Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child care sector: Evidence from North Carolina.

This study provides a comprehensive, census-level evaluation of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the county child care market in a large and diverse state, North Carolina, and the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on different types of providers and communities. We use county-level panel data from 2016 to 2020 and a difference-in-differences design to isolate the effects of the pandemic from unobservable seasonal trends in enrollments and closures. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic reduced county-level child care enrollment by 40% and the number of providers by 2% as of December 2020. Heterogeneity analyses revealed that the family child care sector experienced not only less severe reductions in enrollment and closure than center providers, but also a small growth in the number of family providers. Declines in enrollment were most substantial for preschool-aged children. There was a significant drop in the number of 5-star providers and an increase in the number of lower-quality providers. Provider closures were more concentrated in communities with a higher percentage of Hispanic residents. Higher-SES communities experienced larger drops in enrollment as well as provider closures. Implications for child development and future research and policies are discussed.

Examining Heterogeneity in the Impacts of Socio-Emotional Curricula in Preschool: A Quantile Treatment Effect Approach.

We examine treatment effect heterogeneity using data from the Head Start CARES study, in which a sample of preschool centers was randomly assigned to either one of three curricula interventions targeting socio-emotional (SE) skills (i.e., emotional knowledge, problem-solving skills, and executive functions) or to continue using their "business-as-usual" curriculum. Most existing research estimates only mean differences between treatment and control groups, and uses simple subgroup analyses to assess treatment heterogeneity, which may overlook important variation in treatment effects across the ex post outcome distribution. We use quantile treatment effects analyses to understand the impacts of these curricular interventions at various parts of the outcome distribution, from the 1st percentile to the 99th percentile, to understand who benefits most from SE curricula interventions. Results show positive impacts of the curricula interventions on emotional knowledge and problem-solving skills, but not equally across the full skill distribution. Children in the upper half of the emotional knowledge distribution and at the higher end of the problem-solving skills distribution gain more from the curricula. As in the study's original mean-comparison analyses, we find no impacts on children's executive function skills at any point in the skills distribution. Our findings add to the growing literature on the differential effects of curricula interventions for preschool programs operating at scale. Importantly, it provides the first evidence for the effects of SE curricula interventions on SE outcomes across children's outcome skill levels. We discuss implications for early education programs for children with different school readiness skills.

Who Participates in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems?

Even with rapid and widespread expansion of states' quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS)-tiered frameworks that assess, communicate, and improve early childhood education (ECE) quality-there exists no population-level information regarding which providers choose to participate in these primarily voluntary systems. We use a nationally representative survey of ECE centers to examine how the characteristics of ECE centers and the communities in which they are located predict participation in QRIS to understand the scope of QRIS policy implementation and the extent to which QRIS may be equity enhancing. We find that approximately one-third of centers nationwide participated in QRIS in 2012. Selection model results reveal that participation is more likely among centers that blend multiple funding sources and who are NAEYC accredited, and in communities with high poverty rates. However, QRIS participation is less likely in communities with relatively higher proportions of Black residents. Findings raise questions about how QRISs can equitably engage programs in all communities.

Parenting Skills and Early Childhood Development: Production Function Estimates from Longitudinal Data.

We provide evidence on the importance of specific inputs for child cognitive skills by estimating alternative specifications of the early childhood production function, between birth and kindergarten. We identify a new input measure, parent-child interaction, which is both important for development and amenable to policy intervention because parenting skills can be taught. We find that the application of reading books and singing songs and sensitive and engaging parent-child interactions as early as 9 months of age have an important effect on reading among kindergarten children.

Double Down or Switch It Up: Should Low-Income Children Stay in Head Start for 2 Years or Switch Programs?

BACKGROUND: Recent growth in subsidized preschool opportunities in the United States for low-income 4-year-old children has allowed federal Head Start programs to fund more slots for 3-year-old children. In turn, when Age-3 Head Start participants turn four, they may choose to switch into one of the many alternative care options or choose to stay in Head Start for a second year. OBJECTIVES: We analyze a nationally representative sample of Age-3 Head Start participants to examine whether children who stay in Head Start for a second year at Age 4 exhibit greater school readiness and subsequent cognitive and behavioral performance compared with children who switch out of Head Start into alternative care. We also examine differences between children who stay at the same Head Start center at Age 4 with those who switch to a different Head Start center. RESEARCH DESIGN: Child fixed effects analyses coupled with inverse probability of treatment weights to remove observable, time-invariant differences between Head Start stayers and switchers. SUBJECTS: Cohort of Age-3 Head Start attendees from the Head Start Impact Study. MEASURES: Child cognitive and behavioral skills assessed by trained administrators annually at ages 3-7. RESULTS: Age-3 Head Start participants' outcomes do not differ at the end of preschool, kindergarten, or first grade based on their choice of Age-4 program. Staying at the same Head Start center for 2 years may be beneficial for behavioral skills. CONCLUSIONS: For low-income families, there exist many equally beneficial options to support their children's school readiness through public preschool programs.

