Low-income children who attended a comprehensive early-childhood education program were more likely as adults to go to college, get jobs and stay out of the criminal-justice system, a study released this week says.
“These results strongly suggest that comprehensive early-education programs can have benefits well into adult life,” said Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which funded the study of the Child-Parent Center (CPC) program in the Chicago public school system.
It adds to the evidence that early education is worthwhile, both for the children and society, said Don Owens, spokesman for the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
The nation has to move beyond the model of education that focuses on “catching kids up,” Mr. Owens said. “We plan to use this report … to encourage greater public funding for voluntary early education.”
The study appears in this month’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The study involved about 1,000 low-income preschoolers who went to CPC sites starting in 1985 and 550 peers who attended other early education programs.
A research team led by University of Minnesota professor Arthur J. Reynolds tracked the children for 19 years.
They found that children who attended the CPC program as preschoolers had higher rates of school completion, college attendance and health insurance than peers who attended other programs. The CPC preschool participants also were less likely to have felony arrests, convictions, depression symptoms, out-of-home placements or to be incarcerated.
Children who participated in the CPC program from preschool through third grade did even better: They had higher rates of full-time employment, as well as educational attainment, plus lower rates of disability, public assistance and arrests for violent offenses.
The CPC children did not differ from control-group children in areas such as substance abuse, smoking and teen parenthood.
The NICHD said that because the study did not randomly assign children to the two groups, “it cannot conclusively prove” that the CPC program caused the gains observed in its graduates. “However, the study results strongly suggest that the program produced lasting benefits even for children who completed only part of the program,” the agency said.
The Reynolds report shows “we should rethink our national priorities,” James Forman Jr., a founder of the District’s Maya Angelou Public Charter School, said in an accompanying editorial in the journal called “Why Prison Instead of Preschool?”
“Tragically, however, in D.C. and around the country, there is a chronic shortage of quality options” for early-childhood education, Mr. Forman wrote. “Giving every child the opportunity to attend a program like the Chicago Child-Parent Centers would, among other benefits, reduce the number of prisons and prisoners in this country.”
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