Early Childhood Education Fails Another Randomized Trial

From Tim Taylor. Excerpt:

"But there are now two major randomized control trial studies looking at the the results of publicly provided pre-K programs, and neither one finds lasting success. Mark W. Lipsey, Dale C. Farran, and Kelley Durkin report the results of the most recent study in "Effects of the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program on children’s achievement and behavior through third grade" (Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2018, online version April 21, 2018). 

The Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Program offers support for families with low-income levels. In 2008-2009, the program only had sufficient funding to cover 42% of applicants. Admission to the program was thus decided by a lottery. This selection procedure makes the eyes of academic researchers light up, because it means that there was random selection of who was in the program (the "treatment" group) and those who were not (the "control" group). As these students continue into Tennessee public schools, there is follow-up information on how these two groups performed. The result was that that students in the pre-K program has a short-term boost in performance, which quickly faded. The abstract of the study says:

"Low-income children (N = 2990) applying to oversubscribed programs were randomly assigned to receive offers of admission or remain on a waiting list. Data from pre-k through 3rd grade were obtained from state education records; additional data were collected for a subset of children with parental consent (N = 1076). At the end of pre-k, pre-k participants in the consented subsample performed better than control children on a battery of achievement tests, with non-native English speakers and children scoring lowest at base-line showing the greatest gains. During the kindergarten year and thereafter, the control children caught up with the pre-k participants on those tests and generally surpassed them. Similar results appeared on the 3rd grade state achievement tests for the full randomized sample – pre-k participants did not perform as well as the control children. Teacher ratings of classroom behavior did not favor either group overall, though some negative treatment effects were seen in 1st and 2nd grade."

The previous major randomized control trial study of an early childhood education program was done on the federal Head start program. I discussed it here. Lipsey, Farran and Durkin summarize the finding in this way:

"This study [of Head Start] began in 2002 with a national sample of 5000 children who applied to 84 programs expected to have more applicants than spaces. Children were randomly selected for offers of admission with those not selected providing the control group.The 4-year-old children admitted to Head Start made greater gains across the pre-k year than nonparticipating children on measures of language and literacy, although not on math. However, by the  end of kindergarten the control children had caught up on most achievement outcomes; subsequent positive effects for Head Start participants were found on only one achievement measure at the end of 1st grade and another at the end of 3rd grade. There were no statistically significant effects on social–emotional measures at the end of the pre-k or kindergarten years. A few positive effects appeared in parent reports at the end of the 1st and 3rd grade years, but teacher and child reports in those years showed either null or negative effects.""