Early Investment Equals Academic Success: How States Can Get the Most for their Education Program Dollars

Early childhood programs have recently been the focus of renewed national attention. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has prioritized expanded access to pre-K, and the topic has enjoyed mentions by President Barack Obama in consecutive State of the Union addresses. But studies showing that pre-school is good for kids are not, in themselves, enough to make policy happen. Other constraints – chief among them the cost – are just as important. A recent study aims to capture the impacts of early childhood programs from a policymaker’s perspective – considering a fuller spectrum of costs and benefits. Led by a team from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, the study examined the link between investments in early childhood education programs for low-income residents and their “intermediate-run” educational outcomes. The authors found that the return on investment from these programs is strong overall and produces direct academic improvement in reading and math.

The authors designed their study to examine two of North Carolina’s early childhood education programs: Smart Start (SS) and the More at Four (MAF) program. Smart Start, first implemented in 1993, focuses on bolstering and improving the delivery of child care services for all residents between the ages of zero and five. MAF, established in 2001, is a school preparedness initiative that works to develop four-year-olds for entry into kindergarten the following year.

The authors note that the programs directly target what are believed to be two major pillars of the achievement gap – the deficits low-income children face in nutrition and health care access, and the comparative lack of cognitive stimulation and academic resources that they endure prior to entry into school.

The authors focus on per-child dollars allocated to a county for use on either Smart Start or More at Four. Controlling for differences across counties and years, they measure expenditure against the average standardized test scores of children in the county after the third grade – the earliest time frame for which test score data is available, and a benchmark recognized as a strong predictor of future academic success or failure.

The authors’ choice to measure the average outcomes of all children in a funded community was deliberate. It allowed them to track the full effects that SS and MAF funding had on entire communities, from direct benefits to spillover effects. After all, the effects of funding changes are not confined to program enrollees, and policymakers cannot selectively pick and choose which impacts their funding decisions will cause.

The study found a strong positive link between state investment in children and their eventual third-grade scores. Committing $1,100 per program per child (the average expenditure) translated into test score gains equivalent to roughly four to six additional months spent in school – a large effect from a per-dollar standpoint, since North Carolina currently spends $8,500 per student per year on elementary education.

From a budgeting perspective, it would take between $1,700 and $3,400 worth of classroom instruction to match the test score gains that SS and MAF achieved for $1,100 per program per child.

In related research by the same authors, enrollment in both programs reduced the probability that children became designated as special needs, producing a cost savings there as well. The authors also found that the effects of SS and MAF together were larger for children from low-education backgrounds (fewer than 12 years of school), and were equivalent across racial demographic groups.

Pre-school has quantifiable benefits for children who participate, but policymakers often must balance interest in pre-school programs with concerns for budgetary constraints. The results of this study are therefore particularly compelling as they illustrate the fiscal sensibility of early childhood program expenditures at a state level. The returns on investment suggest that paying more up front can lead to paying far less farther down the line.

Article Source: Helen F. Ladd, Clara G. Muschkin, and Kenneth A. Dodge, “From Birth to School: Early Childhood Initiatives and Third-Grade Outcomes in North Carolina,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 33, No. 1 (2014): 162-187.

Feature Photo: cc/(Simply CVR)