Among Child Care Options in Miami, Children Learn More in School-Based Pre-K

You voted. We investigated. In a blog post earlier this month, we asked you to choose what research most piqued your interest among 10 relevant posters released at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. The top 3 vote-getters: Research on "fade-out" in the elementary school years; social behavior in preschool; and early academic outcomes for children in family-based care, center-based or public pre-K. Here is your first report, on the latter of those three. Keep in mind that these are early findings from not-yet-published research. Stay tuned for the next two, and thanks for your input.

Children who attended pre-K programs run by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools are doing better in elementary school than their peers who attended community-based child-care settings paid for with public subsidies, according to new research from the Miami School Readiness Project.

Those who attended pre-K programs at age 4 in non-Title I schools showed the most dramatic gains compared to their counterparts. Their grades averaged in the B+ range across kindergarten, 1^st , 2^nd and 3^rd grades. Their standardized test scores in math and reading were higher than those who went to Title I programs or child-care centers in the community. Family income appears to account for some, but not all, of the difference, researchers said, because even poor children in those programs did well compared to poor children in other programs.

Children in the Title I pre-K programs also achieved significantly higher grades and test scores in some cases, though their gains were only slightly higher than their peers who came from community-based providers.

The study, which included nearly 14,000 children, tracked outcomes for children who were 4 in 2003 -- two years before Florida started its universal pre-K program. Researchers examined data on early childhood enrollments and public school records up to the 2006-07 school year. They also focused on children in poverty and children whose families qualified for government subsidies for childcare. (The subsidies came from programs funded by the Child Care Development Block Grant or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.)

In a surprise to researchers, it did not seem to matter in most cases whether children receiving those subsidies went to child-care centers or family day care (settings in which non-relatives take care of small groups of children in their homes). In general, researchers found little academic disadvantage to one over the other.

"We expected family daycares to be not as good, but that wasn't found," said Adam Winsler, a professor of applied developmental psychology at George Mason University and a lead researcher on the project. In the Miami area, as elsewhere, Winsler said, family day care and child-care centers have been reported to be of "average, mediocre quality." In general, low-to-average child-care programs are typically associated with far fewer academic gains than high-quality pre-K programs.

Jessica De Feyter, a doctoral student at George Mason, presented the research at SRCD's biennial meeting earlier this month.

The study is part of a larger project examining the impact of early childhood experiences in the urban and heavily Latino county of Miami-Dade. Of the children being studied, 57 percent are Latino. Winsler and Charles Bleiker of Florida International University started the project in 2002, and Louis Manfra at FIU is now involved as a lead investigator as well.

Last summer, the Early Childhood Research Quarterly published the project's first findings, which showed that 4-year-olds in poverty were better prepared for kindergarten after one year of pre-K in the public schools. In tests at the end of the pre-K school year, the children showed relatively large leaps in cognitive ability and language skills. Those who had spent a year in a child-care center also made significant progress, though their gains were not as great.

Although the project started two years before the state-wide launch of Florida's Voluntary Prekindergarten program in 2005, its findings could have implications for parents of young children, educators and policy makers. The VPK program, as the pre-K program is called, is free to all children in Florida and enables parents to choose among community-based or public school providers. But the program has been criticized for allocating only $2,500 per child, and the National Institute for Early Education Research says it meets only 4 of 10 benchmarks for quality.

This month's study shows children in varying childcare settings sustaining some learning gains through 3^rd grade. But the pre-K programs in the public schools appeared to make the biggest difference. Winsler noted that these programs use an early learning curriculum (his previous study showed that most of the Miami-Dade public school pre-K programs use the High/Scope curriculum) and featured teachers with salaries and credentials commensurate with other public school teachers.

The study begs a closer look at the pre-K programs in non-Title I schools specifically, since they appear to be doing the most for children in poverty. These programs were not free -- parents at the time paid a fee to enroll their children -- but evidently some impoverished families in non-Title I neighborhoods were enrolling their children anyway because the classes included children who, a year later, qualified for free/reduced-price lunch in kindergarten. In future research, Winsler said, he and his colleagues hope to examine differences between Title I and non-Title I pre-K programs within the public school system, as well as explore whether factors beyond family income might make some children more likely to attend one program over another.

As the research poster explained: "There is likely something about center/school/program quality that distinguishes Title I and fee-based public school pre-k and contributes to children's positive outcomes."

One final note on the poster: Its findings have not yet been published and it does not include data on children who, at age 4, had parents or relatives taking care of them at home or who paid for enrollment in private preschools or child-care centers without using a subsidy. We have no way of knowing whether they might have benefited academically from the pre-K in the public schools or in other early childhood settings and how their outcomes may differ from the children studied.