Are Content-Specific Curricula Differentially Effective in Head Start or State Prekindergarten Classrooms?

Head Start and state prekindergarten (pre-K) programs can boost the school readiness of low-income children through the use of effective preschool curricula. Encouraging results from some studies suggest that children who receive targeted or content-specific curricular supplements (e.g., literacy or math) during preschool show moderate to large improvements in that targeted content domain, but recent research also suggests differences in children's school readiness among different preschool program settings. We examine whether children in Head Start or public pre-K classrooms differentially benefit from the use of randomly assigned classroom curricula targeting specific academic domains. Our results indicate that children in both Head Start and public pre-K classrooms benefit from targeted, content-specific curricula. Future research is needed to examine the specific mechanisms and classroom processes through which curricula help improve children's outcomes.

Healthy and Ready to Learn: Effects of a School-Based Public Health Insurance Outreach Program for Kindergarten-Aged Children.

BACKGROUND: Rates of child insurance coverage have increased due to expansions in public programs, but many eligible children remain uninsured. Uninsured children are less likely to receive preventative care, which leads to poorer health and achievement in the long term. This study is an evaluation of a school-based health insurance outreach initiative, "Healthy and Ready to Learn," aiming to identify and enroll uninsured kindergarteners in areas of high economic need in 16 counties in North Carolina. METHODS: Regression discontinuity design and difference-in-differences analyses were used to estimate the effect of the initiative on Medicaid and CHIP enrollment (primary outcome) and preventive care use (well-child visits; secondary outcome). Focus groups and key-informant interviews were conducted to assess best practices and identify barriers to outreach for child enrollment. RESULTS: The initiative increased enrollment rates by 12.2% points and increased well-child exam rates by 8.6% points in the RD models, but not differences-in-differences, and did not significantly increase well-child visits. CONCLUSIONS: Findings demonstrate the potential benefits of using schools as a point of intervention in enrolling young children in public health insurance and as a source of trusted information for low-income parents.

Fadeout in an early mathematics intervention: Constraining content or preexisting differences?

A robust finding across research on early childhood educational interventions is that the treatment effect diminishes over time, with children not receiving the intervention eventually catching up to children who did. One popular explanation for fadeout of early mathematics interventions is that elementary school teachers may not teach the kind of advanced content that children are prepared for after receiving the intervention, so lower-achieving children in the control groups of early mathematics interventions catch up to the higher-achieving children in the treatment groups. An alternative explanation is that persistent individual differences in children's long-term mathematical development result more from relatively stable preexisting differences in their skills and environments than from the direct effects of previous knowledge on later knowledge. We tested these 2 hypotheses using data from an effective preschool mathematics intervention previously known to show a diminishing treatment effect over time. We compared the intervention group to a matched subset of the control group with a similar mean and variance of scores at the end of treatment. We then tested the relative contributions of factors that similarly constrain learning in children from treatment and control groups with the same level of posttreatment achievement and preexisting differences between these 2 groups to the fadeout of the treatment effect over time. We found approximately 72% of the fadeout effect to be attributable to preexisting differences between children in treatment and control groups with the same level of achievement at posttest. These differences were fully statistically attenuated by children's prior academic achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record

Head Start at ages 3 and 4 versus Head Start followed by state pre-k: Which is more effective?

As policy-makers contemplate expanding preschool opportunities for low-income children, one possibility is to fund two, rather than one year of Head Start for children at ages 3 and 4. Another option is to offer one year of Head Start followed by one year of pre-k. We ask which of these options is more effective. We use data from the Oklahoma pre-k study to examine these two 'pathways' into kindergarten using regression discontinuity to estimate the effects of each age-4 program, and propensity score weighting to address selection. We find that children attending Head Start at age 3 develop stronger pre-reading skills in a high quality pre-kindergarten at age 4 compared with attending Head Start at age 4. Pre-k and Head Start were not differentially linked to improvements in children's pre-writing skills or pre-math skills. This suggests that some impacts of early learning programs may be related to the sequencing of learning experiences to more academic programming.

The effects of breastfeeding exclusivity on early childhood outcomes.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the relationship between breastfeeding exclusivity and duration and children's health and cognitive outcomes at ages 2 and 4 years. METHODS: We used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, a nationally representative sample of 10,700 children born in the United States in 2001. Parent interviews and child assessments were conducted in measurement waves at 9 months, 2 years, 4 years, and in kindergarten, with the focus on ages 2 and 4 years. We employed propensity scores as a means of adjusting for confounding involving observed characteristics. RESULTS: Outcome analyses using propensity scores showed some small effects of breastfeeding on key outcomes at age 4 years but not at age 2 years. Effects appeared to be concentrated in reading and cognitive outcomes. Overall, we found no consistent evidence for dosage effects of breastfeeding exclusivity. Our sensitivity analyses revealed that a small amount of unobserved confounding could be responsible for the resulting benefits. CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealed little or no effect of breastfeeding exclusivity and duration on key child outcomes.