, South Africa, the Netherlands, and England.
She is the co-author or co-editor of 12 books. These include Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based Reform in Education (Brookings Institution, 1996); The Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy (2008 and second edition 2015), books on school reform in New Zealand and South Africa, and Educational Goods: Values, Evidence and Decision Making (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
From 1996-99 she co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Education Finance. In that capacity she is the co-editor of two books: a set of background papers, Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance and the final report, Making Money Matter: Financing Americaās Schools.
In 2011, she was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education. During 2016 and 2017 she served as a member of a National Academy study of financing early care and education with a highly qualified workforce. She is currently a member of the N.C. Governor's Commission on Access to a Sound, Basic Education.
She was president of the Association for Public Policy and Management in 2011 and, from its founding in 2008 until 2017 was co-chair of the national campaign for a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.
Prior to 1986, she taught at Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, and at Harvard University, first in the City and Regional Planning Program and then in the Kennedy School of Government. She graduated with a B.A. degree from Wellesley College in 1967, received a master's degree from the London School of Economics in 1968, and earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1974.
Early in her career, her research focused on state and local public finance, and she was active in the National Tax Association, which she served as president in 1993-94. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a senior research fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
With the support of two Fulbright grants, she spent the spring term of 1998 in New Zealand studying that countryās education system and the spring term of 2002 doing similar research in South Africa. More recently, she spent a term as a visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam examining the Netherlandsā long experience with parental choice and weighted student funding, and two months in London at the Institute for Fiscal Studies pursuing research on school improvement and English academies.
Clara G. Muschkin
Clara Muschkin is an associate research professor emerita of public policy at Duke University and an affiliate of the Center for Child and Family Policy. She directed the Child Policy Research Certificate Program and was the faculty director for the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC).
Muschkin is a sociologist and demographer with an interdisciplinary research focus. In her research, she asks how education policies that influence the composition and organization of educational institutions can influence student behavior and academic performance. Her current research interests include: the impact of early childhood education policies on subsequent student outcomes; the impact of grade configuration on student behavior; the influence of grade retention and age on behavior and academic performance; impact of school composition by race and immigrant status on student behavior and achievement across grade levels; evaluation of high school reform policies; and successful outcomes for community college students.
Research Interests:- Education and social policy
- Academic performance and student behavior
- Public Policy
- Early Childhood education
- Peer Influence in schools
- Poverty and Inequality
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