3-208 - Getting Inside the Preschool “Black Box”: An Examination of Dosage, Timing, and Programming for 3-Year-Olds

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

While national debates focus on access to and quality of preschool programs for 4-year-olds, a growing number of 3-year-olds attend preschool. This trend raises questions about dosage and timing of preschool exposure and the kinds of programming that are appropriate for 3-year-olds. The papers in this symposium address these relatively unexplored questions using both experimental and rigorous, non-experimental designs.

Papers one and two use propensity-score matching to examine the effects of preschool dosage on child outcomes. Paper one finds that two years of exposure to Head Start is associated with stronger academic skills at the end of Head Start and kindergarten, but finds no effects of quality of care using Head Start FACES data. Paper two finds that two years of enhanced preschool programming are associated with higher academic and social-emotional scores through second grade. Papers three and four focus squarely on 3-year-olds to understand whether dosage and timing of preschool exposure and specific kinds of programming might drive impacts on younger children in preschool programs. Paper three uses statewide Head Start and administrative data from a Midwestern state and finds that 3-year-olds who participated in Head Start and those who attended for at least 100 days have higher third-grade achievement scores than their counterparts who did not. Paper four presents impacts on 3-year-olds from an experimental evaluation of three social-emotional preschool program enhancements. These four papers shed new light on the short- and long-term effects of preschool dosage and timing and inform questions about programming for 3-year-olds.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Amy E Lowenstein, MDRC

Individual Presentations

• Head Start Dosage and Quality Effects: Propensity Score Analyses of Two National Cohorts - Presenting Author: Louisa Banks Tarullo, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.; Yange Xue, Mathematica Policy Research Inc.; Nikki Aikens, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

• Exposure to an Enhanced Preschool Model: Benefits to Children's Social, Emotional, and Academic Outcomes - Presenting Author: Celene Elizabeth Domitrovich; Harshini K Shah, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.; Julia E Moore, University of Toronto; Brittany Cooper, Washington State University; Nicole R. Morgan; Mark T Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University

• Head Start Participation and Dosage Effects: Findings from a Midwestern State - Presenting Author: Irma Arteaga, University of Missouri, Columbia

• Do Social-Emotional Preschool Curricula Benefit 3-Year-Olds? Exploratory Impacts from the Head Start CARES Demonstration - JoAnn Hsueh, MDRC; Presenting Author: Amy E Lowenstein, MDRC; Pamela Morris, New York University; Shira Kolnik Mattera, MDRC; Michael Bangser, MDRC