New York, NY – Following more than two decades of public investment, North Carolina’s pre-kindergarten program has yielded positive outcomes for children, especially those most likely to experience systemic adversity outside of preschool, according to a new study published June 13 that analyzed outcomes of more than 1 million students and examined the effects of the state’s funding for the public pre-k program in North Carolina, called NC Pre-K, on children’s educational development through the end of elementary school.
The findings were published in the Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, here.
Researchers led by Tyler Watts, Assistant Professor in Developmental Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University; Jade Jenkins, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Development at the University of California-Irvine; and Kenneth Dodge, the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University; examined the longer-term effects of funding on children’s academic outcomes in elementary school, and whether these effects varied based on the children’s environments before, during, and after the pre-K year. They found that the state’s funding of NC Pre-K boosted average fifth-grade achievement, and that the impacts were largest for Hispanic children and those whose mothers did not graduate high school.
The funding effects on achievement were larger for children exposed to more disadvantaged environments either before or after the pre-k experience, the researchers write, “indicating that participation in NC Pre-K provides a buffer against the adverse effects of prior negative environmental experiences and protection against the effects of future adverse experiences.”
“The biggest takeaway from our study was that although the overall effect of funding for pre-k on achievement was modest for the average student in the state, these investments mattered more for children who were likely to experience disadvantages in other areas of their life,” said Watts, the study’s lead author. “Interestingly, we even found that funding for pre-k had larger effects for children who attended lower-achieving elementary schools, which suggests that pre-k may provide a boost for children who are at risk to receive lower quality educational environments in other periods.”
The study deepens previous work from 2014, which first introduced the strategy for evaluating the effects of North Carolina’s pre-k investments. Watts’s team updated the research model with new statistical controls and by adding new cohorts of children born since the earlier research had been conducted.
North Carolina has funded public preschool slots for at-risk four-year-olds through the NC-PreK program since 2001. As enrollment in this program continues to rise, questions regarding the long-term effects of public investments remain. And while studies have shown that the North Carolina program has yielded clear short-term benefits in early elementary school, research has been less consistent in finding whether the initial benefits persist, fade, or even become adverse as time passes.
Authors of the new study approached this question by taking into account other experiences children encounter before or after their pre-K year. They hypothesized that the long-term impact of North Carolina’s investment in public pre-K depends on other features of children’s environments. They proposed three developmental theories that could explain how other environmental experiences could interact with pre-K exposure. First, they considered the “dynamic complementarity” effects of factors outside of preschool which complement the positive effects of preschool on skill development. In this scenario, for example, the positive effect of preschool might be enhanced when children later attend a very high-quality kindergarten classroom that further builds on the gains made in pre-k.
They also considered “compensatory effects,” sometimes known as “protective effects” or “buffering effects.” These effects would describe any situation where the effect of pre-K investment is stronger for children less likely to encounter developmentally supportive environments outside of preschool. Finally, the researchers looked at “additive effects,” which predicts that pre-K and external environments contribute to a child’s skill development independently of one another, regardless of the nature of the external environment. The researchers tested these hypotheses across a range of environmental measures and levels of development between birth and grade five, including access to alternative forms of early childhood education, specific features of the elementary school environment, community economic factors, and demographic characteristics of children and families.
The study found that greater investments in the NC Pre-K program are associated with positive effects on grade-5 academic achievement scores, with no effect found on late elementary school grade retention or special education placement. In general, the researchers found substantial support for the idea of “additive effects,” as pre-k funding effects were often consistently observed across other environmental characteristics. However, when environmental interactions were detected, they tended to support the theory that preschool can compensate for negative environments. The researchers concluded that North Carolina’s investments in public pre-K programs were most effective for children who experienced adverse environments.
The researchers also note some limitations of this work. The statistical model leveraged data from over 1 million children growing up in North Carolina over the past several decades, making the researchers able to draw conclusions about the population-level effects of North Carolina’s investment in early childhood education programming. However, the approach depends on the assumption that differences in funding for the program over time are as good as random once certain statistical controls have been included, which can be difficult to fully prove. For this reason, the authors emphasize that these findings, while promising, should be considered alongside the broader literature on pre-k program evaluations before strong conclusions are drawn.
However, the authors note that the broad scope of analyses and the comprehensiveness of the study offer some assurances that the findings are sound. And although the findings challenge some conventional wisdom that the effects of pre-k programs diminish over time, they offer meaningful implications for policy, the authors noted. “I think for a long time people have expected that pre-k experiences will promote children’s well-being when they are followed by more good experiences down the road. But our finding that pre-k experiences may make children more resilient in the face of adversity expands our views on public investments in early childhood,” said study co-author Jade Jenkins.
“This study provides strong evidence that public investments in pre-kindergarten benefit the full population of young children, with even greater benefits for the children who need the most help. This outcome is exactly what public policy should strive to accomplish,” said co-author Kenneth Dodge.
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About Teachers College, Columbia University
Founded in 1887, Teachers College, Columbia University, the first and largest graduate school of education in the United States, is perennially ranked among the nation’s best. Teachers College’s mission is to create a smarter, healthier, and more equitable and peaceful world. Teachers College engages in research and prepares professionals in its three main areas of expertise—education, health and psychology— to work with public and private entities in local, national and global communities and inform public policy. Students choose from among 150 separate programs to earn graduate degrees, which are conferred by Columbia University. While it is closely affiliated with Columbia University and collaborates with it on many programs, the College is an independent, autonomous institution with a separate, independent governing board, president, and financial endowment.