Neighborhood Advantage and Children’s Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Classroom Quality in Preschool

• In Event: 2-179 - Beyond the Census: Understanding How Neighborhoods Matter for Children by Incorporating Novel Data Sources

Integrative Statement

Neighborhood advantage, commonly defined by characteristics like income-level, employment, and levels of educational attainment, has been found to be positively predictive of children’s development and well-being (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Yet, there is little understanding of the mechanisms through which these attributes matter nor whether there exist other salient dimensions of neighborhood advantage beyond socioeconomic status, particularly in early childhood. Early childhood education (ECE) settings may be one potential mechanism through which neighborhood advantage relates to child outcomes given that these programs are embedded within neighborhoods and children spend a sizable proportion of their days in some type of ECE program. Moreover, some evidence suggests that children in more advantaged communities have greater access to higher quality programs, which promotes children’s developmental outcomes (McCoy et al., 2015).

The present study integrates research on school neighborhoods, ECE, and child development to address this research gap. The study will (1) utilize a broader set of neighborhood characteristics (e.g., proximity to child care, healthcare) to measure neighborhood advantage and (2) examine the role of classroom quality in ECE settings as a mediator between neighborhood advantage and child outcomes. Our data come from the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education - Professional Development Study (Pianta and Burchinal, 2007-11), a randomized study of two forms of professional development designed to improve preschool teachers’ interactions with children. Specifically, we draw on measures of classroom quality using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS™; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2018) and child outcomes (i.e. language development, early literacy, and self-regulation) to address our research questions. Neighborhood indicators were compiled from the Child Opportunity Index (Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2014), a measure of relative opportunity across neighborhoods within metropolitan areas. These sources of data are linked to the schools’ 160 census tracts in 8 cities.

First, we used confirmatory factor analyses to construct a more robust measure of neighborhood advantage. Specifically, we explore whether novel measures of neighborhood advantage (i.e., resource features) capture the same aspect of advantage as traditional measures (i.e., economic features). Next, we used structural equation modeling to examine the mediating role of classroom quality between neighborhood advantage and child outcomes. In this model, the neighborhood advantage constructs were included as predictors, the three classroom quality domains (i.e., emotional support, instructional support, classroom organization) as mediators, and children’s spring language development, early literacy, and inhibitory control skills as outcomes in a single model (See Figure 1).

Preliminary findings suggest that economic and resource advantage are distinct factors of neighborhood advantage (See Figure 2; r = .09, p = .41). Additionally, only instructional support was found to partially mediate the relation between neighborhood advantage and children’s vocabulary skills (b = 0.23, SE = 0.14, p < .10) and inhibitory control (b = 0.02, SE = 0.009, p < .05). The final presentation will incorporate more robust neighborhood resource predictors into the model and will include policy implications of this work for neighborhoods and schools.

Authors

• Wendy Wei, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Andrea Kinghorn Busby, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author