Features
The achievement gap: What early childhood educators need to know
by Barbara A. Langham
continued

Closing the gap: Early childhood
In the late 1950s, home life for children underwent many changes including a shift from rural to urban lifestyle, a rising divorce rate, and the movement of greater numbers of women into the workforce.

Preschool programs. In the 1960s and 1970s, preschool programs proliferated to accommodate the growing number of working mothers. While some researchers studied the effect of day care on children, others developed programs specifically aimed at poor and minority children.
In 1962, for example, David Weikart, a special education director in Ypsilanti, Mich., created the Perry Preschool Project. This program served low-income, 3- and 4-year-old black children identified as high risk for later school failure.
A decade later, child development researchers at the University of North Carolina began the Abecedarian Project, a five-year investigation of a full-day, full-year program for poor black children from infancy to age 5.
Both were high-quality programs with well-trained teachers. Results from both programs were positive: less placement in special education, less grade retention, and increased high school graduation. Follow-up of Perry preschoolers, in particular, revealed that at age 40 they had higher educational attainment, higher earnings, and lower crime compared to non-enrolled peers. Significantly, the project showed a high return on every dollar invested, ranging from $5.15 to $17.10 (Isaacs 2008).

Head Start. A number of researchers, including pediatrician Julius Richmond and University of Arkansas professor Bettye Caldwell, investigated the effect of poverty on babies. The conclusion: High-quality infant and toddler care could enhance a child’s emotional and cognitive development (Weber 2008; University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences 2001).
Impressed by such findings, the federal government tapped Richmond and others, notably Yale psychologist Edward Zigler, to create Head Start in 1965 (Yale University n.d.). Head Start provided comprehensive early childhood services to poor 3- and 4-year-olds, in most cases for half a day. The program branched out to include services to pregnant women, infants, and toddlers (Early Head Start). Despite positive results, funding levels allow Head Start to serve less than 40 percent of eligible children, and Early Head Start, less than two percent (National Head Start Association 2008).

Home visiting programs. In the 1970s, David Olds established the Nurse-Family Partnership in Baltimore. Registered nurses made home visits to low-income, first-time mothers during pregnancy and through the child’s second birthday. Nurses taught health practices and parenting skills and helped mothers with plans to finish school and find a job. In 1996, the program branched out to other locations and is now operating in 23 states (Isaacs 2008).
In the early 1980s, Missouri state education officials created Parents As Teachers for first-time parents. It started as a home visiting program, funded through by the state and operated in school districts, in which trained educators visited parents throughout pregnancy and up to age 3. A free, voluntary program, it evolved to include group meetings, screenings, and referrals and was extended to 3- and 4-year-olds.
The program spread to 3,000 sites in 50 states and a dozen other countries. It’s often linked with other programs and funding sources, such as Head Start and Title I. Evaluations have shown positive effects on both parents and children, especially in low-income families (Parents as Teachers 2002).

Brain research. Up until the 1990s, it was widely assumed that babies were born with a fixed learning ability—that is, most had average intelligence, a few were genius level, and others had little ability. That notion was dashed, however, when neuroscientists revealed that the brain is actually hard-wired by a child’s experiences, especially during the first three years of life (U.S. Department of Education 1999; Carnegie Corporation 1994).
Other research established a direct connection between cognition and language. In the mid 1990s, Betty Hart and Todd Risley, for example, found that children reared by parents in professional careers developed more extensive vocabularies than their peers in working class and poor families. The difference was that professional parents talked more to their children and gave more encouragement (Early Education for All 2003).

Harlem Children’s Zone. In 1997, Geoffrey Canada, who had operated social and educational programs for Harlem families for 25 years, created a network of programs for low-income children. The Zone offered a parenting education class for expectant parents and a charter middle school with extended hours that focused on raising students’ test scores.
Before long, he developed a “conveyor belt” approach that would carry children from birth through the preschool years and into elementary and secondary school. Early results showed gains (Harlem Children’s Zone n.d.). Though convinced that this approach works, Canada believes that older kids, who missed out on the conveyor belt, are worth the extraordinary measures needed to save them (Tough 2009).

Universal pre-K. In the 2007-2008 school year, more than 80 percent of all 4-year-olds in the United States attended some kind of preschool. Roughly half of those were in a private program, and half were in a public program such as state pre-K, Head Start, or special education (National Institute for Early Education Research 2008).
The number and type of publicly funded programs varied widely from state to state. In one ranking, Oklahoma topped the list because it provides free public preschool to nearly 90 percent of its 4-year-olds (NIEER 2008).
National consensus for universal pre-K programs is growing (Pew Center on the States 2009). Most state governors recognize the educational and economic necessity of high-quality pre-kindergarten, but support is mixed. (For a state-by-state list of support, see www.preknow.org/documents/LeadershipReport_May2009.pdf.)
One practical proposal, put forth many times in recent years, is to improve coordination at the local level among the public schools, early childhood centers, and community agencies. The Houston Independent School District, for example, has created early childhood centers, partly with the use of Title I funds (Ewen and Matthews 2007).

Where do we go from here?
Four decades of research have led to a better understanding of the conditions in the home, school, and community that affect children’s educational attainment.
We know what early childhood educators have long believed—that high-quality programs that teach parenting skills, enhance infant and toddler development, and expand preschool learning experiences can turn children’s lives around. It’s time to give these programs the added support they deserve.

Editor’s note: Thanks to John Fessenden, director of accountability and research, Del Valle Independent School District, Del Valle, Texas, for reviewing this article.

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