Hi, I'm Lynn Karoly.
I'm a senior economist at RAND.
RAND's been doing research on early childhood programs for more than two decades.
And part of our agenda has looked specifically at preschool programs which are programs that
start one or two years before children enter kindergarten.
And what I spoke about today was the evidence that we see from high-quality research that
shows that preschool programs work, but when we see them working, we know it's because they're high-quality.
Such high quality programs do take a lot of resources, but that investment in high-quality
matters and has a high payoff, so we know that we can implement programs well at high
scale, at district level, at the state level, but the hardest challenge is to see that those
programs have the high-quality features.
Partly that's because we're not always funding programs at the level required to get to high-quality.
But it's also challenging for teachers to have the required background to deliver high-quality
programs and to have the other supports in the program that ensure that the environment
they're going to be working in and the supports that they can offer to their young learners
are actually promoting their development in positive ways.
So the key that we think going ahead is as programs, we look at current programs and
funding for pre-K, and we look at expanding funding.
We really need to be paying attention to the quality of those programs; how we measure
quality, how we incentivize quality, and how we make sure quality is maintained as programs continue.
We looked to research of rigorous evaluations of preschool programs, again focusing on those
programs that are delivered at scale; national, state, local district level and what we see
from that research evidence is strong benefits in terms of children's school readiness.
And that's multiple dimensions of readiness.
It might be their cognitive skills, such as their reading and their math skills as they
enter kindergarten, but also in the domains of social emotional learning we also see benefits there.
So those are immediate benefits.
When we have studies at have been able to follow children longer, we see that in many
cases there are still sustained benefits in terms of their academic achievement, but we
also see other education benefits; reduced special education use, reduced grade retention.
Even longer term followup we see benefits like higher rates of high school graduation.
And a very few studies have looked into adulthood by following participants or using study designs
to look at those long run outcomes.
And there we see everything from reductions in crime, reduced use of social welfare programs,
higher lifetime earnings.
So we think there are a number of issues in the preschool arena, policy issues that need attention.
One is insuring access and access to high-quality.
We know from the data that we have that many, particularly low income, lower-income children,
do not have an opportunity for a high-quality early learning experience for one or two years
before they enter school.
But as we expand that access and address the access gap, we really have to address the quality gap.
And that quality can can be there for children already participating in programs as well
as any expansion that might occur.
So quality is key.
We also need to provide supports for the workforce and that's another area our research has looked
at, is how do we ensure that teachers are well prepared, well compensated, and have
the ongoing professional development that's going to ensure that they're as effective
as they can be in the classroom.
We also, finally, looked to system level infrastructure aspects that ensure that the mix of programs
that we have in their delivery of high-quality preschool programs, are supported.
And that's through financing mechanisms, technical assistance, and other ways in which we replicate
quality and ensure that quality continues.