Associations Between Classroom Quality and Early Development: The Moderating Role of Early Gaps in Language

• In Event: 1-106 - Disparities in Early Childhood Education: Three observational approaches to literacy achievement and development

Integrative Statement

Inequities in pre-academic stimulation and school readiness for children from low-income families start early and represent a documented source for disparities in long-term academic achievement and attainment (Burchinal, Carr, Vernon-Feagans, Blair, & Cox, 2018; Duncan & Murnane, 2011). High-quality preschool has shown both short- and long-term benefits on a host of child outcomes (Phillips et al., 2017; Yoshikawa et al., 2013) and is a potential lever for addressing structural inequities in supporting children’s positive early development. However, nationally, high-quality slots in the U.S. are in scarce supply, and there is considerable policy attention to quality improvement efforts (Weiland, 2018). At the same time, there is evidence that some children benefit more from high-quality preschool programs than others. In particular, consistent with a compensatory effect, children with lower skills at baseline appear particularly likely to benefit from high-quality preschool experience (Bitler, Hoynes, & Domina, 2014; Bloom & Weiland, 2015).

In the present paper, we add to the current literature in two ways. First, we examine whether a commonly used measure of preschool quality – the CLASS (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) -- associated with gains in children’s executive function, vocabulary, and math skills in Boston’s public pre-kindergarten program. Second, at SRCD, we will present models exploring whether, consistent with the compensatory hypothesis, the associations between classroom quality and children’s gains in numeracy, vocabulary and executive function skills are different for children who entered behind, ahead or around the mean standardized scores in language. Notably, this new study extends prior work (Weiland, Ulvestad, Sachs, & Yoshikawa, 2013) which found little evidence of relations between the CLASS and children’s vocabulary and executive function outcomes in Boston prekindergarten. Specifically, our new study adds early math outcomes and considers moderation by baseline skills.

The sample is 307 participants (50.5% Female, 4.65 - 0.29 SD - years) enrolled in 42 preschool classrooms. We use multilevel regression models to estimate linear and quadratic associations between classroom quality and children’s gains in language, executive function, and math in Boston Public Schools. Covariates in the model include children’s age, gender, an indicator whether they are eligible for free or reduced lunch, an indicator whether the language at home is other than English, and children’s race-ethnicity. At the classroom level, we included one indicator for classrooms with more than twenty students and teachers with a master’s degree.

We find that children's vocabulary and executive function gains from fall to spring of the preschool year are negatively associated with the classrooms’ instructional support in linear models, controlling for children’s sociodemographic characteristics. However, we found evidence of some quadratic relations; lower levels of instructional support are positively associated with gains in math and language skills while higher levels of instructional support are negatively associated with gains in math and language. We found a similar quadratic relation between executive function and classroom organization. At SRCD, we will also present results from analyses examining whether these patterns hold for children who start behind, ahead or around their peers’ mean in language.

Authors

• Paola Andrea Guerrero Rosada, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Christina Weiland, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine Snow, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• JoAnn Hsueh, MDRC
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jason Sachs, Boston Public Schools
  Non-Presenting Author