Starting School Before Age 2 Helps Children Avoid Achievement Gaps, Study Finds
Researchers focused on a program called Educare, which experts say could serve as a model for the future of Head Start.
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Preschool teacher Cathy Barraza stood in the center of a large playground as she watched a group of toddlers scoot down the slide and dart across the soft artificial grass. Other 2-year-olds rode tricycles around a track while some clung to their teachers.
鈥淚 had them when they were infants,鈥 said Barraza, who has worked for the Long Beach-based Educare since 2017. Compared to the other state-funded program she used to work for, Educare fosters more trusting relationships with parents. 鈥淭hey become like a family.鈥
A modern facility tucked into a residential neighborhood, the program is part of a network of 25 Educare centers nationwide. In a field with high turnover, Educare is known for keeping children with the same teacher until age 3. Other features 鈥 small class sizes, a full-day schedule and strong family support 鈥 further set the model apart from most early-childhood centers serving young children from poor families.
Those elements pay off once children enter school, according to who spent their early years in the program entered kindergarten on pace academically with students from more affluent families, the study found.
鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 their elementary school experience that was different; their early-childhood experience was different,鈥 said Diane Horm, director of the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa and part of a nationwide network of researchers evaluating Educare. 鈥淭here was no evidence of fade out and no evidence of catch up.鈥
鈥楢 strong model鈥
Even the best preschool programs have faced a common criticism: Gains made by participants frequently during the early grades. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly used such results to argue for budget cuts to
The Educare results, Horm said, suggest that the achievement gap can be avoided if children start preschool before age 2.
The size of the Tulsa study sample wasn鈥檛 large 鈥 just 75 children 鈥 but other researchers say it鈥檚 an important contribution to the early education field.
鈥淵ou have a strong model [over] multiple years and strong persistent outcomes,鈥 Steve Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said about the Tulsa study.
A previous , focused on the first Educare center in Chicago, showed that former students continued to perform well in elementary school and that parents stayed engaged in their children鈥檚 education. But the Tulsa study is considered more rigorous because Horm compared the students鈥 achievement to those who didn鈥檛 attend Educare.
The study鈥檚 results, experts say, support the argument for more federal spending on high-quality programs for infants and toddlers, especially since now provide some funding for pre-K.
鈥淚f the states are going to put money into pre-K, maybe a better use of federal resources is for birth to 3,鈥 said Linda Smith, director of the Early Childhood Development Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank.
Educare, which Horm called an 鈥渆nhanced鈥 version of Head Start and Early Head Start, could even serve as a blueprint for the future of those programs, which are long overdue for , Smith said.
Head Start began in the 1960s鈥 as part of the War on Poverty. Early Head Start followed in 1995 to serve infants and toddlers. Housed within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they are two separate programs, but Smith would like to see that change.
鈥淚t鈥檚 time to make this a birth-to-school-entry program and let communities determine their needs,鈥 she said.
鈥楾he kids are ready鈥
Educare prefers to locate its centers as close to an elementary school as possible to help ease the transition into state-funded pre-K or kindergarten. The Long Beach center even shares its property with an elementary school.
鈥淭he Tulsa results confirmed the work that we do,鈥 said Maria Harris, who served as an Educare principal until becoming Head Start director for the Long Beach Unified School District. 鈥淲hat we鈥檙e hearing from our receiving elementaries is, 鈥楾he kids are ready.鈥 鈥
Most Educare classes have three teachers 鈥 a lead with a bachelor鈥檚 degree and two assistants 鈥 providing children more individual attention and opportunities to talk about their routines throughout the day.
Janet Rosales, whose 10-year-old son attended Educare in Tulsa, thinks the consistent structure he experienced during his earliest years is why he鈥檚 doing well in school now. He鈥檚 in the gifted program at Eliot Elementary, is quick and accurate with math problems and loves to draw.
When her youngest, now 10 months, got a slot at the same center, with the same teacher who taught her son, Rosales said she 鈥渃ried with happiness.鈥
鈥淚t鈥檚 just hard to find a place that is so engaging with your children,鈥 Rosales said.
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