Randomized Control Trial of Pre-K on Children’s Skills Through 3rd Grade [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Randomized Control Trial of Pre-K on Children’s Skills Through 3rd Grade [pdf]

peabody.vanderbilt.edu

9 pointsmhb22 comments

This result, among others, was discussed in this post (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-26/early-child...) and the writer's conclusions make sense to me. Small difference + statistical noise + conflicting study results could just mean that you're seeing no meaningful effect. There's probably no need to construct a twisted rationale over why this sort of program would actually produce net bad results.

What's interesting is that the author talks only about impact on children. I was under the impression that a large part of the argument for universal preK (and universal day-care, like Head Start) was that it evens out how easy it is for parents to work when they have small kids. If that's the case, then it's not a huge problem that the academic results aren't great over time for the kids themselves if it means that overall family well-being is improved.

As a side note, Head Start is also interesting in that it, when it's done using blended classrooms, it also lets kids from diverse background interact with each other before they've learned a lot of prejudicial behaviors.

It may well be true that pitching universal preK as universal child-care would be more honest. I suspect the problem is that it would also be significantly more controversial as it wouldn't really be "for the children and the future" any longer but rather, for better or worse, a straight income transfer to parents of young children.

yes. If you actually look at the results table in the study, the results are not even significant at 5% level.

From the summary at the end:

>by the spring of the first grade year, teachers rated the TN‐VPK children as less well prepared for school, having poorer work skills, and feeling more negative about school. This was a reversal of the ratings provided by the kindergarten teachers at the beginning of kindergarten. It is notable that these ratings precede the downward achievement trend for TN‐VPK children that appeared in the second and third grades.

What is TN-VPK?

Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten program

the finding of this study defies common sense. Children supposedly first improved but then magically became statistically significantly worse by third grade. I would argue the most likely explanation for such weird results is errors in either data collection or analysis

It only defies common sense if you believe more schooling must be better in every way and it is a free lunch.

There is, however, a vein of research (related to the unschooling & homeschooling movements) indicating that too much early schooling can crowd out play and mental development, in which case occasionally you'll see stuff like this (early improvement because of teaching to the test, followed by some loss later on).

To give the most recent example of such research, here's a Danish quasi-experimental study showing increases in ADHD from earlier schooling: "The Gift of Time? School Starting Age and Mental Health" https://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 or before that, I saw "Non-cognitive deficits and young adult outcomes: the long-run impacts of a universal child care program" http:/www.gwern.net/docs/2015-baker.pdf

(Of course, it could just be an artifact of some sort.)

I think many of these results are artifacts of poor sampling choices on the part of researchers. It's very easy to introduce subtle bias into the data at every stage

It sounds strange, but there are lots of potential explanations:

1) The pre-k program is "teaching to the test", focusing on higher scores but not the core skills that matter by third grade.

2) Parents who opt to send their children to this pre-k program are less engaged than those who keep their children at home.

3) The k-3 curriculum doesn't capitalize on the skills gained in pre-k.

It's interesting because it's such a non-intuitive result. Could be bad data, but worth checking out....

I work full time in a Head Start agency and work with over 250 students every week in a STEM Lab for over 8 years. I am proud of what I do and even more proud of the teachers, students and families.

1) "Teaching to the Test" is to teachers. They are tested on CLASS (Teacher engagement with the students) ECARDS (Classroom environment) NAECY (Classroom and Teacher Lesson Plans). Federal Reviewers check for Food and general Safety.

Children are engage at their point of interest. So if many in the classroom are interested in a subject the teacher will structure the classroom to focus on that subject and make projects etc..

2) Parents are very much apart of Head Start. Every one has a Policy Council that parents actually help run and make classroom policies. We also have Family engagement partners that visit the homes as close to monthly as possible to help the families to create successful students. The teachers are required to visit the homes at least 3 times a year.

3) I think that is the issue. K-3 does not go through NAEYC or CLASS and usually developmentally inappropriate. There is no family engagement in my experience.

CURRENT POLICY of Head Start Agencies - The lowest 10% of CLASS scores are to be de-funded and the contract to be put up for competition. Also any missing children or serious safety violations equals immediate de-funding.

NAEYC - https://www.naeyc.org/accreditation CLASS - http://teachstone.com/classroom-assessment-scoring-system/ EKRDS -

"teaching to the test" depends on the instrument they are using - I cannot find it in the study.

We used LAP and ELAP (8 domain assessments) because we started much earlier (6 weeks). It is structured so you do teach the test but when the test says "stack 3 blocks on top of each other" (obvious early LAP skill), you are pretty much going to teach the test.

In my experience (90s research program), this is basically in line with what Harvard found about Head Start. Starting earlier has the effect of finding learning defects (not sure the current term) earlier like hearing problems and allows time for correction during the critical 0-3 years.

Point 2 rings true, but I would doubt your #3.

2) can be discounted probably, because students were chosen at random

1) and 3) seem a stretch. How do you teach to test in such a way ( assuming no cheating by teachers ), that kids can do math on the test, but later they lose that skill in such a way that they become worse (!) in a statistically significant way than those who weren't in pre-k ?

I think what it is, is bad sampling procedures. For example, in the study, they had to get permission of parents to evaluate the kids and only 36% ( ! ) of those not in pre-k agreed to be evaluated. So, I think this is just biased sampling at work.

Having looked seriously into this study it does appear to be done correctly. I struggle with it is Pre-K's fault and not what are we doing wrong with K-3, which is were I think our Public Education System (Especially in Urban Schools) are at our weakest. The "common sense" of start early for reading became all 5 year olds must learn to read became my daughters 3 hours of reading a day Kindergarten and 2.5 hours of math with no recesses.

The issue is not that it's done incorrectly, the issue is that the limitations of the available sample are such that there will be a bias introduced. Most parents did not respond to request to be evaluated ! that's a very strong indication of a possible bias

It states that the raw values come from the school database with a sample size of around 3,000 children. Also the teachers were giving the responses at the end of the school year.

The parents did have to sign a letter at some point to be apart of this but it appears that there is an issue with the outcomes. I fully believe what is happening in my Head Start really is making a difference, but it seems to be harder to see the advantages right now with this research paper.

only 32% of non-participants gave consent for their children to be evaluated. Nuff said.

Thank you. This study has rocked a lot of people in Head Start around the nation. This could cause problems with funding in the years ahead.

Remember that the most at-risk students were being selected for the program. It's possible that the education helped a bit, but was ultimately outweighed by the negative factors which made them at-risk to begin with. If so, it would substantiate the idea that the success or failure of education starts in the home.

the students were selected at random from the same population, so I don't believe your explanation fits the data here

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