Quality of Early Childcare and Education Predicts High School STEM Achievement for Students from Low-income Backgrounds

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

High-quality early-care and education (ECE) has demonstrated long-term associations with positive educational and life outcomes and can be particularly impactful for children from low-income backgrounds. This study extends the literature on the long-term associations between high-quality ECE and STEM success in high school. Using the 1991 NICHD SECCYD (n=1,096; 48.6% Female; 76.4% White, 11.3% African-American, 5.8% Latine, 6.5% Other), results demonstrated that ECE was associated with reduced disparities between low- and higher-income children’s STEM achievement and school performance at age 15. Disparities in STEM school performance (i.e., enrollment in advanced STEM courses and STEM GPA) and STEM achievement (i.e., Woodcock Johnson cognitive battery) were reduced when children from lower-income families experienced high-quality ECE across the first five years of life. Further, results suggested an indirect pathway for these associations from high-quality ECE to age 15 STEM success through increased STEM achievement in middle childhood. Findings suggest that community-based ECE is linked to meaningful improvements in STEM achievement in middle childhood which in turn relates to STEM achievement and school performance in high school, and high-quality ECE is particularly important for children from lower-income backgrounds. This work has implications for policy and practice positioning high-quality ECE across the first five years of life as a promising lever for bolstering the STEM pipeline for children from lower-income backgrounds.

Author

• Andres Sebastian Bustamante, University of California - Irvine